OX
2009 - 18.5" x 23.5" Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel, on plywood.
Finished with three coats of Krylon Kamar Varnish #1312
(Available - Inquire for Price)

Date: March 10, 2009

Ox is celebrating The Year of the Ox, with his friends under a new moon. Rat is checking if the blue moon is made of bleu cheese.

This painting was created in a similar way as "Along Came A Spider". It started with some random blobs of paint and scribbles. Eventually, the scribbles turned into animals and then I added a few more.

The original inspiration for this method of painting can be explained as follows: Abstract Expressionism is one of my favorite genres of painting, with Cy Twombly and Willem deKooning being my favorites of the group. I would also include Robert Rauschenberg, but he's not considered an Abstract Expressionist. In Robert's words, he was the bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. When I see the Abstract Expressionism paintings at the museums, I like to imagine my little animals within some of the paintings. I can't paint anything like Twombly or deKooning, but I was thinking about their artwork when creating this painting.

The scratch marks were made with a razor blade and have a cleaner look that my other paintings because this is on plywood. I can scrape the surface, but it's difficult to dig into the plywood. My smaller 11"x12" paintings are on pine have deeper incisions from the razor blade cuts.

In the yellow section, I used coarse sandpaper to rough up the surface and remove some of the paint. You can also see this through the animal in black outline, just below the yellow. Another sanded area is near the little pink house, behind ox. I left some of the sanded residue on the painting when I varnished it (not easy to see in photo).

The painting is dated 4707 on the back for Chinese New Year. I'm aware there are different Chinese calendar, and some show 2009 as being 4706. However, since I started 2008 (Year of the Rat) as 4706, I am going to continue with this numbering system.

 

Here is a larger photo: