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I drew this this morning and it went through many changes throughout the day. I got the idea from a message a friend sent me. It had to do with string theory and there was a picture of a kitten with a string, which I thought was pretty funny. I think the video about string theory stuck in my mind, because the idea of other unknown, undiscovered dimensions interests me, especially as an Orthodox Christian. I had a close friend who loved quantum physics and had a good mind for grasping it and he used to talk about it a lot, but it had been awhile since I had thought about it.

I like to think about these kinds of things when I draw, because although my main interests and inspirations have always been line and color, I am still fascinated by shape, space, and mass, probably the same way a bird might be fascinated by an airplane. We do something similar, but very differently and for very different reasons. But I will never be an airplane, and an airplane will never be a bird.

So I thought a lot about how mass affects space when I originally drew this, but true to form, after I had my fun with that, the picture started taking over, and making its own rules, leading the way to its own conclusion. It's too early for me to tell how much of my original questionings are left here, but certainly the contemplation of string theory was the seed, fertilized by a cat laying on the back of my sofa, in the morning sunlight.

I painted this a month or so ago, and just uploaded it. I have many pictures in my files I haven't uploaded yet. Usually if they are compositions I am still studying, I let them brew for a while in the files, until I know better what I think of them. I am always trying something new, so that's not the reason, but it's the trying something new coupled with something else hard to describe that makes me want to sit on them a while. In this case the content of a cat portrait mixed with an interior and an idea of a task brought in new elements. I think more than any of my cat portraits this is most similar to a piece I did a while back call "Arranging Flowers" which also involved the idea of a task.



I don't like to represent things too literally because I feel that is visually heavy handed. I am searching for something not quite poetic, not quite lyrical, but otherworldly and maybe literal in a different sense. As I said, it is hard to describe. I want it to be personal, intimate, and questioning and a bit challenging for the viewer. I want it to be hard edged in design, but not hard edged in story. How do you make something visually explanatory without being literal? I think you have to enter a parallel reality. Maybe it is a bit like creating a language, and I myself am still learning it - from myself, and yet I hear it in the distance and I try to speak what I hear, as if it is already out there somewhere. At the same time I am trying, I hope subtly, to teach it. So, I keep these pictures in my files for a while, and I think about them.

I drew this this morning and I am really happy with it. Swatchee was my model. He was sleeping on the floor in front of me. I worked from life and then began slowly abstracting it. I think I am happy with it visually, as it is enough to carry me there, back to that moment, and yet it goes beyond that to make feel something true, something about me, something about life, that is very hard to express. It's the something the world competes with, drowns out, steps over and on, and yet here it is, shining brightly, telling its truth. This means something to me.



Today has been a difficult day, but when I look back on how I spent this portion of the morning, I feel good about it. Sometimes you are caught up in the troubles of others, and you cannot help them, and you feel like you are losing who you are. It is important then to do something to help you remember who you are.

Created as a mate for my piece 'Andras', Gynaika is a modern classical primitive portrait of a young female, drawing stylistically on Greek Art, History, and Culture. It's a simple line drawing in black and white, minimalistic, with just a little color used for emphasis and decorative effect. I am surprised at the popularity of this series. I am not sure what inspired it, but I realize now it was inspired.

I found a new way to express myself with these drawings, as I started my career with people portraits, but disliked the specificity of the genre, and was not happy with the pressures of doing commissions. I turned to self portraits over the years to experiment with something closer to what I wanted to do, closer to what I actually liked. When I look at portraiture throughout art history, I can point to a common thread in the artworks I admire. With these pieces, Andras and Gynaika, along with some others, I have gotten closer to what I want, and, like to see, in portraits: a universality, a simplicity, a modern viewpoint, and an iconic presence.



I did not work very closely with Andras when I drew this, but I did make a few references to it. It is difficult for me to stay interested in duplicating something that has been successful, because I am more motivated in wanting to know, than I am interested in success I suppose. Once I start drawing, no matter my intention when I sit down, my interest in what I don't know takes over, and I follow it to its end. If I had to work any other way I would choose a different profession. It's also why I stopped doing commissions. People have expectations, and I have none, only my interest and my quest to understand. The piece I hope speaks to both those things, and becomes part of the content. Which begs the question, is it still a just a portrait? I hope not. I hope it is much more than that. I hope it is a drawing. I hope it is a composition. I hope it shows deliberation and design. I hope it is content rich, but not in an illustrative sense. I hope it shows the years and years of experience of my drawing. I hope it references all the artists who inspired me. I hope it is universal in scope. I hope it is iconic.

