Paint the Town Vinaceous

Art and wine often go hand in hand, but not synthesized and fused together in this way. I frequently enjoy a glass of wine after a long day, but find that the reds aren't easy to preserve over a couple of days. 

For a recent textile project, I wanted to work with an antique look from the outset, and aged the appearance of the paper by making a natural dye from tea. As I was letting the paper soak, I looked over at a yet another Cabernet that had turned into an unpleasant vinegary slurry, and got an idea for an experiment. With every new project, artists often face the fear of a blank page. Tinted paper offers great possibilities as an inspired base. Here are the results with my new paintings!

Buckyball at Madison Square Park

As another ball drops in Times Square later tonight, its artistic twin (of sorts) sits in Madison Square Park. Mesmerizing and delighting viewers, the thirty-foot tall illuminated Buckyball sculpture changes color moment to moment in an open space just within view of the Empire State and Flatiron Buildings. Lounge chairs surround the artwork allowing visitors to sit and interact with the ever-changing light show. Buckyball is made from a larger (twenty foot diameter) three-dimensional molecule form comprised of hexagons and attached to other hexagons of the same size by a common side. Inside, lies a smaller (ten foot diameter) identical and self-similar version of the shape based on geodesic figures and domes made famous by Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller. More about the artist, Leo Villareal, the mathematics, and scientific concepts behind the artwork can be found at the Park's website.

Enjoy the many colorful iterations of this sculpture below and in Madison Square Park through February 1, 2013.

Latest Work - Science and Math for Back To School

Blow off the dust from that old book! My latest inspirations come from the worlds of science and math. Vintage Coral and Seaweed (left) is like discovering an 18th or 19th century print from an old botany book  uncovered from the spiderwebs of the lost stacks in the Natural History Museum. Pie Shell (right) is a visual math pun based on the Pythagorean Theorem for triangles and pi.

Someday My Prints Will Come

...and now they have! I am now offering prints in my Etsy shop. Up to now, I've only listed original artwork. For years, fellow artists have been telling me that I should get reproductions made of my paintings. As a new goal set for this year, I finally did the research and got it done! The resulting prints are slightly larger than the originals and the quality is amazing showing all details and maintaining that prized velvety quality on the archival paper - available at: www.kipi.etsy.com

Before and After - Book Page Paintings

Mitosis (left) and Early Man (right) - available in my shop.

This painting on the left is the one that started it all. It was an experiment. I liked the results, so later I came back to this idea. I ripped apart the rest of the book and painted on those pages too. And a whole new series was born. One of my most recent pieces is on the right. Using my initial motif of a cell wall with the nuclei splitting inside some of the contained areas, these small works have come full circle. Back to my scientific roots!

New Paintings with Scientific Undertones - October 2011

Below are some new paintings I've been working on this month. They appear on scientific book pages that have been carefully chosen to relate to the subject matter. The topics range from human anatomy to physics. Sometimes, the text underneath lends itself to the title. These pieces (among others) can be found here. Enjoy!

Of Sound (left) and Lift (right)

Elements of the Ocean (left) and Spring Bud (right)

Vitamin Chart (left) and Candyland (right)

Science Into Art

I've been quite busy hibernating in my studio during this cold weather snap. These pieces were created with my old biological studies in mind. Painted on the pages ripped from an old chemistry book, they depict various compounds, muscle fibers, and a multi-planed formation. From left, "Crystalline Forms", "Peeky-Boo", and "Tetrahedron - Commercial Processes" - all of which are available now in my shop.

More Artistic Pairings

Pink Retro Pods (left) and Twig (right), original gouache paintings on antique book page.

Circus II (left) and Ionization Theory (right), original gouache paintings on antique book pages.

I've been quite busy painting lately! These are some of my latest pieces now available here.

More Snow

There's more snow in Brooklyn today, and that means more paintings! I am working on some new pieces like these below on antique book pages. I found a series of great old science and history books from the 1960's several years ago and started painting on them as an experiment. Since I started working on this paper almost exclusively these days, I've been looking and able to find more books from the same publisher online.

The book pages have been discolored and stained over the years to a nice dark beige. This tint immediately gives the work character rather than just working with a scary, blank, bright-white, pristine piece of art paper. The pages soak up the gouache while at the same time allows the colors to remain bright. Here's a collection of them all together. (P.S. Thanks, Sushipot for the great photo tip!)

Recurring Themes

While painting my new series on old book pages, I have been making repeat patterns by slightly varying the shape and color of each piece. I have been looking at them and creating them as individual pieces, but as I was putting them in preservative covers, I started layout out similar works together. I didn't realize I had so many "themes"! Now, back to work...

The Origins of the Small Paintings on Book Pages

I never liked making small paintings. I've always been the sort of painter who needs to work large; like 5x7, or 6x9, as in feet. I always like to put my whole body into the creation of a work, and have it almost swallow me in its scale. I've just always felt more expressive working this way. Other New York artists I know (and family members) always laugh at me, saying that if I keep making incredibly large pieces, that one day, the paintings will take up all of what's left of my apartment, and I'll be forced to live in one small corner of it.

Well, the concept of working small never quite set in. It's something I do occasionally to make as gifts for people, or to try again to see if I've finally conquered this problem. The result is almost always, nope.

Last year, when I was cleaning out my studio, I came across a couple of small pieces that I've always loved. Despite their size (5x7- as in inches) I felt that they were pretty successful. They were made with gouache and with the imagery that has come to be my signature vocabulary in almost all of my recent work: biology and science. I never dated them, but I think they're from 2005. For the past two years, I've felt completely overwhelmed with health issues and my day job, that it seems that I just never had time or energy to make my large paintings anymore. I haven't felt the satisfaction of actually completing a significant piece of artwork in quite some time, and this was the whole reason I moved to New York in the first place. I pulled out the paintings (above) and used them as a model for the pieces that I've been doing recently.

These new works are much smaller, but I truly feel a sense of satisfaction in being able to complete several of them over the course of a week. They are a way for me to purge all of the designs and patterns that I see throughout the work week in the subway (and elswhere in the city) and translate them into works of art. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoy making them.