Sometimes this job sucks.

I'm sure you've all heard the term " starving artist ". There's a reason why its starving artist, and not starving criminal or starving writer. It's because alot of artists are so poor, they litterally can't afford food. Well, we could if we didn't drink beer, but then painting wouldn't be as fun. A few of us would usually work through lunch, and after 7 pm the cafeteria would close, leaving those of us with meal plans screwed, some of us didn't even have meal plans. By the time we eased up for a break at midnight, the menu would be either gas station beer and cigarettes thanks to my gas card, or if we could scrape up enough cash, Wendys. Rolling Rock was usually $11 an 18 pack, Miller High Life $10, or you could go the malt liquor route. There's something called Joose that's 10% by volume of a tall boy of malt sugar, but damn they were cheap. Lucky Strikes were only $5 a pack, but there was always cigarettes to go around anyway.

Solidarity was commonplace, any of us that had money during an all-nighter would cover the others. When we ran out of canvases to paint on, we painted just canvas. When that ran out, we'd paint masonite or wood. When that ran out, we painted scrapwood. Then paper, after that, It'd be time to fine something else. I would argue that there is no other major other than art that students would spend all night working on, in their classroom. We did this because there was nothing we would rather be doing. We just wanted to paint. One time we spent three days and nights working, playing basketball when we got tired. That was the longest I'd ever stayed awake, even though I drove from Las Vegas to Boston without sleeping, but that's another story.

We painted all day and all night, because it felt right. There was no comparison to creating something out of nothing, to stand back from your hard work and see something happen that, you didn't know you were capable of. When you see a certain color next to another, and something great happens. You've just created something new and original, you've created space. When you feel passonately about a work of art that your hands made, there aren't alot of feelings that can compare. That's why we put up with being poor, overlooked, and written off. That feeling is worth a lifetime of poverty. As long as we still have beer, that is.




" Edwin Roy Sewell " acrillic on canvas

This painting took 50 hour to make, and 2 all nighters. I wouldn't have had it any other
way. My back hurting and my eyes shot, huddled over a canvas I just spent 12 hours working on, looking back and then going back into it. AGain and again and again, alone in a studio. Yep, wouldn't have had it any other way.

Business time - New Series

As none of you know, because it's barely mentioned here, I am a figure painter. For the winter I will be working out of my home in Lynn, MA until the spring semester at Emerson College in Boston, MA starts. For my current series, I have been focusing alot on geometry that has a certain, organic quality to its composition. I describe my paintings as a study of muscle countour using implied space created through the process of painting to show the model's implied movement. I will post of few pieces from the past months here's and elaborate on all of them.

" Rachel goes down in the 15th "

oil, pencil, and dirt on canvas

This painting was started without a preconceived idea, at the time I had been doing alot of studies and devoted alot of time in dissecting Euen Uglow's style, and the meaning behind it. I had been taught by Steve Mishol to make paintings that had a purpose, a reason for the paint to exist on the canvas. Everything I had been taught was very specific, my professor spent years doing color studies, seeing how a certain grey would look next to a certain blue, and so on. I had three pieces I worked on while struggling with Uglow. I was told to take his methods, and improve on them, to make them stronger. At first I thought to incorporate more levity when dealing with female models, showing curves and feminine features in a more curvelinear way than he did. It wasn't until this painting that I discovered how to take his idea and bring it to a new level. Anyways, back to the painting. I had only pregessoed canvas to work with, so I layed maybe 6 ft by 4.5 ft on the ground, and the model stand on it. I first did a analytic drawing, but was careful to include cross contour and to show the partitions in the muscle groups where the color would shift. As I would draw her I would get closer to the ground as I got closer to the model. This resulted in the model appearing to have a trunkated torso, and a head tilted up. I used the wear and dirt on the canvas to show an implied space, an idea of space, rather than simply do a background painting. There are lines that lead the viewer into the painting, that seem to push her back as if she will fall backward into the painting even more. I realized that by showing movement with the movement occuring, or implied movement, I was using the geometric mapping method in a whole new way. I called the piece " Rachel goes down in the 15th " as a nod to the fight I had been having with Uglow, the challenge of trying to produce something new that originated in his paintings. The title is also a nod to Rachel falling backward. For this series every painting has a name derived from boxing terminology.

