Paperback Novel

In desperation for distraction, at the airport, you see this across the tiny store of glossy magazines and abused people.
..and down the rabbit hole of unusual geometry and aggressive color you fly

Tree of Undreamt Dreams

This watercolor was directly inspired by an image in a Patrick White novel. I don't remember which one--although I think it was one of his stories about painters. He wrote beautifully about artists.
For me, who has lived my whole life drenched in the colors of my dreams, it is a perfect visual. White was into exposing the demons. He liked to fill them in in all their glorious, awful details.
...one of the reasons I like his work so much.

At the Zipper

From last Sunday night: on the left co-producer-Carla Cantrelle, on the double lyra-Britt Nhi Sarah, and on the right-myself the trainer.
photo by Jan Meissner

Heart in Traffic

That Catskill creek turned out to be an important place for me, visually as well as emotionally.
In this, the second catspider painting I did, it became the heart of the painting both literally and figuratively. The colors of the hybrid beings are a direct result of my having spent a week in Japan before I began work on the painting. Japan is a place that is unafraid of color. Its OK to have a lavender backhoe, or a man dressed in orange, pink and gold at the Kabuki (OK, onstage). And when I was there the telephone booths were brilliant green.

From Andes

There was a time when I spent summers up in the Catskill Mountains in the town of Andes. I stayed in a little house on top of one of those rolling hills (small mountains) that ripple through that part of New York. The view from the house was always in the throes of incoming weather: summer clouds, wind, morning mist, and thunderstorms. It never held still...




Down the hill in the middle of the field there was a creek, blissfully clean and cold, running between the high banks it had cut for itself. It emerged from a culvert beneath the dirt road, the circle of metal reflected among the happy summer jumble of rocks and wild flowers...




It made its way into the hemlock forest where, under the huge trees, it muscled its way around gigantic rocks furred in moss, in between fountains of ferns and tangled wild blackberries, all the way down to the reservoir miles below...






In the meadow a spring ran from underground in a scribbled wetness that joined the creek through a miniature realm of dark-mud deltas, greenery and shadowy, reflective chaos...

Bird

S0 now: a bird, water, reflections, rambunctious light, and a tree. An aerial creature flashes its colors on a singular arboreal, waiting for, most likely, your gaze.
The undersides of the wings talk to the Red Spirit's orchid feather extravaganza. The water coupled with intermittent light presents a myriad of possible illusions. The Wolff is momentarily appeased.

Void Step

This is a triptych that I did several years ago. It has something in common with aerial thinking although not in a literal circus way.
The first canvas (left image) is Red Spirit. The design of his wing's coloration is based on orchids:




The second canvas (middle image) is based on something I saw in the subway. I was waiting on the platform and heard the train coming down the tunnel from the left. I looked to the right, and dead center in the black space was a white, white pigeon flying straight towards the oncoming train. At the last minute it swooped up in a steep arc and avoided the huge rush of metal. I combined that with the idea of old church structure and the gold of the Holy Spirit's white bird emblem. The symbol on the front of the train is a wing. Bird in Subway:




The last canvas (right image) is myself walking down a street in NYC . It is loosely based on a place in the East Village. I had a friend take a whole series of photos of me waking down that street. The vapors of gold and pink are layers of my spiritual self unwinding into the wind.
Wolff Walk:

Rehearsal

At this point in the rehearsals we had a pretty good idea of the structure of the piece, but didn't have all the specific moves, shapes and transitions. Often I would draw while Britt Nhi would experiment--so that we'd have an exact scribble of the things that happen in the midst, by mistake & on purpose, and still have my hands free--a lot easier to drop a sketch book than a camera. Or suddenly I would say---That! Can you do that again? Or: Can you levitate around the hoop? And sometimes it would turn out that she could.

