Night yachting... a little hobby of mine.

figure 1.

 figure 2. 

No man can block the way of progress...

Except for maybe a very fat man.
Or maybe a man who has been crippled in some way.

The painting show is coming together.  Most of what stands in my way is lack of funds.  Two larger paintings are going to get costly, but I guess I need to do some research on how to get grant money.  Other people seem to know how to do it.

Speaking of funds, my new online store will be up and running soon and I plan on having a big sale (prints, drawings) with some other artists sometime before Christmas.  And yes I take debit or credit.

Here is a drawing from my sketchbook from way back when I was not so lucky as to be trampled by progress (although I do need a haircut):

Seeing you on a foreign continent... dog torturer!

I just finished reading two novels by Peter Handke (A Moment of True Feeling, and The Left-Handed Woman), just in time too for the annual book sale where not only do you get your choice of literally thousands of books for virtually nothing but also free with purchase a nice sampling of dust and mold from the various hovels* these books originated from.  All sorts of good eye scratching and sniffling going on around my house these days.  Also, Katherine scored a page torn from a sixties Playboy magazine tucked away in her copy of Visual Persuasion, The Effect of Pictures on the Subconcious.  She taped that picture up in the dog's crate to help test this effect on dogs.

So far no results.

A short quote from "Visual Persuasion":

The car used to be more masculine than feminine, but in this modern world it is rapidly becoming bisexual.

Anyway...

I found both of these novels a bit difficult, but in a good way.  I like not knowing what the hell an author is doing.  Handke can be a bit repetitive (at least in translation) in description and drag things on a bit but there are truly beautiful moments throughout like little morsels of sugar at the bottom of some perplexingly deep bowl you struggle to get your head into.  These books came out in the 70's so I'm not here selling something new, but worth a read that I just kind of fell into.  To the members of Katherine's now defunct book club I say thank you for having read these books more than a year ago.  

I've moved on to Frank O'Connor, which is to move backwards chronologically.  Putting that lyrical irish voice back in my head that seems to come out in my own writing sometimes, but mostly in a cartoonish leprechaun sort of way.

Anyway I made a short video of the paintings that I am working on right now.  I have a fancy phone now so I can do stuff like that.  I'm trying to post it but the damn thing won't work and the line between me getting annoyed at a computer and throwing it out a window is thin so I will post a picture for now.

These are all paintings in progress.

*I describe the homes the books came from as "hovels" not to insult the former owners, but rather to capture for the reader the stench of wet earth that emits from their pages.

Ahoy! Captain Eli

I saw a root beer today that was called "Captain Eli's Root Beer", which naturally I did not buy.  Straub's Fine Grocers apparently stocks a wide selection of root beers.  I bought Boston Tower Root Beer because it sounded cooler.  I haven't tried it yet so don't ask.

Here is a sketchbook drawing of my dog friend named Eli, maybe you can see why I didn't buy the rootbeer...

If that didn't make enough sense here is another sketch of a super yacht...

I am working on a new exhibition of paintings.  The tentative title being "Splash and Play."  I'll explain later...

Comics!

... and the celebration ensues...

as I work steadily towards evolving into a completely autonomous art making person the debt gets as fat as a bouncing baby boy.  I got a nice new computer out of the deal, so not complaining.  This also means I can post again assumed audience that doesn't exist.  Hooray for me.

Anyway, I am currently working on two little books of writing that include stories and poem-like thingies  (I have always written poem-like thingies, but the process of making them usually ended with me crying and tearing the poem-like thingies into pieces... not this time no sir!)
Here is the cover for one of the books titled Spaghetti & Meatballs:

Nice job Liam.
Thank you self.

The Moon Rises Over Wes' Kingdom

Drew up something for Wes Anderson's new film Moonrise Kingdom.  Whether or not you like Wes Anderson's films you can't deny that aesthetically they are always solid.  I've always enjoyed they way he composes the frame, the vibrant colors and costuming.  Not sure if I will use this illustration for my portfolio but I like it.

Winks and Pelvic Thrusts

Here is part of a story that I have been working on for a couple of months.  It is from the point of view of an unsuccessful writer.  Lika hera hera go:


I’ve been published a couple of times.  I even won a contest in a magazine for a story about a hippy playing the bongoes.  I’ll summarize it for you:  The hippy’s dog keeps barking and barking, yap yap yap, while the guy is there trying to get into a groove on his bongoes.  But the hippy has to keep stopping to correct the dog.  The first time he says to the dog, “come on man," in kind of a whiney voice.  But when he tries to play again, the dog starts barking, so the hippy gets a little mad.  He snaps at the dog “shut up Leonard!” And okay, the dog is quiet, he has learned his lesson.   The hippy starts playing again just for a minute to where he is really getting into it.  His beeds are rattling and his head is shaking.  His hair is flying and he’s looking up at the sky for that moment, for that one thing, that clear tunnel that sucks you in like a vacuum tube and your just some light piece of dust.  He’s looking for it.  When he’s right at the edge (its like the lip of a glass, all rounded over and he see’s it like a blue horizon) the dog starts yapping again.  The hippy throws down his bongoes, snapping them apart, and kicks the dog hard in the side. 


The story was published two years after giving up on graduate school, in a pretty obscure magazine that I don’t think exists anymore.  I got the idea when I overheard my neighbor doing pretty much what I described.  I had just returned from some place that I can’t remember.  Work probably.  I was maybe thirty.  I was feeling pretty dismal, though thinking about it now I can’t say why I was so sad all the time.  The piercing yelp of the dog when that hippy kicked him in the ribs made me laugh out loud.  I was delighted to see someone who was wearing the uniform of tranquilty acting so viscious, so full of wrath.  I can’t remember if I thought of myself as the hippy or the dog.  We switch sides that way.