" Even in the 14th "

oil, pencil, micron pen on canvas

This painting was my second real piece of work in the Uglow study. This was painted before " Rachel goes down in the 15th" . This study was done while I was trying to capture uglow's geometric shifting of color, the way he masterfully places one color next to another that seems like a perfect gradient shift. Obviously I had a ways to go, but if it wasn't for this painting I would have never had my revelation. There is no implied social statement in this painting as some have guessed, the model was an actualy model who wore make-up like this for a fashion show, her name is Maddie and she's a good friend of mine and a great model. The painting was named " Even in the 14th " because of the way it was stretched, a perfect square, a cube almost. I also considered it to be the step before I had my breakthrough with the Rachel painting, and since I named this painted after Rachel was done, I felt it was a nice touch.

" Maddie with the Technical Knockout "

oil, pencil, micron pen and dirt on canvas

This painting was done after the previously shown works. It added a new feature to my series, points of reference. Again I am showing muscle countour using implied space created through the process of painting to show the model's implied movement. The points of reference are tiny circles throughout the painting to remind myself where I shifted during the process. I turned throughout the canvas on the floor to give the illusion of Maddie turning. I am still not sure if the crammed space makes the painting suffer or not, while a nice wide horizontal space would be nice to let the painting breathe, I'm not sure it would serve as much of a purpose as Rachel because of the action of the model. This painting was much harder to do as far as the color scheme of the muscle's go, because the action was far more dynamic.

Well, that's it for now guys. The next post will be another story or something along those lines to remind people that a person created these, a person who is dirt broke right now. Hell, I like money. " You like sex and money? We should hang out. "

- Alex

First post; the Halloween Story

To begin this blog, I think I'll start with one of my favorite openings of all time, " They were the best of times, they were the worst of times." Not to sound too bombastic, but " We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold " didn't quite seem to fit, although that did happen to me in Bartsow last summer, but that's another story for another time. My intent is not to saunter on with no intention, I mean to help anyone anyway I can, hopefully this blog will make some people laugh, others will hate it. But hell, that's life. I will not prose my way off of the computer screen if I can help it.

I'll start off with a good story, one I keep in my back pocket if I'm too drunk to think of anything off the cuff. It was Halloween, 2008. I was in Boston with two friends of mine. We had always gone into Salem for halloween, sometimes to bad parties, other times to nowhere. If I had anything to say about it, this was not going to be one of those times. The two friends I was with were not the kind of people to find a party in a busy city with guestlists, so I wasn't too confident in our plan, which was basically loiter around BU houses trying to get pulled into a party. Not being 21 sucks. After alot of police shakedowns, Dave Burke, a cricket player, and Marty Mcfly decided to sit down with some chinese food and plan out the night. I had two leads on a party near Boylston St., so after a few cab rides of me trying to remember the order of numbers in the adress (fuck, was it 895 or 598?), we found a row of party houses. They looked like the kind of frats Hugh Hefner attended, large brick tenements on millionaire streets. I couldn't get us in without girls, but after awhile we found the house we were looking for across the street.

We walk up to the front, and there's a line of people. The guys at the door are carding for college ids, none of us brought ours. I acted like I knew one of them and slipped him a twenty and he put us upstairs. Friends, just let me tell you that this was a shit show, because the words to describe the situation escape me. There were so many people going up the strairs, it took us an HOUR to get into the party, which, turned out to be a black frat party. ( The term african-american takes to long to type, oh shit, I just did it! Two pints for me!) I think I may have impregnated two girls just trying to walk across the dance floor, there were that many people. After a half hour of one trip to the keg and drinking steel reserve with some new friends we decided to leave. The cricket player wanted to get back to Lynn to score weed, but I wasn't for it, I was about my business. A friend of mine had told me to ask for Mike at the party, but until we were leaving and I saw him come in, I didn't realize it was a dear old friend of mine. He wasn't shocked to see me because he thought we came in with 8 other friends of ours that were downstairs trying to get in. 8 guys. We came outside and had a nice bout of exciting cheers and toasts of 40s. One of them had bumped into a girl he met once and got a line on a party, so we all huddled into a minivan (who's, I don't know. All I know is not one of them owned a minivan). Just like that we were off passing the Citgo Sign and Fenway, toasting our drunkeness the whole time.

