Celebrate the Birthday of Painting Everyday!

My December painting show, opening at The Venue Fine Art and Gifts and The Bellevue Gallery at the Farmer House Museum (both in Bloomington, Indiana), entitled PAINTINGISDEADLONGLIVEPAINTING, is the best and most important show I have done.

 It's a statement about the importance of painting not only in art history but also today and in the future.  Many of the paintings in the show are homages to famous paintings from the 'traditional' canon of art history, though you don't have to know this to appreciate the paintings.  They celebrate what for a long time was known as THE Tradition and now is known more appropriately as A Tradition.  They also poke a little bit of fun.

For example, this painting is an homage to a painting by Cezanne...

Making a Point, by Paul Kane

Cezanne

I wanted to achieve the same feeling that Cezanne achieves (I think), that these two men have been meeting this way a long time.  With Cezanne one gets the feeling that the two guys never talk.  My two characters talk a lot I think.

I think of the paintings in my December show as fairy tales.  The beautiful thing about fairy tales is that they can be very sweet and playful, but they can also  be very dark.   I explore both sides in this show, sometimes in the same painting, sometimes in separate paintings.

This is one of my favorite paintings in the show...

Dragon Wagon by Paul Kane

Why is a centaur boy pulling a child dragon through an enchanted forest in a little red wagon with his father looking on protectively?  Only in dreams can that be explained.

Another painting in my show seems to me more mythological, or even shamanic...

Learning to Fly by Paul Kane

I think of the painting as depicting a gathering of birds (and other animals) whose purpose is to remind human beings of their connection to nature.

This painting is the largest in the show at four feet by five feet...

Blinded by the Light by Paul Kane

I see it as possibly a gathering of people around some tragedy, or  perhaps around a religious/shamanic moment, such as Saint Paul struck to the ground on the way to Damascus.

Showing in two locations allows one location, The Venue Fine Art and Gifts, to focus more on  more whimsical work, while the other location, The Bellevue Gallery at the Farmer House Museum, focuses more on darker themes.  Neither side is entirely dark or light, though.  The balance between dark and light might lean one way or the other, but there is always a balance.