I finished these there paintings this week. I still need to sign them and mount hangers on the back but the art is done. They are all 18″ x 18″ acrylic paintings. I’m getting down to the wire for my solo show (it is the end of the month). I have a handful of additional paintings I am currently working on which may or may not make the cut… plus there are three paintings I’m really hoping to do before the show.
Which of these three paintings do you like the best?
After wrapping up this series of skull paintings, I wanted to shift gears. I decided to paint another lonesome cloud image. This is a “work in progress”, though it is nearly complete. There are six more paintings I hope to create before late March… We shall see how it goes…
I took a long weekend trip to Jackson Hole Wyoming. Such an incredibly beautiful place.
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 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!
This is an atmospheric painting I have just been working on. Working with thinly applied paint with very little opacity. I blend and remove paint while it is still wet and try to work out a sense of shadow and volume. It is an exciting and odd method of working that can help create that haunted forsaken feeling that seems to be my endless goal. I struggle not to overwork the image, it is incredibly difficult to find a balance between not enough and overwrought (it turns out too much is never enough! is nonsense 1980’s MTV!). I continue to create a large body of unfinished work. Ultimately I need to step up my game so that I can put together a proper show by late March.
R.I.P. David Bowie
These are some of the Endless Roar paintings I had started a while back. I finished them since the previous post. Here are five of them! You can see some of the texture showing through the paintings. The texture seems to shift with the lighting and angle of view.
I started this painting January 1st. It is going to be a busy year, best get started!
I am working on more cloud and atmospheric work. This is the latest painting, it is an 18″ x 18″acrylic.
brian sostrom 