When we got to the house, which I still don't remember where it was except it wasn't too far off Boylston, some bad craziness occured, but we got in nonetheless. 10 guys. With no girls. I felt ontop of the world when we went downstairs, this was a good party, the kind of party you find at 1 AM on a holiday where there's no shortage of drinks and everyone's happy to be there and alive in that moment. We did a lap around, each quarter of the clock I would find the exact girl for a friend. Injured Tom Brady got a football ref, a leprachaun got a nice Isrish lad. Hell, I was walking to the bathroom and inadvertenly found a girl for Dave, who wasn't even wearing a damn costume. It went something like this, as only drunk conversation can.
Me, " Hey, do you know where the can is?"
Her , " Don't call it a can please. "
Me , " Hey I'm from Lynn, in Lynn we call it a damn can. " ( I need to shake my own head at this)
Her , " You're from Lynn! Do you know Billy ___?! "
Me, " Yeah! Hey, that's his best friend overthere! The one who looks just like him and is perfect for revenge sex! " ( It was loud, she may not have heard the last part )

With Dave taken care of, I walked around feeling happy that all my friends were having a great time. That's when I saw her walk down the stairs. She was dressed up as Audrey Hepburn and she looked beautiful. I walked up to her and say something along the lines of " Hey, I'm Alex, and I need to get to know you. "

We talked throughout the night, I was that rare charming drunk that is a fluke when you're drunk, or maybe just you feel that way. Either way I thought the world of this person, she seemed wonderful in the ways you only see in movies, she seemed perfect. Her friend liked me, which was a problem, but I ran enough interfearence that she go the hint. My friend wanted to leave, he said it was getting late. I convinced him I, and we all, needed to stay, to hold on to this great simple night because you never know when you get another. I ran into a guy dressed in a FLAWLESS Mr. Peanut costume who kept spouting cryptic gibberish at me. I'd say " Hey Mr.Peanut, whats the word!" and he'd reply , " The world is made of five wheels and its going to end". Ths went on for way too long until I saw him later and exclaimed, " I get it! He's NUTS! " . That got me a huge thumbs up from the planter's mascot. After another 2 hours, I got Audrey's name, both our phones were dead so I was supposed to facebook her the next day. We all jumped into the van, drunk as hell but no throwing up (thank you Ice Cube), and roared through the streets as the sun was just thinking of coming up. My friend driving, who was the soberest man for the job, took a left onto Boylston, the wrong way. It didn't take more than 3 seconds for us to get pulled over.

" RUN! " screamed the driver, so I pushed my toomate, injured Tom Brady, out of the van and made a b-line for the next street. The cop stood there and said, " You have got to be fucking kidding me. " I ran down the street at about 4:40 mile pace with my high tops, puffy vest and jean suit and headphones. People seemed horrified, like they didn't know if they should tackle me or what. It was like that wrestling burgular scene from spider-man. I made it around the block, just hauling ass. There weas no catching me under normal circumstances, let alone when I'm running from something like this. I made it to government center and remembered my phone was dead, and I had no money for train faire when the T started up so I needed to get back to my friends. So there I was, a few layers of clothes lighter, running down Boylston St at 4 AM. I made it to the car and saw the cops were still there. I leaned in and told the guys to meet me at government center if the car didn't get towed or whatever. The yelled at me to run and the cop turned around. Poor guy, he must've felt like Danny Glover from Leathal Weapon. " There's that fuckin' kid again! " And I was off making the same route until I found my roomate hiding in a dumpster. Turns out he ran straight into a parking garage, and accidentlly into the security office. Now he was here. His phone worked and he had our friends meet us, they had only gotten a $50 dollar ticket for going up a wrong way street. The cop took mercy on them and probably didn't want to report the running and whatnot. My friend confessed he had us jump out of the car because there were more people than seatbelts. We all had a good laugh at this. After a quick reliving of the situation by a homeless spectator, we all pitched in and gave him money for a shower and a suit and headed home. I got through the door and hit the ground, laughing. The sky was never as blue again as it was that early morning, and it's something that I think of every early morning T-ride or a late night past of failure. That night, we got everything and more from Boston.