I’m in the process of two big projects that involve large scale painting, installations, and collage. It’s great, all that prop styling and interior decorating has lead me to create large scale work for environments.

The first project is a mural for the waiting area / entryway of Nylon magazine. I’ll be doing an install of some panels that feature my paintings and collage.
The second project is painting parts of a very cool (soon to open) Parisian taqueria that David and Cheri are working on. I’ll be going out there in late February to work on the install. And then to hit up Paris fashion week.

I’ve been gathering reference for the paintings and it lead me to Clement Greenberg and a group of artists he termed “Post Painterly Abstraction.” They included Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler, Jack Bush, Kenneth Noland, Al Held etc. Here are some images I’m channeling for the taqueria paintings. Of course I’m sourcing vintage baja jackets, deco wallpaper, Rockaway Taco, and oaxaca textiles but 60s colors and shapes are definitely in the mix.

Jack Bush

also by Jack Bush, from 1964

By Friedel Dzubas

Frank Stella

Kenneth Noland

Moris Louis

In 2003 I stumbled into an Adolf Wolfli show at The American Folk Art Museum. Spent today revisiting his work as I prepare some new personal pieces for a upcoming Giant Artists group show at Space 15Twenty in Los Angeles.

As a big fan out outsider art, especially the likes of Henry Darger, seeing Wolfli’s work was nothing short of a relevation.
The parts of his work I love best are his use of pattern, repetition, and especially sneaky characters! I’ve been drawing people with bandit masks for as long as I can remember. Wolfli is definitely a kindred spirit.

Here are some of his awesome pieces

His handwriting has so much personality!
If he worked today (and wasn’t a crazy) I could see these letterforms making for amazing wallpaper designs.

Really love the color combination of yellow with graphite + the color of the aged paper

A lot of his works involve symmetry and ornate patterning going around and around his figures and scenes.
This one clearly focues on a Jesus like figure on the cross with little sneaks wearing cross-crowns.
Not normally into religious iconography, but the colors and shapes of this one are great.

I’d never think to use purple and orange with green.

This is one of the most orate of the images I’ve seen.
At the American Folk Art Musuem I was surprised by how large scale his pieces were.
This one seems like some Battlestar Galactica inspired futurist image, but yet those towers and fortresses recall something Byzantine.
Really cool.

The perspective is all wackadoo found in an Emaki or the horizontal Japanese illustrated narrative handscroll.

Think “Tale of Genji” by Lady Murasaki Shikibu.

Unfortunately the images I found aren’t the best. I tried!

I’ve been thinking about illustration as 3-dimensional object a lot recently. Not just art on products, but art on wooden shapes, paintings on toys, Calder’s circus, illustrator and painter as sculptor. Below are some images by the 60s pop artist Marisol. I like how her figures are relatively simple arrangements of cubes and, what appears to be found objects, combined with faces and clothing painted on flat surfaces. Very simple, childlike, playful, dada.

(MISSING IMAGE. BLAME FLICKR!!!)

I’m making a concerted effort to find more women designers, photographers, and motion graphics wunderkinds. Today I discovered the really beautiful work of photographer Anna Wolf. I especially like that she had a “little book” section on her portfolio. Oh zines, I have forsaken you. I really should do another one. It’s been…oh, a decade.

Judging by her portfolio Anna seems to often shoot for Urban Outfitters, Free People, Quicksilver, and Domino. Makes sense, her portraits are flattering, the natural lighting is dreamy, and her locations “I want to go to there.”