Bridges 2006

As a child I had a fascination with water. After a hard rain my buddies and I would build dams, channels, and bridges all over the neighborhood. The bridges where my favorite and to be able to ride my bike over a large span of open water on six inch wide bridge began my bridge passion. Since then I’ve built many bridges, (five alone on my property crossing over a winding creek) and always wide eyed when I pass a newly discovered bridge. Bridges was a commission piece for some friends in New York City. I wanted to combine a verity of massive bridges in a part of the world where it’s not practical, other than the pure beauty to a bridge enthusiast.

oil on canvas 32"x30" sold

Development 2005

When I painted Development I was fresh out of college. I had learned a lot in the past four years, mostly who I was as an artist. I felt many of my paintings where incomplete before I would move on to another piece not allowing them to become what I fully intend them to become. Paintings where piling up, ideas churning in, I needed to focus. Development became (I felt) like many other of my cityscapes so I attempted to redevelop how I would approach a painting. You’ll see down the road….

oil on canvas 36"x32" sold

Someday City 2005

At the time Someday City was the largest canvas I began a painting on. Four by three feet. Many of my professors suggested that I go big, think big with broad-brush strokes. The canvas hung on my studio wall for a month, blank, looking back at me waiting. I remember drawing many thumb nails for the large canvas and one day I though I knew what I wanted, and the pallet filled with piles of color. A few weeks in and I hated where I was going. A month in it just wasn’t working for me, frustration built. I was doing the same thing I always did and knew it so, I took the biggest brush I could find and covered the whole cityscape painting with ultramarine blue. I freaked out and began using turp to remove my large brush stokes, and what turned out opened a large door for me. Someday City is about taking chances, risks by stepping into the unknown. It’s a painting about our future and whether our risks and decision making is right or wrong and how you really are never sure until you do it.

Oil on Canvas 48" x 36"
2000.

Neat Street 2005

In college I was broke. Nearly every surface I painted on was found, given, or made myself out of odd items. My studio became overloaded with things I thought I might use one day. Classic hoarding. It was all good stuff and with such a small budget to purchase these item if I ever need them just wasn’t possible. Neat Street is about that, discovering things around you that are free, neat, and eye opening. The canvas, paint, stretcher bars, and gesso to make Neat Street where all given to me, or found in MECA’s free for the taking bin. I loved that bin!

Oil on Canvas 28" x 24"
750. (framed)

Pinball City 2005

Pinball City was also an imagined satellite view where I began to realize that not only did I enjoy that act of painting I also enjoyed building. In this case I was building a functional city (I thought) maybe as a city planner would. Though this piece wasn’t just that, I explored mixing mediums, different brush widths and strokes. Different tools to apply paint witch eventually led me to thinking about a painting that was built like a sculpture. I called it Pinball City only because it looked like a Pinball Game.

Oil on Canvas 20" x 16"
250.

Which Way City 2005

Senior year in the MECA painting department was one of the greatest years in my life. I met and became friends with some incredible artist. It was a constant ball of creative who knows what! It was also a time when we began to understand who we where as artist. Finding that my passion for architecture as well as human population growth I really began looking at cityscape paintings, maps, historical photographs, and sprawl. 2005 was the year of the Cityscape. Which Way City is an imagined satellite view of a city that was I would harness on an old clock, rotating it 360 degrees.


Oil on Canvas 11" x 14"
N.F.S.

Desk Top 2004

I like a lot of things, but Desk Top is one of my favorites. I had taken several Graphic Design courses at MECA and loved them. I love design, right down to whoever designs clever Icons on the computer’s desktop. Returning to my studio I realize I too have a “desktop” and on it I have my “icons”. The things I click on while I’m creating. Cezanne influenced how in still life the parts make up the whole.

Oil on Canvas 24" x 24"
600.

Dreaming of Home 2004

I called this piece, Dreaming of Home. Not long after High School I traveled city to city all over the US. The memories are rich with the amazement of America’s Industrial Revolution and the direction it has taken our society. The metropolises really stuck with me, the skylines, the people, the noise, it all filled my eyes with excitement, but in the back of my mind I was always of dreaming of home.

Oil on Canvas 18" x 36"
350.