Last Night at the Zipper

Last night at the Zipper theater there was an aerial performance. My student, Britt Nhi Sarah, was performing on the double lyra. It was a beautiful, difficult piece involving swinging, transferring from hoop to hoop and a continual, graceful line. The photos were taken by Jan Meissner

Penguin

The penguin came out as an elegant bird with some allusions to a monk-like persona, perhaps because of the robe body. I like the image below of him gliding cross the grass, the velvet beak's long, gentle curve dipped down at the autumn lawn. And I love the light on the black fur:



...pausing to assess penguinhood:

Horse Heads

About ten years ago I was asked by my son's teacher if I could make some horse heads for the upcoming play (a Norse myth). I went into the studio and made a small drawing of what I took to be the pattern for a three dimensional head that would fit over a human head. I then enlarged the drawing on heavy bristol board, cut it out, scored the lines and bent it into shape. Many hours later after much gluing, correcting, painting and adding on of ribbons I had two heads--one black and one white.

Here, in mufti, out in the wintry light:


...and here in the midst of theatrical rehearsal as Loki:



..and then, of course, the artist got hold of those heads again and tweaked this little event:

Fur

One of the great painting challenges is depicting fur. Its one thing to do it with line and humor, as above, but its another to do it in paint. At the Frick Museum there are three fantastic examples: a Titian portrait , a Vermeer, and a Rembrandt. Every time I go I spend time with my nose right up to the paintings trying to understand the mush of brushwork that becomes tangible, visceral fur when you step back.
In the painting below--the fur isn't bad, although the painting itself isn't one of my favorites:
...Sphinx fur detail:

Cluny the Scourge

This is Cluny the Scourge, a character out of the Redwall book series. He was a large, very bad rat wielding a staff topped with a weasel skull. The challenge was the head which I just kind of did out of my own head. My son insisted that he be completely hidden, so I managed to make the mouth large enough for him to see out of (through a scrim of dark cloth)......
Here he is lounging in NYC, with velvet-barbed tail and his gilded, deer skull staff:



...and dancing across the lawn upstate, tail tucked in his belt:

The Gryphon

Here, in the autumnal woods of yesterday, lurks the legendary Gryphon. He spreads his fantastic, fake-fur wings and slyly looks our way. Those wings almost drove me to despair. I was out in the studio for a week. The head piece went relatively OK--involving my own version of paper mache, sewing, painting (eyes) and gluing. But the architecture of the wings proved daunting. Fortunately my friend Chris came up to visit and assist, thereby avoiding being a witness to a case of art madness....


Here is the Gryphon hanging from my ceiling in NYC, laughing all the way...




...and here is the Gryphon, the Stinkbug, and another glimpse of the Gutmonster (whose story has yet to be told):

Creatures flat and round

One of my favorites, who later showed up in the painting East Wolffland:





And now back to the Great Halloween Years where my son became a demon cat one year:



This is the costume on its own with Lylin (a stuffed creature I created one xmas) sitting on its lap:

Wolff Creature

This is one of those imaginary animals..............

The Stinkbug

Above is the stinkbug with no one in it. Below it is inhabited by its requestee. In the second year of the Halloween Costume Enterprise I had been doing some drawings for a children's website about real and imaginary animals. The stinkbug was one of the real ones. When my son saw the drawing he said that that was what he wanted to be for Halloween. The basis for the costume was an old denim vest and a baseball hat. Underneath went a red sweatshirt and red sweatpants. Everything else was invented with wire, cloth, rhinestones and stuffing.
I have found that I like working with soft materials and going from a two dimensional idea to a three dimensional realization.
In my brain are some interesting plans for stuffed catspiders....

Built by the Boy

These are photos of something my son built. He was always constructing something. I was continually fascinated by the aesthetics of these edifices. This in particular with its aperture for the miniature car and its resulting collapse...

Ming and the Boy

Ming and the mask

This is a mask I made for my son when he still did Halloween. Actually it may have comprised the entire costume. He came to me with a Moorcock paperback, I think Hawkmoon, and pointed to the dragon-wolf head on the cover and said he wanted to be that for Halloween. This is what we did every year. He would come up with an idea and I would go into the studio for several days to a week and emerge with the solution.