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Large Mill, 1995, acrylic, gouache, ink, and pencil on paper, 90" X 88" (Stage One)
Stage Two
Final Version
never exhibited--done right before I moved to NY and started working with the computer. the piece got more difficult to look at as it was completed--by the end it was impossible for very long without retinal strain and headaches--the early stages appear tasteful in these polaroid scans but the colors are pretty artificial and obnoxious in person--I contemplated stopping the process and calling it done at many stages but pressed on out of some innate sense of responsibility to the initial premise. the "disc" design was originally based on paintings of rolled-up silk seen end-on in a Russian constructivist-influenced painting, I think by Liubov Popova.
Psychic Highway, 1994, gouache on aluminum-coated paper, linen tape [along seams on back], 81" x 78" (destroyed 2002)
Getting the water-based gouache paints to stick on that metallic surface was the challenge of a lifetime. By 2002 so much had cracked off it the piece had to go to the landfill. The drips are all fake--to give the look of zestful spontaneity. A bit Scharfish but without his commitment to creating a fine, permanent object.
Spheres on Checks, 1994, gouache on 363 cancelled checks, linen tape, 90" x 66"
I had to yawn when I saw that Richard Prince's new paintings incorporated his cancelled checks. From the reproductions I saw, he didn't do anything interesting with them, like paint several hundred spheres on them. This reproduction is pretty grainy; I'll try to post something more detailed on another page.
Advil Box, 1994, acrylic on promotional display box, 16.5 x 8 x 8.5 inches
Magnolias, 1994-1996, ink, acrylic, and collage, 21.5 x 17 inches.
I think was done in '95--it's a transition between my painted and computer pieces.
The image in this post from my main blog is a "virtual" version of a series I did in the early to mid-'90s, of acrylic and gouache molecules painted on giant, taped together sheets of doodled-on, throwaway paper. I did quite a few of these pieces (detail of one above--full sized one in progress below) before moving to New York and getting minimalist religion.
I mean, I like the ability of avowedly maximalist work to upset people. Collectors prefer elegant black and white abstractions that fade into the background, and the bad kid in me wants to make something they'll totally hate. And these are bad--there are a lot of degraded, half-finished pin-up girl drawings you can't see in the scanned polaroid, and bug-eyed caricatures, just the worst stuff. I'm compelled to do this kind of work (still) but once it's finished and I step back and look at it, I sometimes wish I hadn't.
If I'm sympathetic to the New Dumb Little Painting genre it's because I've done my share of them over the years. Here's one from '91: Rot Gut, acrylic on canvas, 10 X 8 inches, currently hanging in the Louvre in Paris, France.
Molecule on Legal Pad, 1996, mixed media, approx. 40" X 35"
Tom Moody, Study for Selected Apparitions (detail), 1983, scan of collage
Wolf and Molecule (Eat at the Y), 1992, acrylic on canvas, 12" X 9"
Left: Curly Attempts to Repair Bathtub
Right: A Plumbing We Will Go, 1994, acrylic, ink, gouache on paper, 70" X 54" (edited)
Buckyball II, 1993, acrylic on paper, 80" X 76" (edited)
Double Alpen, 1995, acrylic on cereal boxes, 10" X 13" X 3"
Stripes and Cage, 1995, acrylic on paper, 47" X 40"
Green Cage, 1992, acrylic on canvas, 30" X 30" (whereabouts unknown)