This is a portrait in development. I have saved many copies along the way, as I am experimenting and want to see how it unfolds. I don't have a particular result in mind when I work like this and am quite open to the results. I often work intuitively, but this can mean many things, and the styles can end up very differently. I am always interested in the mystery of a painting's development, but with a great measure of respect. Sometimes to see something new, you have to do something new, and this means not resting on a concept, but swimming out to sea.

This was created to be a companion piece to 'Andras Black and White'. It's a simple modern abstract black and white drawing based on elements of Greek Classicism. I don't use a model for these drawings, but I do have a person in mind when I draw them. The point is not to get to specific, to stay universal and just focus on the qualities I consider to be specific to 'woman', which is what gynaika means in Greek.

I painted this in 2012. I pulled it up today noticing I didn't have many keywords for it, or a description, so it wasn't getting found. I still love this piece. It was spontaneous, driven by a giant affection I developed for a cat named Bette Davis and her two kittens, Theo and Minnow. All three cats are gone now, but the memories stay with me. MInnow had a liver disorder. Brother Theo developed diabetes. Mom Bette disappeared and I suspect foul play. Par for the course in Cyprus where cats are poisoned and used for target practice by the hunters.



But this is a happy painting, and happy my memories of Mother Bette and all her friends remain. I love the stained glass mosaic effect this painting creates at a distance. I love the multi-colors. But mostly I love that it is my memory of time well spent.

This piece started as a drawing of a cat in a window. I was looking at Dusty who was sitting in the kitchen window. I drew her silhouette. Then I began to abstract and draw the shutters and they started to look like notebook paper. I thought about how long it had been since I had written on notebook paper. I thought about had sad it is we don't write messages to each other like this anymore, and how much I miss them. Instead we get texts.

Then my mind wandered to relationships, to how they change as we get older. I remembered the stress of being young and how every little nuance of a changing relationship was cause for alarm. I thought about how as I have gotten older, change seems more like an opportunity to find out more about myself. I thought about the hard earned calm I have found. I feel so lucky to have found what makes me happy in life, how simple it all was, and yet it took so long to see.

If we can find peace and not strive for it, we will see that we always carry others with us, and we go on in relationship with them no matter where they are, or how long they have been gone.

Dusty writes a letter to Joe. Joe may as well have been me a long time ago. Cats have a wonderful way of living in the present.

Someone offered to publish Christian Artwork on a Christian Art blog yesterday. I jumped at the chance. But I think they were confused when going through my portfolio. I already had a gallery of my crosses but I quickly made a up a Christian Gallery for them to go through. I realize why I had never made one up before. Everything I do is Christian Art, you just wouldn't know it by the subject matter. But my faith and the Orthodox world view is behind everything I do. I could no more separate it from me than I could pull out my eyeballs; nor would I want to. But do I paint traditional religious subject matter? Not very often. So far it hasn't been my calling. I don't think your subject matter has to be religious for you to make Christian Art or Sacred Art. It's the world view that comes through that makes it what it is. Often when I am browsing the art of others and I am drawn to something, I find out when I get more information that they are a Christian. It's hard to hide. There is a innocence and purity that often comes through, despite the subject matter being perhaps, say, a flower. There is a glaring absence of cynicism and anger, even when portraying dark subject matter. I might dissolve the gallery now that it served it's purpose. I don't know. I will think about it.

I always look for this quality in art, this spark. It is not made or recognized by knowledge, but by faith.

It makes me think of this passage from the Bible: For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. 1 Corinthians 3:19

Here's an article from The Washington Post, that when you take with the Facebook Experiment revealed recently, is a bit troubling. I suspected voyeurism was a large part of Internet snooping and 'intercepted data" (a euphemism for juicy tidbits?), simply because of the human weakness for it. But to see it in print...I didn't think I would see that. It makes me wonder, as robots become a reality, is it just coincidental that human beings are becoming zombies? And for those teetering on the edge, or who have little memory of what it was like to be human, are these strange characters in the world who are still human the real spectacle? The real target of all this snooping? Is it a sad reaching of the fallen for a memory of what used to be in themselves? A strange curiosity? Are we now, if we are still human, still thinking, still feeling, still reaching up for God, the "other"?


In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are


"Many other files, described as useless by the analysts but nonetheless retained, have a startlingly intimate, even voyeuristic quality. They tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes. The daily lives of more than 10,000 account holders who were not targeted are catalogued and recorded nevertheless." Read more...