What you are seeing here are portraits. You may not see many names, because the portraits have been given to the individual. Plus I’ve been accused of “outing people” (ie.- Gay’s in the Military Ken).
-You’re welcome Brian!

Everything I do is inspired by someone I've met. As you can clearly see, alot of my friends drink and smoke pot. I hope you see yourself or someone you love in my work.

After a mixed media show in 1997, was sued by a major toy company (that sounds like Motel, but will remain nameless) for depictions of Trailer Trash and Drag Queen Dolls.

Following that event, started Arsenic & Apple Pie, a toy and novelty company dealing in Trailer Trash and Drag Queen dolls and similar paraphernalia. The toy company was dissolved in 2008.

The insects started as pins for the Yuma Arts Symposium back in 2005. The opening night of this Artist convention is a pin swap. They were wildly popular and evolved into my current work over the years.

Have most recently showed at ArtShow 2010 (June), Levi's (August 2010), and Whatcha Doin' Wednesdays, in the Castro (September 2010).

I'm very proud to be a San Franciscan and a Member of ArtSpan! Enjoy Open Studios, and I hope to see you!

Paul

While debating demanding topics such as race, religion, or war, it is simple enough to become polarized, and see situations in either black or white, right or wrong. These tactics may satisfy individuals whose position depends on employing policies or implementing strategies that promote specific agendas for a specific constituency. But as an artist, it is more important to create a platform that moves us past alliances, and begins a dialogue that informs, questions, and in some cases even satires our divisive issues. Without this type of introspection, we are in danger of having apathy rule our senses. We can easily succumb to a national mob mentality, and ignore individual accounts and memories. With my work I am creating an intersection where body and place, memory and fact are merged to re-examine human interactions and cultural conditions to create a narrative that requires us to be present and profound.

My works on paper begin at the printing press, with multiple runs or plates, and often take final form as collages. The imagery emerges in squishes, overlapping colors, intersecting linework, and the perfect paper scrap. Shapes, lines, and colors conspire in ever shifting ways, each interaction bringing surprise, delight, and possibility. Pure play, each turn of the press wheel offers up opportunities to inhabit a new space—to breathe in orange, green and red, to go like this.

It is my intention to be as spontaneous as possible in my painting.  As an abstract painter I rely on strong impulsive action and response to "create" my imagery on a canvas. 

Much of what I discover on the canvas I have recalled to be observed in reality – in nature or art – and long forgotten.  The appearance and combining of these snippets is spontaneous.  I am enthralled and my work sustained by the depth and breadth of unconscious information at hand.

 This makes my work loosely improvisational, strong in color, gesture and brush mark.  It is direct and unpredictable in execution.

 I work on a series of paintings to see how variations play out.  Often I will work on three or more paintings simultaneously.

 A strong, clear color will come to mind.   Mixing the pigment and choosing the size of brush I’ll make a broad calligraphic mark on the canvas.  In response to that mark, the color, size and placement of the next stroke will occur to me.   After every brush mark I wait for the awareness of the next step, while contemplating what is already there. 

 The brush strokes and color move the eye over the canvas in a pattern, a choreography, if you will.  My eyes move with the direction of the mark or marks, and very much like in a dance I feel where the next step, the next mark should be.  Insight can be rapid and exciting, or require patience.  Working on a painting steadily will exhaust the call and response mechanism, while I understand there is more to come.  I can refresh this mechanism by focusing on another painting.  

 I will work on a painting until information no longer comes, the movement rests, the painting completed.  There may be feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction, or in the best work, a sense of unease in the balance, when culmination comes through the feeling of anticipation. 

For a while I did a lot of abstract expressionism with a lot of action, a lot of gestural drawings and lines. I liked it because all those lines came from unconscious physical movement, and I tried to express emotion through all of the variations of energy, speed, thickness and thinness. But I finally hit an artist’s block, because unverbalized emotion is limiting for me. It was frustrating; I wanted to go in a new direction.

 So one day, very humbly, I started to make these round things. I felt like “I’m a terrible painter. At least I know how to make circles.” So one by one, with a wholehearted sincerity, I started to make these circles. One of my friend’s nieces made a scribbled painting with a lot of round shapes. When asked about them, the niece said, “Oh, this one is my mom, and this is my aunt.” All these circles represented humans to her. And it really hit me. It really fit my purpose and meaning in a way I had felt only vaguely before, but now felt much more tangibly.

After that, it was like learning to drive. At first, you feel like it’s difficult and you don’t have control, but soon you’re picking up speed and feeling comfortable in your actions. I realized that without human beings and relationships, nothing in life means anything. Humans are the base, the foundation of my life and my work. Each circle is a person, connected with those around it. These connections form like a net. Every hole may have flaws or shortcomings or pain, but they’re all linked to each other, like we are, and through these links we heal each other and give meaning to life. If one hole breaks, it’s like a tear in the fishing net; it affects us all.

The creation process felt very healing. All of these circles had lots of potential meanings: they could be eternity; they could be like the two rings of marriage, or life and death, or day and night. I wanted these circles to create something visually beautiful. I want to experiment with size and layers, layers that can represent all of the people we meet in our life. Some come and go; some disappear beneath the layers, like strata.

 Right now, my direction is circles: some are somber, the way we go through difficult periods in life, but sometimes we are happy, so I want to reflect that. Some of my circles are serene; at that time I was sick and low on energy, and I wanted to create a more mature response. And some circles are playful and childlike and reflect that emotional space.