The show is up, please come visit. We’ve sold a few paintings already, but the show lasts all month. To arrange a private appointment, please email me to make arrangements, or check out the show on weekends throughout the month of November.

Thanks to all who came out to support me, especially my lovely wife Corey, and all of our friends. It was a great opening reception!

November 2: “30in30 Artist Statement”
Spray paint on canvas
36″ x30″
TBD

Thirty characters, each individual and unique but when appreciated collectively, create something greater than the sum of the individuals.

Tomorrow I’ll do something different and not paint.

After much thought and research, the time everyone has been waiting for has arrived… all 29 paintings completed to date have been priced. 

Those who have claimed dibs on a piece (you know who you are) have until 2 PM (MST) Friday November 3rd to give me a “go” or “no go.”  If you have dibs on a piece and would like a preview, that can be arranged by appointment for either Thursday evening or Friday morning though I can assure you that if you liked the image on screen, you will absolutely love the painting in person.

For those of you out there East of the Mississippi, shipping of the paintings can be arranged or maybe I will have to make a trip back with a car full of paintings.  All that can be arranged later.

The clock is ticking…

November 1: “Mirrored”
Oil bar and spray paint on canvas
32″ x 12″
$300

I start many of my paintings with markings like these.  Rather than move quickly in making these lines as I normally would, I carefully constructed this arrangement.  I like the simplicity of this piece.  It allows a lot of room to wander.

October 31: “Noise”
Oil bar and spray paint on canvas
38″ x 20″
$650

This one needs to be seen in person.  It is not just white on white. I started with a piece that looked a lot like yesterday’s painting and kept eliminating color and whittled it down to the bare essentials.  Glimpses of what was covered can be seen through the white texture.

Two days to go.  I just got back from the gallery where (the other) Kyle and Corey helped me start hanging the paintings.  It was the first time I saw all the paintings to date in the same room without them leaning against each other.  I think it will be a great show.  I certainly am looking forward to it.

FYI for all those of you who have placed dibs on a piece; I will be posting prices (no they aren’t free) tomorrow night.  I know it’s a day earlier than I had originally said but I want to make sure those people have enough time to claim them or let them go to the public so pay attention.

Good night and good luck.

October 30: “In Passing”
oil and spray paint on canvas
44″ x22″
SOLD

I had originally planned to use the last few days of the 30in30 project to somehow tie up loose ends and paint the four paintings that could represent the collective of all the previous paintings. I now think that’s pretty much impossible. So, instead, I am going to use these next few days however I please and do my best to enjoy the completion of this project rather than rack my brain over how to summarize one months worth of joy and anguish onto canvas.

I was sitting in my basement last night after a long day surrounded by 20+ paintings. There is hardly a square inch in the room that isn’t covered 3 deep in artwork. I have basically produced in a month more than I have in the last year. Some of the paintings I saw last night from earlier in the project seemed like long lost aquaintances. It was awkward. I wasn’t quite sure what to say to them. I vaguely remembered them but it seemed like a different time when I knew them. It was only a couple of weeks ago but it feels like much longer.

The countdown has begun…3…..

October 29: “Scattered”
oil, oil bar, and spray paint on canvas
40″ x26″
$900

One thing that I have learned over the course of this project is that when you treat painting like any other full time job, the weekend are still the weekends.  After a long and exhausting week of painting all day it’s difficult to work through the weekend.  I had a difficult time today though the result is interesting, a slight throwback to some of my earlier work (pre 30in30.)  It is far looser in feel than anything else I have put out. I suffered through several false starts this afternoon and had a difficult time focusing.

I have been wanting to utilize more negative space in my paintings of late, creating more room in the composition.  I like the simplicity of this piece and although I struggled mightily all afternoon, it still feels light and airy.

Coming around the home stretch.

October 28: “Path”
oil, spray paint, and graphite on canvas
30″ x 18″
SOLD

This piece’s influence skips back to day 23 and explores the scraping away of spray paint to reveal the oil paint underneath.  Then I use patterns in both the background and the scraped away areas to draw lines.  I like the way the varied size and density of the lines draws the eye in.  It is a smaller piece for this georgeous Saturday in Colorado.  

I spend a good 6 hours stretching canvases this afternoon in preparation for next Friday.  I promised myself about 25 days ago that I would keep up with getting all the pieces ready for the show.  Needless to say, I didn’t keep that promise and now have 25 pieces (and 5 more coming) to get ready to hang in 5 days and I need to go skiing before October ends.  So much to do, so little time.

