Shadows

Eyes Mirrors Boxes Follies

In the title of my show at MorYork the word "Boxes" should come first because the "Boxes" came first. That category includes my oldest work dating from the 1980s. The box constructions were mostly assembled in the late 80s although parts of the contents were made in the 1970s. Those early box contents include small sewn pieces which I created by making sheets of acrylic medium, stretching them, and stuffing them, like little pillows. "Pillows" makes them sound cushy and comforting but they're a bit creepy and absurd too like David's Lynch's Eraserhead: the baby. The arylic sheets I made are skins albeit acrylic skins so it's a bit like embalming or taxidermy. The box that appears to contain a shrunken blue head is the head of David Bowie. I made the skin from a printed album insert from Bowie's Alladin Sane. It's his head. It's so painted over you can't tell but he's in there.

Photographing my boxes has always been a challange. The first challange is that I'm aiming directly at a pane of glass which is naturally going to show my reflection. So I've had to be tricky about photographing that work. And with anything three dimensional there are any number of ways to light them which naturally changes the look of the piece especially when it is a shadow box. Of course that's also what makes them interesting to look at, always different, from different angles, different times of day. In future posts I'll include others from this tall series of boxes and my horizontal format boxes which were made in the 1990s. Stay close.

Scott Waterman at MorYork

More, more, more!

The show continues. At MorYork, the storied Wunderkammer created by Clare Graham. Within MorYork I've installed my own cabinet of curiosity which are works from series titled: Eyes, Mirrors, Boxes, and Follies. Some of this work dates from the 1980s and most of it is at least 20 years old. That said most of the work was created to look curiously old even when it was new. Running through February 25, 2024 please know that you are invited to attend. See my contact info. 4959 York Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90042

Scott Waterman at MorYork, Highland Park, Los Angeles

 Santiago, Chile; Las Vegas; and Carmelo. Uruguay. What do they have in common? They're all locations of some of my site specific overscale paintings and a triptych. See them and more on my newly expanded site. https://lnkd.in/dwryYTRh

Diptyque a diptych

Diptyque: Prince @ Mott NYC.

To be honest the Diptyque email was barely saved from my trash folder. I was sure it was some kind of scam as it was international, came with attachments, and a text that launched into an improbable story. In fact, looking back on it, the whole thing seems like a dream.  Fly from L.A. to New York and paint a mural thought up in a Parisian design studio in an interior designed by a London architecture firm. The thing is all my projects have a slightly preposterous quality. Needless to say once carefully read I realized this email was completely legitimate. 

Design concept w/drawing reference.

Finished mural.

Mural in progress.

George Haussman gave Paris the look we associate with Paris and the Prince Street Diptyque interior was conceived of as if it were a classical Haussman apartment albeit with some ingenious twists. That includes my mural which at first glance looks like a maniacal kid ambitiously scrawled on the walls, even part of the ceiling. But if you’re thinking Cy Twombly or Julie Mehretu you’re on the right track because these ambitious scribbles are in earnest and the height of sophistication. 

Mural with store installation.

Mural with store installation.

It’s the whole package. The mural, the chic urbane interior architecture, the coveted corner shop at Prince and Mott in Nolita, it all works together so beautifully which is why I said yes to the project. It’s atypical for me to paint a mural not of my own design or at least as a collaboration but I was sold on the idea especially given the 3D rendering. The inspiration is from an original sketch by Desmond Knox-Leet, the painter and one of the founders of Diptyque. And the notion of taking his scratchy little jot and rendering it mural size: brilliant.

Mural close-up.

Ink, watercolor, gouache on paper 2013 

Ink, watercolor, gouache on paper 2011

Ink, watercolor, gouache on paper 2011

Ink, watercolor, gouache on paper 2017

Metaphorically like a diptych they live side by side; my commission projects and my studio practice as a painter. I take techniques and ideas I develop in commissions and use them in my own work and vice versa. Sue and I established a procedure and found tools specifically for the Diptyque mural. The project was recreating Desmond’s work though it could have been based on one of my own gnarly paintings/drawings. It’s my working method to make a watercolor sketch to scale when planning a mural commission so I think of all of my work as potentially panoramic. Scrappy sketchy scrawls, check, I’ve done that. You have a wall; I have an idea.

My Kiawah Island mural (studio view) 1997.

I'll Be Your Mirrors

Paintings for sale. For the first time ever I've got paintings online for sale. I'm calling the collection, The Villa Mirrors. Some I've sold to private clients, a couple are in a restaurant in Charleston, S.C. and one hangs prominantly above the mantle in the main salon of the Villa Feltrinelli in Lago di Garda, Italy hence "The Villa Mirrors". While they last The Villa Mirrors are for sale on my webpage

Return to the Scene of the Rhyme

I used words from Billie Elish and Beatles' songs in my painting.

I’m back! I’m back in Palm Beach at Bricktop’s restaurant with another big bird painting. That’s what the employees call it, “Big Bird”, and presumably they’ll call my second painting: “Big Bird 2” because it is a painting of a big bird too.

Near left my new painting and far right in the distance my first one.

My first one was a popular hit and there was immediately talk of painting more but here we are, it’s taken four years to get an order for a second one. Like the first it is an homage to Audubon and his “Birds of America”. The idea was to take a John James Audubon bird as subject matter but render it with a twist.

I caught the last of this sort of scene when I visited S. Florida in the early 80s.

A surfer from 60s California but I needed him as compositional motif.

With that assignment I immediately thought of the contemporary artist, Walton Ford, because he’s made a career of that sort of thing. Except I didn’t bother to reacquaint myself with Ford's paintings so my results are hardly anything like his and I’m glad of that. Both my paintings combine a sort of serious fauna study with some playful and absurd representations of life in South Florida.

Shes seems like fun, so I couldn't resist.

It's always good to get another perspective on things.

And by the way the second big bird isn’t even based on Audubon, rather an image I found in the Biodiversity Library. Still it looks like an Audubon. Sounds like an Audubon? Let’s say is rhymes with Audubon.