“Gallery 2024: Jomptien”
Oil/paper
11” x 8.5”
2024
If you want to know about how and why I created these works on paper, please see the essay attached to the gallery for Roller Paintings 2024.
What I will add here is that these were painted at my friend’s house in Jomptien, a small city in Thailand just south of Bangkok. I am so grateful to Mark for letting me turn his garage/ wood shop in to my studio for a few weeks. It turned out to be a very good place for me to make art.
Since there are so many pieces, I decided to create a gallery where you can click on the small icons and enlarge it. And just write this cover letter for the gallery rather than writing about each one.
I would like to offer a challenge to you. If one of these pieces inspires a poem or a story, please send it to me along with the screen shot of the image. I will then pull that image out of the pack and give it its own space on the site along with your poem and a credit to you. I would love to hear what thoughts and art these pieces inspire.
“Chiang Mai Monsoon”
Oil/paper
12” x 8”
2024
In the low mountains that flank Chiang Mai to the northwest, there are thick forests of bamboo, camphor and teak. These forests are fed each summer by several months of relentless heavy rain. The sky is a slack bright grey much of the time but the foliage is electric green. The mud is yellow or red brown and the understory is black. The valleys and little pockets of flat areas are almost all converted to rice paddies. Amidst all this lush nature is the scrum and detritus of a restless people eager to get on with life and not sure what to do with their stuff. Garbage and abandoned junk accumulates in gulleys and in spaces … everywhere. And all the while the raucous growth of jungle plants are at war with armies of weed wackers and the tougher scyth and sickle wielders.
The slick mud seems to make its way everywhere and the rivers are choked with silt. And then, around many curves or perched on a little high point is a pristine little square with a temple or a stupa: a patch of pristine immaculately cared for if not over burdened with kitsch.
How does one possibly convey any or all of this? I could and do snap a few pics. But these little sketches in oil on paper are much closer to the whole of it.
“Winter 2024”
Oil/paper
11” x 8.5”
2024