October 27: “Cross Section”
Oil, oil bar, spray paint, charcoal, and graphite on canvas
64″ x 36″
$2000

This piece woke me up this morning at 5:30 AM.  I had this idea in my head and couldn’t go back to sleep.  I know it’s rather different from the rest of the week’s paintings but here it is.

For quite a while I have purposely not painted using ideas I have had from my background as a geologist.  I guess I never wanted to be known as “the painting geologist” or any other clever nickname.  However, I do think my earlier work is heavily influenced by my work as a geologist (how could it not?).  I have decided to embrace the geologic influence in my work rather than skirt around it.  I’m not saying that every piece form now is going to be on a geology theme.  I’m just saying that it has always been there and now it may be a little more prevalent. 

Funny thing is that this is not the painting that wouldn’t let me sleep this morning.  This piece is somewhat derived from yesterday’s piece in both technique and in form.  This is the largest piece thus far and it is a vibrant piece in person.  I like the textures derived from the brilliant color revealed behind the scraped away grays.

One week from tonight is opening night for 30in30!!!

October 26: “Stacked”
oil, spray paint, charcoal, graphite on canvas
32″ x 14″
SOLD

What can I say? It’s been a long week and with the snow today, and a bunch of other things in life, I decided to play around a little. The result? Some diagonal lines.

Yes, I said diagonal lines.

But only a few. This one is very different from the previous pieces in that all of the color was revealed by scraping away the grey paint rather than applied on top, lending to a more hidden feel. The theory of the lines remains the same as the previous pieces.

Maybe more of this tomorrow, maybe something different. One full week to go. I’m learning a lot about myself, my painting, and how I like to work. If I never did this project, my next 30 paintings certainly would not have been these 30, which is interesting. The process of this project is just as impressionable as my brush, my mood, or my canvas.

So, more of this tomorrow? We’ll see. Perhaps.

Enjoy.

October 25: “Spiral Effect”
Oil bar, charcoal, graphite, and spray paint on canvas
36″ x 30″
$950

This piece harkens back to some of my more chaotic “all over” compositions but remains strongly influenced and directed by my more recent compartmentalized pieces. Rather than obscuring areas with blocky color and bolder lines, I took a more subtle approach and fully allowed the underpainting to come through. I maintained some control over it by still using the bold lines. The main difference between this piece and the previous three or so is that with this piece the bolder lines and boxes are drawn solely in reaction to the energy of the background rather than vise versa. I let the movement of the background direct more of the appearance than before. Which ties into a question posed by DC from DC:

“So is the rectilinear stuff about finding underlying patterns/realities or about imposing a perception of order on chaos?”

Yes. I think it’s more about imposing the perception of order based on discovering the underlying patterns. The order I impose on it is applied by looking at the chaotic areas long enough and intently enough to see (or think I see) some patterns or areas of similarity on which to draw the more distinct boundaries i.e. order around. I am trying to both allow the chaos to exist but also harness it in some manner.More tomorrow.

October 24: “Moments of Clarity”
Oil, oil bar, spray paint, charcoal, and graphite on canvas
46″ x 32″
$1250

Every have three, four, or five thoughts coursing through your head and you constantly jump from one to another? I do. I often find my mind circling around simultaneously on several thoughts, not really making any progress on working through a problem or an idea (most often between the hours of 12-3 AM). Well, here is my loose representation of that. I wanted to create a sense of these vague areas of color consolidating into a mass, then disassembling without ever really fully materializing. i.e. all these thoughts stirring in the background, coming to the forefront, then fading without resolution.

OK. Ok. I’ll move on from the bold Mondrian lines - kind of, maybe. I still have some unresolved issues with this but maybe I’ll come at it from a different angle. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

In the past two days I’ve been asked the same question by two very different people. Boulder artist Bill Napier recently asked in a comment on these pages to “say more about the ubiquitous Mondrianesque grids, the dominant rectilinearity of your work.” Then yesterday, (the other) Kyle’s 5-year-old daughter Logan asked me, “Mr. Kyle, why do you always draw lines?” as we were painting with water color on butcher paper and I broke into my usual style. These are two very astute ways of posing the same question. I’m sure everyone else was thinking the same question so I might as well answer it.

I certainly do have a fascination with Mondrian and his elegant, simple, yet interesting compositions as he called them, not paintings. While many others of his time were deeply immersed in abstracting forms in busy and wildly colorful means, Mondrian did the same with simple lines and boxes. My fascination grew exponentially while in New York and, for the first time, being in a room full of his work. It was the most captivating room in the whole museum (MoMA) for me.

