Influences

I want to extend my sincere thanks again to everyone for the significant outpouring of support that I received in my last post about the passing of my Mom. I know that she is pleased that there are so many comments.
Knowing that there is so much love, prayers and virtual hugs out there has really meant a lot to me.


Andrew Wyeth passed away last week.
His art has influenced many of us in one way or another along our paths as artists.
The Wyeths were subject of many late night discussions on our recent painting trip to Maine.
Andrew and his family have homes in the area of Maine where we were painting. It seemed that each of the artists present had their favorite Wyeth and many of them are influenced to some extent by their work.



Untitled, mixed media collage/color xerox, Frank Gardner © 1982


I dug out this old piece of mine from my RISD days. This was a freshman foundation project that I did in '82. and it is influenced by the Andrew Wyeth painting "Christina's World".
We were working with collage between layers of glass and then color xeroxing them. Each generation of xerox having a higher contrast to it. Breaking it down to the basic form. I don't have the original here, but I have this version, which is a color xerox of the original, and it has a section of it that had been xeroxed two times in the original piece and therefore it would be three times in this version. There are lots of different ways that the elements in this collage relate to each other. The breaking down of the original Wyeth painting by the xerox process. The breaking down of the structure of house on the hill with the architectural drawing of a similar building. The way Muybridge used multiple cameras to capture the movements of his subjects. The same goes for the Degas drawing that he gridded out, breaking it down to the structure of the figure. And so on. The painting being simplified by the xerox process.
This was done a long time ago, so I have a hard time remembering everything that I was thinking at the moment.
I just wanted to share it as an example of Andrew's influence dating way back in my artistic journey.

A couple of oldies

We got back from our summer vacation this weekend. Lots of traveling around and playing.

My family has a pretty large collection of my older paintings.
That's what happens when you don't sell many of them.
It is always nice to see all of those older paintings when I visit.
Here are two that I am particularly fond of.
The sizes are approximate. I guess I should have measured them.



"Fish", 30" x 24" ? , Frank Gardner © 1989
Private Collection



"W", 24" x 24" ? , Frank Gardner ©1989
Private Collection

Thanks for all of your well wishes for our trip. I'll get to posting a bit about that later.
It was just a family trip with no painting or blogging.
There is a lot of work to catch up on.

Viernes Santo- Good Friday

Since it is Good Friday, Viernes Santo here in Mexico, I wanted to share these two paintings that I did my first year living in Mexico. That was 1990.
Here is my confession. I do not know what size they are or the titles that I gave them. I am bad at keeping records of that sort, but I was even worse back then. Maybe it seemed presumptuous to me to think that it would matter. Maybe I was just lazy. They are probably about 24"x30" give or take a little. Oil on canvas. These are scanned from fairly bad snap shots.



On Viernes Santo there are Via Crucis (Way of the Cross or Stations of the Cross) all over Mexico. I was living in Atotonilco, and this was the first time that I ever saw anything quite like this. They reenact the Stations of the Cross with local folks playing the roles. Everyone turns out to watch. They end up with the crucifixion in front of the church.




I liked the fact that the guy in the foreground had his crown of thorns over a wool cap.

I have a few other paintings or the Via Crucis, but I am was so bad about photographing my art and keeping records, that I could not find images.


Here are a few more photos of the procession. These are from 1990 in Atotonilco.
The views from above were taken from the roof where I was living at the time. Then I went down into the crowd. There are a few others taken by a friend of mine, Phil, who was visiting at the time.














Thanks for looking!

Twenty Years Ago

Today is my birthday.
I was thinking about how my style has changed over the years, so I am going to post a painting that I did about 20 years ago.
I was fresh out of RISD and my work was pretty much all over the place.There were oils, collages, prints, found object sculptures, you name it. I had not really settled on my "style" yet, but this is pretty representative of how I was painting.
This is a large painting. At least 4 x 5 feet. I was not very good at keeping records back then so I am not sure.
I scanned the slide big so you can see into all of the detail if you click on the image. It's the best I could do with this old slide.
I am usually am pretty good about letting go of my art. But if I could buy back one painting that I have ever done it might be this one. I sold it CHEAP to get money to drive to Mexico 18 years ago, to someone who promptly re sold it for more money.

So it goes.

I hope that whoever owns it now is enjoying it.



"Untitled", approx. 48" x 60" oil on canvas, found objects
circa 1989, Private Collection