I'm making some progress on my House of Uncommons body of work.  Priority number one was putting something, anything, down on those white canvases. That something is normally color splashes, drips, fades and explosions.. These color exercises help to inform the work going forward and basically act to push and pull out ideas and shapes out of the canvases. Sometimes they will simply be background color.

In addition to the color exercises, i've been playing around with toning some of these canvases using smokebombs. I've always wanted to "paint" with smoke bombs, so i'm taking the opportunity of a new body of work to explore "smokebomb" bkgrounds and toning.

Here is an example of what the smokebomb toning looks like.. more images of this process down the road..

The first step with all these nice white canvases I built is to get rid of all that white!  All that white is daunting.. and being that I love splashing around color to begin a piece, I started there.. splashing watered down acrylics to create some bkground fields.  Some studio snaps from the toning and beginning process on these canvases..

I'm back from California, fresh off the Tragic Heroes show and a little time off in LA.. I'm back in my studio now getting to work on a solo exhibition I have in Portland this summer at Hellion Gallery.  The show is called The House of Uncommons and will be entirely comprised of new paintings on canvas. Yes, that's right, paintings.  I've stepped away from paper in the past, taking small forays into painting and what have you for group shows.  This will be the first time I'm dedicating an entire solo show to painting and i'm a little nervous and very excited.  Painting has always been daunting to me, so I decided to face my fears and just dive in.  

First step.. make canvases...