Dancing under a dark sky

From the PuzzledDragon archives: 

This is a picture where music is integral to the subject. You can't dance unless someone or something is piping out a tune...

This work is an oil pastel/water color I did in 1992 while I was in Maine and its lovely hills are visible in the background. The guy in blue with the hair was a very odd fellow named Peter Smith who used to wear fingerless billy idol gloves and who could talk just like homer simpson. Go figure.  The fellow in the brown tee shirt is waving his arms despite his girth. He was based on a rotund neighbor named Rob Puncheon. I tried to create vivacity here with the motion of bodies, stars, sky and grasses. Even the seated figure on the far left seems as though she might jump up and join in.  The only static being here is the pensive onlooker on the right. And the picture is really hinges on her. There is all this joyful motion and one sad bit of pensive melancholy. Ah well.

This was moved from the gallery blog, where it was a Jan. '07 entry

Hairs on Fire - with an oil pastel technique

From the archives:

HAIRS ON FIRE! Not really. This is an oil pastel I did while working in North Conway, New Hampshire.  I often find the faces of people I know creeping into my work. I guess because I have had to look at them and their features are familiar. In my mind there is some facial resemblance to a fellow named Burns who was a planner there. (It's not much of a likeness.)

One of my favorite things to do with oil pastels is to lay down thick color then draw back into it with some handy implement or other. Sometimes the first layer is scraped, then a second color is heavily applied and scraped into revealing some of the first color. When I took a drawing class at Western Connecticut State University, many years ago, I remember learning to draw into  heavy pencil marks with an eraser. This is where I got the idea of removing material as a way to form the picture. 

Post Script 10/19/2011 - One of the reasons I reposted this at this time is, I recently read how Jay Defeo formed The Rose using sharpened knives as much as brushes as she cut back into the layers of paint and scraped and hacked to remove material to form the topography of the painting. Very cool stuff.

Weep for the Dead

On this 4th of July weekend - that celebrates the birthday of a nation who's present government violently pursues its agenda at the expense of ethics, decency and common sense  - I offer this oil pastel/watercolor called Weep for the Dead.

We have taken our freedom and our equality and turned it into a crass, egotistical culture that values Blackwater, Halliburton and their like and lets the poor drown in a flood. That believes valor can be bought.

We are like the British empire of old, we are in decline. Selah.

Boots & Sneakers: A Farewell to Rob Ayotte

This still life, which I did in a college class, is rendered in oil pastel. It makes me think of a friend, who recently died, who had the largest sneaker collection I have ever seen. There were fireworks somewhere a little while ago, and a band is playing across the street. Now though, it's 10:30pm. It has grown hot and sticky. The dog is nervous because of the fireworks. The cat is ignoring us as usual. There are sirens downtown. And I am thinking about the Rob: Robert Bryan Ayotte /

Hometown: Tonowanda, NY / United States You can visit  RememberingRob  on Youtube, a channel setup in his memory at http://youtube.com/RememberingRob It includes clips of some recitals, some from his choir & soloists and selections from his Master's recital for SUNY Binghamton (NY) played on the organ at the First Presbyterian Church there.

  The late Robert Bryan Ayotte, who was Director of Music and Organist for St Mary Parish for seven years, died at home in his Danbury apartment, and was found on June 4, 2008. He was only 34 years old.

Rob earned music performance degrees at SUNY Buffalo and SUNY at Binghamton. At the time of his death, he was in the last stages of earning a DMA in Organ Performance from the University of Indiana at Bloomington. Through the course of his studies, his applied keyboard teachers included Roland E. Martin, David Fuller, Jonathan Biggers, Marilyn Keiser and David Smith. He was known for his devoted work ethic, his skill as a choirmaster and organist, for his dry sense of humor, his generosity of spirit, his willingness to encourage colleagues, his love of chocolate chip cookies and brownies, and for his enormous collection of sneakers and boots.

Besides his work at St. Mary's, Rob served as membership registrar at the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He gave his last recital on May 20, 2008 at a Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church, in Baltimore, MD, where he played on a one-of-a-kind antique pipe organ. His is survived by his parents, Peter and Joanne Ayotte, a brother Eric (Shannon), as well as a neice Devin and a nephew, Joshua. He will be greatly missed by the members of his choir, his music staff, his colleagues in the organists guild and other musical organizations he had worked with, by his many friends from college, the clergy and parishioners, his friends at St Mary's. Rob's Funeral was held at St Mary's in June, and later on July 11, 2008 his ashes were interred at St Mary Cemetery. Rest in Peace, friend.

Poetic license

As a medium, oil pastel offers a lot of possibility. This is a none-too-flattering, not particularly accurate self-portrait of the puzzled dragon at the easel. This was just after I came back from Maine when I lived in the attic of the house where I grew up. I like the crazy colors. The curtains were really white but that wasn't that interesting somehow. My hair is not really green either. haha.

WRITING NOTE: Writing fiction or poetry is a lot like that - the details can be altered to good effect on the bottomline of the story. Non-fiction has another standard - but the filter is still the writer's, reflected in what comes first, what details are included, what items had follow up research, etc etc.