I do not fashion myself to be an imitator. I do not wish to replicate what has already been done. I have been moving in a rectilinear direction (well, only in painting, not walking around or anything; that would be absurd) for upwards of 6 months but in a more chaotic and organic way. You can see some of the work at www.ktg-creations.com. I have been working to create by using intersections of lines and boxes rather than fluid brush strokes. I’m interested in how the eye moves about and what cues direct it’s movement. The lines and boxes are not what are important, it’s how the viewer uses them to move about the painting. While the lines are rectilinear, the eye doesn’t move in 90 degree angles. It’s lazy. It cuts corners, moving diagonally, even in a circular manner even though there are no diagonal lines. So, I would argue if your eye moves in a diagonal manner, then I don’t just paint vertical and horizontal lines.

I also like the interplay between the very simple shapes that I use and the complex compositions that I create. The collective of all the individual lines is quite complex. There are a lot of possible metaphors there in our daily life.

I’m rambling. I can go one but I think that is enough for one entry. 

The last time I felt this way was about this time last year when I was running the Chicago marathon. I remember crossing the 18-mile mark, starting to feel the effects, and thinking to myself: “Holy crap, I’ve run 18 miles with a bum foot and I’m still going. Holy crap, I still have another 6 and change to go. Better eat a banana.” Needless to say, I am confident that the remaining 10 days will not be as excruciating as those last 6 miles. Or maybe they will be, just in a different, non lactic acid, kind of way.

I’m not going to lie. This has NOT been easy. It has been far more difficult than I could have imagined. I feel as though I am taking a crash course in the Classics of the Artist Struggle 101 - a true weeder course. Just as in those 101 classes in college, I’ve found the most important thing to keep me going is learning my strengths and weaknesses and adapting to them.

The first few days, I would rush to my studio feeling pressured as if 18 hours wasn’t going to be enough time to complete a painting. Within seconds of getting there I would be painting. These days, I roll into the studio when I am ready and usually sit in my chair for a good 15-20 minutes drinking my tea, looking at previous paintings, the same handful of sketches, and absorbing my surroundings. Then I paint.

I experienced some monstrous, nagging headaches every day for the first week. At first I thought it was the excessive time spent in my unventilated studio but now I think it was an actual physiological adjustment going on in my head. I think the trip to NYC and, perhaps, a little perspective (from Corey) on things ended my headaches. I do still feel as though I walk around all day with my head in the clouds, preoccupied by what I have done and what’s next.

On the whole, I am thoroughly enjoying the requisite highs and lows of creating. The feelings are much the same as I’ve experience over the past 6 months; they just occur at a significantly higher frequency. To be expected, but I didn’t.

So, it’s gut-check time. I just bought a bunch of bananas.

October 23: “Amplitude”
Oil, oil bar, spray paint, charcoal, and graphite on canvas
34″ x 25″
SOLD

This one circles back in a way to Day 8 (”Center of Mass”) but progressing. To what, I’m not entirely sure yet but I am enjoying the ride more and more each day. I was working on some unfinished business from yesterday’s piece. I like the complexity of lines and movement in the higher frequency areas contrasted with the starkness of the blocky grays, blues, and whites. Though, in person, the large blocks are not entirely flat but reveal glimpses of what was covered over.

So, in my earlier works one of my main goals was to drive the eye all about the piece following patterns of color and lines. While the last 5 or 6 painting are very different from those earlier pieces, I am working on the same idea. Instead of using bright colors with more energy, I am now using bold, black lines. Not entirely sure what that means at this point. It’s difficult to have perspective on the collective 20 paintings when I am still in the trenches.

Back at it bright and early tomorrow.

October 22: “Pixelated Landscape”
Oil, oil bar, spray paint, charcoal, and graphite on canvas
32″ x 18″
$500

This piece, in a way, bridges the gap between day three “Area of Confluence” and my recent paintings. I varied the complexity of the textures in a similar manner that digital image files vary resolution of an image depending on how close you are viewing it. In areas that there was a lot of variance in the colors I made smaller partitions and lines using either charcoal or graphite. In areas where the under painting was blocky, I over painted with large, flat blocks. The general thought was to paint only the minimum amount of complexity but still maintaining the gist of the original image I painted.

This was a difficult piece to paint in one day as I kept adding layer on top of layers. Normally I could have waiting for days in between applications to achieve more distinct edges. Instead, I was constantly repainting on wet paint and trying not to make a complete mess out of it.