Ocher City 2004

Ocher City was the third of a series of quickly imagined cityscapes. I wanted to become more familiar with oil paint and the ability to work with different levels of paint applications. With these paintings I began to look less at subject mater and more of who I may have been at the time as a painter, as well as a creative thinker. Less of a camera and more of a painter, I thought.


Oil on Canvas 20" x 20"
sold

City of Lights 2003

Learning about art and the artist of yesterday and today is like a wide river of water and I’m a six-foot dry sponge. In 1994 a friend and I flew out of San Francisco at night, and it was the first time I saw city lights stretch out into the vast distance. When I discovered Yvonne Jacquette’s airplane view paintings it instantly drew me back to the San Fran night skyline from above. With just a memory I tried to recreate what I was so impressed by and City Lights began many paintings with the “hot air balloon view”.


Oil on Canvas 18" x 24"
Sold

Future City 2003 (triptych)

When I moved into my studio at college, I moved right in. Loaded it top to bottom with things I loved, images, sculpture, motorized gizmos, and plenty of new and used canvas. When the brush hit the surface it didn’t take long to realize what my passion was, architecture, and the process of how things are built and created. Future City was an off spring of the idea of the imagined city, where I wanted to allow the viewer to understand that it’s an planned, drafted, engineered, bickered over, and eventually built metropolis. This triptych really got my wheels turning.

Oil on Canvas ea. roughly 18" x 22"
600.

Nude Figure 2003

Painting from the figure never really appealed to me. Maybe I was more focused on whether the sitter was comfortable sitting nude in front of a bunch of people rather than trying to focus on painting and capture the sitters soul. When I turned to the pallet knife I found abstracting the paintings I was able to detach from the curiosity that was distracting me.

Oil on Canvas 12" x 16"
N.F.S.

A Day at the Cafe' 2003

The next three paintings are from old family photos my mother found in an old box. Each photo was about three inches square and over the years became quite faded and damaged. At the time I had three large canvases and thought that bringing these photos back to life via painting them would keep me painting through the summer break. A Day at the Cafe' is of, from left to right; Unknown man, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Guy Hickok, and Mary Hickok. Circa. 1926 Milan, Spain

Oil on Canvas 36" x 36"
N.F.S.

The Governess 2003

My Great Aunt Andre and Grandfather posing for a photo with their governess. Circa. 1925

Oil on Canvas 36" x 36"

Sunday Stroll 2003

From Left to Right;
Family Friend, my Great Grandmother, Mary Hickok, my Great Grandfather, Guy Hickok, my Great Aunt Andre and my Grandfather Robert Hickok.

Oil on Canvas 36" x 36"
N.F.S.

Lost, Reward, Found 2003

One of my favorite pieces! My intro to print class was a new perspective of creating the image. Thinking about the content of my work I found the obvious to be humorous. Push pins at college are everywhere, yet there was always someone who didn't have any for their final critique. I remember forgetting my box of push pins one day and found all that I needed on the ground and it hit me. What about the humor of an old western style poster with such concern about a minuscule valuable possession. I posted the three separate block prints, Lost, Reward, then Found around campus for three weeks. They kept getting taken down so, I kept making more. Still have the blocks they're printed from, might make some more!

Ink on Paper 8" x 12" each

Adding Machine 2003

Adding Machine is a self-portrait. Our assignment in a Still Life Painting class was to paint an object that represented ourselves. I came to class with nothing, not because I slacked off, (sometimes I was) but because I struggled to find anything. I asked my Professor if I could leave class to stop at a local Goodwill to see if they had anything. She wasn't amused. When I made it to the hard goods the adding machine was looking right at me. Price tag, $1.00. Numbers are always on my mind.

Oil on Canvas 18" x24"
sold

The Mixer 2003

Soon after Power Struggle, The Mixer became more of a metaphor about why we always seem to try to do things faster and easier. This old mixer was one of two random items left behind at an apartment that I moved into. I remember thinking how unusable it was and how obvious it was that they didn’t need it anymore. Forty bucks down the drain. Accompanied by the fork, a machine that takes a little longer to mix with but hasn’t broken down in centuries. The light bulb represents not such a brilliant idea.

Oil on Canvas 11" x 14"

The Mixer 2003

This was the second still life of The Mixer. I painted it in a dark storage closet in the classroom with the door just cracked a few inches. Mixing the colors in the dark and painting with very little light was new for me and I believed turned out surprisingly well.

Oil on Canvas 18" x 8"