Elves and Fairies are Metal

Hi Everyone,

I have finished the last piece for my upcoming show. I am pretty pleased with the results and I will post some photos of the painting tomorrow.

It is only 11 days away from the opening of my solo show at the WAVE gallery, and I am thrilled. After hundreds of hours of planning, drawing, and painting,  I think I have produced a pretty neat body of work and I can't wait share it my friends and the community. The show is called, "Death Potion" and the work represents the last few years of painting, loosely tied around themes of drinking, depression, and recession, juxtaposed with fairy tale imagery.

The album is insanely good, and served for a lot of inspiration when
creating my last body of work. Early Man will melt your face.

More than anything, the last series of paintings has been an exploration in discovering my personal voice as an artist, refining my art-making process, and learning how to become a better painter. I am still a beginner. I have only been painting seriously for two and a half years, and strangely, the only thing I am certain of in life is that I am supposed to paint every day.

THE HIDDEN FOLK 


Once you finish a painting, or even a series of paintings, you can't just sit back and relax. An artists work is never done. It's time to start a new painting. It's time to start a new series.

The show will be called "The Hidden Folk" and will, for the most part, be a series of semi-autobiographical paintings unified around folklore imagery. I believe the paintings will be set in the world of fairies, but will include modern day people who have stumbled into this world just like Alice, Dorthy, and all the others. I think coming up with my own interpretation of fairies, gnomes, elves, dwarfs, and goblins will be really fun. Don't expect any tiny half-naked nymphs with butterfly wings, or any other traditional representations of these creatures. Things are going to be a little more creepy than that.

This book is fucking rad!

"The Troll Book", shown above, was one of my favorites as a kid, and it is one of the few possessions I have kept from early childhood. It is essentially a beautifully illustrated educational text dealing with the lives of trolls and also describes other beings from Scandinavian folklore. After all these years, I still love this book, and some of the concepts with serve as a platform for the Hidden Folk series.

Arthur Rackham, Goblin Market

Arthur Rackham, is one of my favorite painters and is a pretty big inspiration. I love how he balances realism of the girl with almost cartoon-like characters.

The Labyrinth = Awesome!

Pan's Labyrinth = Metal!

And now I am off to paint!