The Kiss
2007 - 20.5"x18" Acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, newspaper on found chipboard wood.
Finished with three coats of Krylon Kamar Varnish #1312
(Not For Sale)

I planned to experiement again with newspaper so I glued a few pieces of roughtly cut paper to the wood. There is an animal from my painting "No Snow in Central Park" that I wanted to use again. I started cutting away pieces of newspaper, and ended up with something similar but more evolved with a deer-like body. There was also a stick figure man and snake that didn't turn out well and were removed. The mirror image of the deer bird was traced off the original. There was a little bit of yellow print on the left rear leg of the right deer bird. I liked the yellow/black look and filled in the rest of the white space with yellow pencil.

The painting had a very clean look to it and I was at a loss for where to go next. I was thinking of adding a newspaper sun in the upper right corner and glued down a piece of newspaper. I painted it red, and then decided to add more newspaper. It was kind of spontaneous after that, and sloppily painted the other pieces, white, black and yellow. I liked that it loosened up the feel of the painting. For no specific reason, I added the triangle, bird, and the Egyptian writing along the bottom of the newspaper.

The red space looked like it needed something, but I wanted to keep it uncluttered. I decided to add the split between the deer birds by masking a vertical line and adding charcoal to the left side. The black sun came next, followed by the white moon. The black strip on the right side was the final addition.

One of the great things about New York City is the cultural diversity. It's a melting pot of nationalities, art, music, architecture, cuisine, fashion, religion, ideas, etc. It's really amazing to see how it all blends together and how everyone can happily co-exist. I wasn't consciously thinking of this as the painting was made, but it's what I see when I look at it. The title was originally "Deerbirds" is in reference to mixed nationalities. I'm half German and half Japanese, so it includes me too. Sometime I wonder what kind of interesting animals we would have roaming around if they could cross breed. However, I later renamed it to "The Kiss". There is a sculpture I really like from Constantin Brancussi also called "The Kiss" and a painting by Gustav Klimt.