Towel Bar (Diptych)

Two panels each 24x36x1.5 inches. Total size is 36x48x1.5 inches, oil on stretched canvas. Extra thick stretcher bars. No need to frame.

Lately I've been experimenting with different imagery, materials, techniques and color. I've been looking at a lot of my Bay Area Figurative artist favorites, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, and James Weeks, Paul Wonner, Nathan Oliveira, Glenn Wessels, Wayne Thiebaud, Raimonds Staprans, and James Weeks.

I sketch the composition out using crayon and then paint successive layers over them using "non-local colors."

“Local color” refers to an artist choosing to paint an object or person using the colors that they actually see. For instance, when painting a red rose, the artist would be using local color if they painted the rose using reds. If the rose is painted blue, then they would not be using local color.

The paint on this is super thick and it took several days to make the painting. Recently I moved from California, where I had a pretty cramped small studio, to a larger house where I’ve taken the entire basement as my painting studio. This is allowed me to experiment and try out new things that I have never been able to do because I have a lot more space and places for things to dry and services to work on. I can work on paintings over several days or weeks rather than have to rush through them and work on only one painting at a time.

This is one of a group of paintings that were worked on over the course of a week or two in a more layered approach. It began more as a rough sketch on the canvas panel that I worked out a little bit more with crayon and worked out the shading and environment using my imagination. Over the next couple of days the painting was developed more.

The next couple of days were spent working on an underpainting that began his thin washes of oil paint and ended up with thicker more opaque layers.

The finishing day that I worked on this painting I attempted to build up the surface is more and enhance the textures so that the paint textures matched a little bit more closely the physicality or textures of the figures and the environment they are in. Some of the paint is almost 2 to 3 cm thick and applied with plastering knives and thick bristle brushes which I think gives the surface and almost skin like quality.

For years I had trouble accepting my body as I aged. So I began to paint people who looked more like me and I realized I wasn’t alone when I discovered other bears and the concepts behind “body positivity.”

This painting is based in the tenets of the “body positivity” movement. Body positivity refers to the assertion that all people deserve to have a positive body image, regardless of how society and popular culture view ideal shape, size, and appearance.

Some of the goals of the body positivity movement include:

Challenging how society views the body

Promoting the acceptance of all bodies

Helping people build confidence and acceptance of their own bodies

Addressing unrealistic body standards