It is early winter, we have had our first snowfall, the winter tires are on the car, and the Northern Lights are shining brightly.  Recent work includes a focus on familiar themes: divination (specifically the Tarot), convalescence, disability, and transgression, all glimpsed through a miasma of religious dysfunction.  The first few mages in this gallery are focused on Transgression (more specifically Blasphemy);  I have also included a few on the Tarot and Orinthomancy (divination based on the flight of birds), as well as one of Stephen Hawking dreaming of Purgatory. 

Summer 2024. I spent some time in May-June re-organizing my “gallery” pages, hence going over and taking a close look at paintings from the past few years. This one, for example, “Penitent Magdalene,”  a large (5 ft wide) oil painting from 2018.

After a bit of contemplation, though I felt good about the canvas over-all, I decided to re-work the face of the Magdalene figure (using some of the new creative tools I have acquired over the past couple of years). Work on this is currently in progress (detail at right). Similarly for 3 or 4 other paintings . . . see below.

I also decided, on a bit of a whim, to frame a painting from the early 70s: Self Portrait as Lapsed Sabbatarian (upper left). The hands-on work on the frame was therapeutic, and seeing the older painting with recent work (like Ball-Joint Doll Crucifix, lower left and right, from 2024) led to sketching and reflection. The theme of the painting is introspection and guilt, a subject which I continue to find inspirational (see Girls Breaking the Ten Commandments above). 

The Rainbow. This is another relatively large painting (h = 45 in.) from a few years earlier (2013) that I decided to re-work. Taking a closer look (after having the painting in a storage area of the studio for a few years) I was quite pleased with the painting over-all, but not entirely satisfied with the way I had handled the hair. Re-working this portion of the painting is currently in-progress. (Why is Jesus vomiting a rainbow?  Though I am not “locked in” to any particular interpretation, I would point out that I had been reading/thinking about experiences of “mystic revelation” induced by ayahuasca, DMT, and other such entheogens at the time. I recall one participant in an ayahuasca “trip” saying that in the initial phases she felt like she was vomiting light or rainbows.)