Facebook

I suck at keeping this thing updated!  Well, one of my goals in the new year is to get an official website going instead of utilizing blogging technology.  Maybe I will have a blog on my website, and put my feelings there, like a diary, or not.

In the meantime, feel free to add me over on facebook, here's a link: https://www.facebook.com/travis.wade.5.  I promise I will have feelings there.

XOXO

Seizure

My friend and fellow painter Shannon Lewis and I worked on several collaborative paintings.  They're currently being displayed at Urban Grind located at 911 NW 14th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209. 

It started with epilepsy.  Epilepsy, for me, turned into exploration of absence seizures and the idea of being both physically present and psychologically absent.

The physicality of absence seizures lead to thoughts of the body's circuitry and in opposition to absence seizures, paralytic states of consciousness where the body is immobilized but can still experience floating out of body experiences.

During our trading of the paintings back and forth, I noticed Shannon had developed her own inspiration within and outside of epilepsy.  Rather than trying to control the crux of the individual works, we attempted to allow our own concepts, as well as our painting styles, to exist simultaneously.

It was something new for me to work collaboratively, sometimes trying, but overwhelmingly positive.  I think we both struggled initially with how we were going to marry my, literally darker, figurative work with her more colorful work in abstraction.  In the end the works stand on their own, I think, apart from Shannon and I.  I like to think of the paintings as imaginary worlds that are strangely alien but familiar and of the mind, exploding.

Dynamic Groups & Group Dynamics

Untitled

12x12

Acrylic on panel

Tangential Questioning As Inspiration

Controlled Communication
24 x 24

Acrylic on Panel

Sometimes people ask what my paintings are about and I do not feel prepared to answer with much specificity.  When I first started painting I tried to be as direct as I could on subjects, like some reporter of my internal and external experience with the world. Over time I think that my paintings have morphed from reportage to participating in questions that I have related to human peculiarities.

 

The painting above was inspired by individuals in my life who make declarative statements about their belief systems which have been taken directly from dominant media sources, as if media purports truth.  This lead to an interest in Media Systems Dependency Theory, which provided insight into this behavior but not reasoning.

Media Systems Dependency Theory and the declarative statement made prior lead to further questions - about willful subjugation, organizational behavior (a perennial favorite), propaganda in times of war, and on and on and on...  And so it goes.

 

So, from the example above, you can see why I have difficulty with specificity.  My paintings are, I guess, generally, about tangential questioning of things that interest me.

My New Art Statement

Paintings about fantasy realized through appropriation.

You Are Not Alone

The Random Illustrator

Daisy of The Random Illustrator featured my painting of criminals on her blog.  Daisy has a cool thing going on where she generated a random word and runs with it.  Check out the feature here.

Artist of the Month at Urban Art Network

Dunce Boy
8" x 25"

acrylic and charcoal on panel

 

I was featured on Urban Art Network's website as Artist of the Month for January.  Click here to read the interview and check out some work.  Much appreciation to Teresa Bergen and all the folks at UAN who make so much possible.

Boy at The Docks

Boy at the Docks
6" x 6"
Acrylic on panel

Still working on some smaller works as part of my painting a day for etsy until I reach 100 items.  44 more to go!  I wonder if I'll stop there?

Getting into the practice of a painting a day has been a good experience.  It keeps me in practice, so to speak, and offers time for evaluation and reflection..  Not to mention a great deal of experimentation, both in size and color combinations.  I still find soft, subtle colors appealing.  The cool end of the color spectrum, I suppose.

Wading

Wading, work in progress

8"x10"

acrylic on salvaged wood

Some detail work seems to be coming back into my paintings.  I don't think the loose quality has totally left, "mark making".  For so long they were so loose, dribbles and sprays and violent smears.  Lately I have been given to these small, intimate gestures.

I could keep going on with this painting.  The more I look at it the more I want to go back in and rework a few areas.  There comes a point when you have to "stop".  Apparently my stopping point is two days.  I have the attention span of a gnat.  Time to put this aside for awhile.