I like the sense of viewing the same image at several different scales simultaneously though, I admit, it’s a complicated piece and I’m not sure that I nailed it. This idea may need further refinement. What I do like about this piece is that I can see fragments of many of the previous pieces embedded in it somewhere. I think there will be more to come on this.

October 21: “Indefinite Boundary”
Oil, gesso, oil bar, graphite, and charcoal on tarpaper
32″ x 32″
SOLD

Ah, feeling refreshed and ready to paint this morning after a wonderful yoga class (thank you Masami - just what the Dr. ordered.) After my experience last night I was completed exhausted - but couldn’t sleep. One thing I have learned from this experience is the need to worry about one thing at time. I’ve found that when things aren’t working for me in the studio it’s usually because I am thinking about and formulating the next two or three paintings in my head rather than focusing on the one I am working on. It’s kind of like eating a tangerine - eat one section at a time and finish one before you eat the next. A wise sage told me that.

Anyway, this piece arose from “Departure” from two days ago. I liked the partitions that I created by the bold lines and wanted to continue with that while further simplifying the appearance. Working on tarpaper lends itself to adding paint, pushing it around with a knife, and scraping it away to reveal hints of the underlying tarpaper.

This is another one that needs to be seen in person. A four by four inch image on screen just doesn’t do it justice.

A beautiful day in CO - snow and blue sky - and I’m out of the basement early enought to enjoy it!

October 20: “Line study”
Spray paint on canvas
22″ x 16″
$250

Day 17, over two weeks of painting every… single… day.

Today was by far the most frustrating of those days. For this project, anyway. It was apparently just one of those days where nothing was working. Not the canvas. Not the paint. Not my head, I suppose.

So, rather than making things more complicated, I chose to simplify. Simple lines, simple colors, and a small canvas made for a small piece this evening. (That is, after day turned to afternoon and afternoon turned to evening).
Happy Friday.

October 19: “Departure”
Spray paint and oil on canvas
56″ x 22″
$1050

Never in the last 16 days have I spent so much of my studio time thinking about how I wanted an individual piece to look. My usual methods rely significantly on impulsive movements followed by contemplation. With this piece I tried to eliminate this temptation and carefully construct this piece line by line.

I wanted a sharp contrast between the hazy but distinguishable shapes fading in and out of focus in the background and the starkness of the blue-gray lines. I titled this piece “Departure” from the sense of passing by these somewhat nebulous shapes, catching tiny glimpses - not enough to know what you’re looking at, but enough to know there is something to see.

I think my methods significantly impacted the feel of this piece. It feels stark and cold, but not in a negative way. This piece was about 1/3 of a second away from looking completely different. I hadn’t originally planned to paint the blue-grey overtop. I had called the piece complete, taken the picture, packed my bag, and was literally walking out the door when I looked at it one last time and saw something that was missing. Despite my reluctance to show you, here is what the piece would have looked like had I kept walking. Don’t be afraid to tell me you like it better before, I can take. Besides, it’s my painting.

That is all, until tomorrow.

October 18: “En Masse”
oil, oil bar, charcoal, spray paint, latex paint, and the kitchen sink on canvas
52″ x 32″
$1450

Maybe it was my recent trip to New York City, the news yesterday that the U.S. population hit 300 million, or the general disarray of my studio but something inspired me to paint this perspective peering in, around, and through a crowd. Whether you want to associate the shapes as buildings (the obvious), a crowd of people (like you’re lookinging over their shoulders), or whatever else, I wanted to instill a sense of being surrounded and being anonymous among the masses. I’m not trying to depict the actual building or people, just the feeling. I also get the sense of peering out into the distance and what’s out there peering back at you. hmmmm…

Sure, you can look back over the previous two paintings and ponder where or how you missed the segue but why bother. The basic idea of developing complex interactions of forms built upon simple shapes holds true regardless of the level of complexity in the composition or the density of these interactions. Sure.

Half way home.

October 17: “Sudoku Construct - 24″
Oil, spray paint, and charcoal on canvas
27″ x 27″
$625

A natural progression given last night’s piece - a further simplification of form. I Sudoku daily and doodle on them once after I’m done. I like connecting numbers or sequences of numbers to make a derivative drawing from the Sudoku. I’ve been holding off doing this piece for quite a while, waiting until I worked up to it.

I chose the number and color combinations before I did the puzzle so the color component of this piece was predetermined by some computer that generated the puzzle. My only color choice was to only add yellow to the twos and fours when they were adjacent to one another.

I like the idea of a significant portion of the composition being predetermined before even as much as a line is drawn. I think it still works visually. Those computers sure are smart.

Do you Sudoku?