I am finishing up the second “Western Shadows (bison skull)” painting. I will try to get a proper photograph of it when it is complete. There are some pretty interesting textures happening that aren’t apparent in this photograph. I’m planning on doing at least one more of these but who can tell?
This is the newest acrylic painting I have completed. I am putting more pieces together for the “Shadows of the West” show. My goal here is to create what amounts to a really atmospheric still life painting. I want it to have a very ghostly ethereal quality, not entirely there. I found a bit of success with this particular painting. I am currently working on a couple other paintings with a similar approach, hopefully I will be able to post another one next week!
I’ve wrapped up my herd of cow heads so now I’ll move on to other paintings. I’ve decided to use this particular painting for the promotional card for the show “Shadows of the West”. The show is going to start March 31st of this year. I have a lot more work to do before now and then! I will post more information about that as the date looms closer.
I am attaching an image that shows three other paintings that are part of the 5 cow heads I recently completed. I still need to take final photographs of one of these.
This is an 18″ x 18″ acrylic painting that I recently finished.
Before I took the final photograph I took a snapshot with my iPhone in the studio. My subjects have been bouncing around from minimal landscapes to portraits of cows (cowscapes)? I thought it was interesting seeing the latest cow portrait next to “Cloud & Sea” on my easel. Wondering how these paintings will relate to one another in the context of a gallery show. Each painting was done by the same hand, same mediums and the same general approach. They are different paintings but they both are sort of a simplistic study of isolation/solitude. These two in particular had a nice relationship and set my mind at ease to some degree.
Building a collection of paintings for a show is both exciting and a bit daunting. I am always wondering if I shouldn’t narrow my scope and make a really tight collection of paintings with a very specific subject holding them together. The problem is when I’m working I always get excited about “the next painting”. Often this leads to something seemingly unrelated to the previous piece. Tangents and random explorations are part of the creative process and lead to new ideas and often new approaches. In a perfect world I would love to have a massive space where I could hang paintings to really get the overall feel. Then I would replace paintings that were not bolstering the show. Remove paintings that felt redundant or didn’t enrich the overall feeling. Create new paintings that would fill out the collection in just the right way. Of course this is not a perfect world and that is just a daydream. So ultimately I will follow my gut when choosing pieces and have a little faith…
Ten years ago I painted the labels for this series of Snoqualmie wines. It was a fun experience because one of my friends was the designer at the winery… it is who you know. It was an excuse to go out to lunch and hang around under the banner of “work”. Sadly he left the winery before the project was finished.
The end result was kind of an interesting look. It was a lot of fun to see the wine in stores, every time I went to a new grocery store I would look for it! I’ve attached two pictures I took at the Snoqualmie Winery in Prosser Washington. If you are a fan of wine this is a great area to do a lot of wine tasting. There are several dozen tasting rooms and several annual wine-tasting events. It is also on the dry side of Washington State so odds are good you will see some sunshine! .
I decided to do this post as a result of instagram. I was poking around, as people do, and just happened to come across a picture of someone with one of these bottles of wine next to a glass enjoying a summers day. Hard to believe ten years have come and gone… they come and go faster now don’t they. Snoqualmie introduced new labels a couple of years ago so you can no longer find mine in stores.
I have finished two more paintings recently. These are continuations of a theme I started last spring. That theme is essentially a study in atmosphere and emptiness in landscape painting.
Both paintings are acrylic paint on plexiglass. “Cloud and Sea” is 20″ x 20″ and Water’s Lullaby is 18″ x 18″. I think the cloud painting is the most successful, it has a moody ethereal felling that I like. Which painting do you prefer and why?
More and more I want to reduce my imagery down to a minimal form and allow the paint to be the subtle star of the show. If only I didn’t have to work a day job! But the isolating night is a pretty ideal setting for this type of imagery… the trick is staying motivated and awake.
This is a cloud painting I’m finally getting close to finishing. I guess when something is “finished” it has officially run out of potential? Maybe that’s why I’m dragging my feet these last few weeks. I am trying to wrap up a number of paintings… Of course I have to start some more to keep the wheel turning.
I’m also attaching a photo I took last night. I was thinking this particular corner of the studio had a lot of interesting things happening. It isn’t the “landfill” style of decoration I have used around the rest of the space. Anyway just got nostalgic looking at objects representing the last 6 years or so. One of the last crazy Halloween masks I made was in the shot along with paintings and show flyers. I did a terrible job framing the shot but it was good enough for Instagram!
I’m making a number of pretty large cow portraits. So far they are all 20″x20″. I’m trying to strike that balance between subtle atmosphere and interesting brush work/mark making. The paint in this one is harmonizing with the shining texture beneath the surface.
Last weekend I took a lot of reference photos not only of the ocean but of pastural scenery and the incarcerated cow. It seems there is no such thing as too much reference.
I wasn’t intending to post a photo of what I was working on tonight… but here we are. Still with David Bowie stuck in my brain. I always liked him but was never more excited about him than hearing Kurt Cobain say “that was a David Bowie song”… Today on rollingstone.com I was reminded of the excellent sketch he was in on Extras… oh man it reminds me why I loved Rickey Jervace as well… To a much lesser degree obviously. None of this has a thing to do with my late night painting… just thoughts and marks on a board. Also beef, it’s what’s for dinner.
There is something intriguing about antique communication devices. They are often really beautiful objects that play no part in our modern world. I purchased this phone on eBay because I wanted to use it as a subject! I was also experiementing with destruction. I often use squeegees and unusual brushes to create marks that I find beautiful. This time I recklessly attached the painting with liquids before it had dried. The results speak of chaos, I thought some of it was pretty interesting looking. I have not been pouring liquid on my wet paintings as of late but like the subject itself I may revisit.
brian sostrom 