This painting is based on a number of photographs I took of a young buck near my home. I never grow tired of wildlife and somehow feel the same charge when I spot a deer. This guy hung around for weeks but I haven’t seen him in a while.
Tag: poem
Sunday Drive
I spent much of the afternoon driving around on the Oregon Coast. I took a lot of reference photos. Here is a collection from the day. Difficult to take a bad phot here!
Broken Lines
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.
Gallery Wall
I have three paintings in a group show at the confluence gallery. The show is called “Shadow & Light”, a pretty nice theme for an art show that can be extended in a lot of psychological as well as literal directions.
These are 18″ x 18″ paintings, they appeared gigantic when it was time to box them up but they look so small here! I will not be able to attend the opening of the show so ended up mailing the paintings… always seems a little scary!
Portrait Vignette
This was a 10″ x 10″ cow portrait I did in acrylic not too long ago. Once again using the cow as sympathetic subject. I have been working on highly atmospheric environmental scenes of late. I have largely abandoned opaque colors since doing this painting. I am trying to make work with a lot of transparency and light penetrating the paint. I hope to bring it back around and do some large sweeping landscapes with shadowy cows. We shall see where things go… Best to follow the work rather than trying to map out a plan.
Fog of Isolation
These two paintings were part of a small collection of animal paintings I did. Very heavily influenced by Tonalism, a movement that emerged in the 1880s. Works that fell under that umbrella of style were painted with an overall tone of colored atmosphere.
There were a lot of really interesting artists that were grouped into this art movement such as George Innes and James McNeil Whistler. My personal favorite was Albert Pinkham Ryder, his work is more stylized with a very grim and haunting look. I was excited to see some of his original pieces at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art a number of years ago!
Three
This painting that goes back a few years. I was playing around with Brewer’s Blackbirds as stark symbolic subjects. Lacking the stature and mystique of the crow they are nonetheless interesting birds. The strange light ring of their eye… the surreal dark shapes they create in the sky with their multitudes. I dusted this one off recently as it was purchased by my brother in-law as a Christmas gift. I realized I didn’t have a decent photograph so I took a little time to capture one!
Endless Roar #1-#6
I painted six small water paintings. These are 10″x10″, so fairly small. The painting I singled out with a close up I am giving to my niece for Christmas… Just wrapped it!
Other Spaces #3
This was the third in a triptich that I did called “Other Spaces”. The images were simple and bleak but interesting, particularly together. I used paint brushes and a 24″ squeegee to create these paintings that are 20″ x 20″ each.
Ripple then Wave
Waves
I finished some of the desolate water paintings I started on recently. These are two of the paintings of which I am particularly fond. You can see some interesting surface qualities if you look carefully. These are most noticeable on the first image, particularly along the left side. These odd textural anomalies are my favorite things! These paintings both have deep translucent depth, more than 1/8th inch so the light really moves through the work.
brian sostrom 