Finding my 'Voice'

This is Axel again. When I started this painting thing, the only thing I could do was admire what other painters had done and try to copy them. I really do love doing that. Nothing makes me understand a painter like doing one of their paintings and trying to think what they were thinking when they did it. Van Gogh, Katsushika, Klimt, and TMTC Spanish artists (honestly, the more I look at painting, the more I love Spanish artists). I do get comments though like "when are you going to do your own style?" It used to bug me. Firstly, because trying to paint "Starry Night" or "The Great Wave of Kanagawa" is not easy. And when it is finished and looks good, it makes me happy, which is why I am doing all this. Secondly it bugged me because, well, they are right. Art is about creation, not so much imitation, and I have to be honest, there wasn't a lot of creation.

I kept looking for artists who inspired me and one day I tried a painting of a house (last post) that was the house, but with weird colors. I liked the way it felt as it was uniquely mine. So I started doing more. The painting above is of course Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Children". I loved that painting the first time I saw it, and after seeing it again in the most recent "Wall Street" movie, I have wanted to paint it. I tried to paint it in my newer style which was to try to play around with the colors to convey a feeling. As I did it I thought that a better representation of this painting would be "Humanity Eating Mother Earth". Now I am not a raging Al Gore liberal (even though I have become much more so since living overseas), but I have to agree that the destruction of the earth can't be a good thing. So I painted Saturn as if he represented mankind and the 'child' represented Mother Earth. Instead of blood, she gushed oil. And as Saturn (us) devoured her, we felt conflicted; hated ourselves for doing it, but we could stop ourselves from doing it. This is my new fav picture. It is big (120x80) and the paint is thick so it gives a great emotion everytime I look at it. This is a picture I took in Souq Waqif while our family was out wandering around there. I took the picture and did the colors to try to show more emotion. I really liked how it turned out and I will probably hang this one in my office. But then I did another view of another part of Souq Waqif and it didn't turn out well at all. Kind of don't like this one. I was talking to Anna a lot lately (which is so great because now she has skype too and we can chat art more) about this subject. I told her I thought most masters keep painting because honestly they view 80% of their stuff as crap. It is the crap that keeps you going. To try to get to that 20% 'jelly' as MJ would say that makes you happy and keeps you moving on. I think if every painting you did was good, you would find somthing else more challenging. Which is probably why guys like Michelangelo and many other artists didn't just paint, but did sculpture as well. It is so great to talk to my sister about this stuff. After I painted the Goya one, I knew I had to paint this one. This is a painting of the Hindu god Narasimaha (an avatar of Vishnu) killing Hiranyakashipa. Hiranyakashipa was blessed by the gods that he could never be killed by man nor beast, inside nor outside, in the day or night, on the ground nor in the air. Because of it he became prideful and engaged in lots of wicked things, the chief among them was to destroy a statue of Vishnu and not care. Basically putting himself ahead of the gods. Vishnu was so angry that Hiranyakashipa was so bad he turned into a half man half animal (neither man nor animal), caught Hiranyakashipa in a doorway in a courtyard (neither inside nor out), waited until twilight (neither day nor night) and lifted him up on his lap and pulled his guts out (neither on the ground nor in the air).

The story teaches two things. First, never put yourself ahead of the gods no matter how cool you think you are, and two, regardless of how invincible you feel, when it is your time, it is your time. Using this story I made up the above painting to show Mother Earth (representing Narasimaha) finally fed up with Humanity's (Hiranyakashipu) pride and killing him. One day our actions will have consequences and we are always so shocked when mother nature exerts her power. Which I think is going to be happening more and more. I like this painting for a few reasons. It goes well with the Goya painting, it was 100% made up by me, and if you look at his arms and just concentrate on any two arms you can almost see him moving in the kill.

While Terah was at Anna's house we used to talk a lot on skype. When it was my morning she could tell me the stories of the day and vice versa. One night while she was waking up I took this picture of her on the computer screen. The picture had no color, just blue reflecting on her skin from the computer screen. I loved it, so I tried it on a huge canvas (about 130-140 x 80-90 cm). I changed the blue to green and the skin to blue and took out her hair as it looked like it would get in the way. I really liked how it turned out but more importantly she did too. She says she is going to have a hard time hanging it up as then everyone who comes over to the house will think "look at Terah!" Tough. That is how I feel anyways.

A quick one of me and Terah in 'my' (can I say that yet?) style. I embelished one thing on my body (not hard to guess - I haven't been buff for a while) and Terah seems to think the same on hers. I however know I got the whole thing right! Again, sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. This is a great picture of Terah and me in Delaware when Jay and Lynn came to visit many years ago, but it just didn't really work out as a painting. I tried, but it just didn't. I don't know why. I did try more realistic colors. Maybe that is why.
Anna was so great to not only let Terah and Heavah stay at her house but also go around and look at the houses and hang out with them. It really made me grateful that she would do that when she is so busy with baby twins and about a million other things to do. So in honor of that I know that this is one of her favorite VGs so I decided to paint it for her so she can have it when we return in he summer. I hope she likes it. I am getting quicker at doing VGs... Another view of Souq Waqif. Where we usually buy local Kilmns and sheep skin rugs. I love this place, and the painting turned out OK. I want to paint all my kids in this style I have been doing lately. I have always loved this picture of Xay we took when we were at a water park in Bali. It sums him up pretty well. He has this greek god body, never slows down, always laughs and was shooting at me. However after I painted it I just didn't like it. Something was wrong and I realized I had too much going on. Anna suggested I just do the whole background in blue so I tried that. And it turned out much better. The water gun fades a bit and Xay pops out much more. Which is what I was going for. And the whole painting has a cooler feeling, apropos for the day. I was looking for inspiration one night while Terah was messing around on FB. I found my inspiriation... Not that I love this picture, but whatever. It was fun to paint. My self portrait in this new style. Well, I hope you liked these. I am going to paint more of them. I really like doing them and I like how I feel when they are done. I am not going to give up painting other styles but I am thinking about 4 or 5 other paintings I want to do in this styale. Thanks for looking!