The World Is Not Beautiful
2009 - 11"x12" Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel, newspaper, on wood.
Finished with Liquitex Gloss Medium & Varnish
(Private Collection - New York)

July 5, 2009

I have no idea what this painting is about, so I decided to name it after the poem in the painting. Here is a poem created from the text in the newspaper collage. I underline words and phrases within the newspaper articles and then piece the phrases together to create a poem. As always, I use the Brooklyn Rail newspaper.

The walking goldfish was in a previous painting called "Goldfish" and he's back for another appearance in celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday.

The World Is Not Beautiful
If you can just slow down.
Paint the beauty of.
The world is not beautiful.

I'd rather enjoy a big bag of popcorn and
The world's lovliest music in a second.

A group of small paintings.
You never forget.
Unnaturally triangular.
Stay true to this.

This painting and another called "Happy Ladybug" were both experiments with a different process. In past paintings, I have always completed the painting, then used a spray on varnish. The summer months in New York can be very humid, which is bad for a spray on varnish which needs low humidity. Not to mention we had 9+ inches of rain in June alone. I decided to experiment again with brush on varnishes and chose the Liquitex Gloss & Medium Varnish since I already had some lying around. Instead of applying the varnish at the end, I applied layers throughout the process of creating the painting along with additional layers of newspaper. This is most noticeable on the left edge where you see some newspaper that is more pink than red. I'm very happy with the results and the paintings seem to have a greater depth to them. I will be experimenting further with this process.

Here is a larger detailed photo: