I Spent 4 hours last night painting text...and my wrist is killing me right now. I recently ordered a bunch of dual-language books so I don't have to scour the internet for content so much anymore. I'm really enjoying using the text behind the figure, it gives the pieces a balance that I haven't been able to give them any other way, and adds depth too boot. Now I have Dante's Inferno in the original Italian, a bunch of classic Latin stories from forever ago, and even a book in Russian. The fact that I can't read any of these languages adds just the right amount of distraction from the main figure in my paintings...probably something that wouldn't quite work with english.

I've been doing almost nothing but painting for weeks now. very few social interactions at all, dirty house, neglected work, pending taxes, happy cat, etc. I'm making progress, although I'm working on 3 paintings at a time right now, which means they all seem to be crawling towards completion. unsurprisingly I've decided I may not want to include one or two older ones in the show and instead have nice shiny brand new ones...that are nowhere near done. keep in mind, that in my painting world, "old" is creeping in around the 6 month mark. but a solo show takes almost a year to paint you say? I guess that means i'm improving, in my own head at least.

First off, happy new year. my 2009 was horrible; with the exception of painting, just about everything else totally blew up in my face. After such a bad year (which shall now be referred to as "oh nien"), I was looking forward to this next decade with urgency...and, so far so good.

I recently got my first batch of new prints for "a swan among ducks". they look great, and at 27" x 22", they're the biggest prints I've made so far.This painting was in my show at RedLetter1 last April, and will most likely be included in my show at the Shooting Gallery (although it now lives in Florida with Phil Holt and family). This will be a limited edition of 20 prints, signed and numbered, and they're available now here.

On Saturday, I hit Art Basel at the Miami Convention Center...another world entirely. The place was super crowded and filled with so many galleries that after an hour I was overwhelmed and totally lost. I saw some great stuff there too, but there was a much higher percentage of stuff that just didn't do it for me at all

After almost two weeks at my dads in Mass., I took a quick trip down to Miami to join the Shooting Gallery crew at Art Basel. While I've been to Miami a few times in the past, I was pretty unprepared for the sheer amount of art I saw in such a short period of time. The whole city turns into an art gallery; with the main Art Basel fair at the convention center, and a million satellite fairs of various sizes spread all over the place. That compared with the usual weirdness that is Miami; 90º weather in December and beautiful people dressed terribly, made for an exhausting few days.

I'm out at my dads place in Massachusetts taking a much needed break from reality. I've been working on a new piece for the last few days and it's coming along nicely. I'm trying to get as much done here as possible before I head to Miami on Thursday for Art Basel. I'll then either have the painting shipped out to California once it's dry enough, or just leave it out on the East Coast and come back to finish it.

I finally got a chance to put up a new site for my art. Things are much more simple than previous incarnations of the site, and should prove easier to get around and see the work. There's not much new work as of yet, but I have a lot on it's way. I'll eventually have a new site up for my web design company (Two Twenty Two Design Studio) as...