JK Rowling Portrait: Expressing Your Love for an Author With More Than Words

JK Rowling original stencil portrait

The JK Rowling Portrait isn’t the first stencil portrait I made in the early days of my Jim Public website, but it is the portrait that one of you bought most recently, so Jo is fresh on my mind. This article talks a little about why and how I made this portrait, and it is the second post of my website’s 10th anniversary celebration.

Why Draw JK Rowling?

I once created a chart called “All Art Is Abstract Art,” which I still stand by, but it is equally true that All Art Is Fan Art. Artists are inspired by things that other people make; few of us make artwork as a spontaneous activity, detached from the things that we’ve seen other people make. The history of art is largely the history of artists loving stuff that other artists made and then making new artwork as result.

I love the Harry Potter novels, and this love has abided through:

  • reading the books to myself
  • listening to the incredible audiobooks read by Jim Dale
  • reading the full series aloud to my daughter
  • reading the full series aloud to my son
  • enduring the first three films
  • either walking out of the fourth film or spending the entirety of the fourth film fantasizing about walking out
  • watching Jo’s online reputation trend steadily downward in recent years as she weighs in on things beyond the Potterverse

Rowling is still an author I greatly admire, but I’m not planning to write a book that pays homage to Rowling as Philip Pullman honored Blake, Milton and others with His Dark Materials. I opted for creating a portrait instead.

How to Make a Portrait of JK Rowling

In setting out to make an original portrait of Jo, I did not have the traditional, crucial resource at hand: JK Rowling was not around to sit for the portrait. I do not like the idea of plagiarizing someone else’s photos, so I gathered about ten photos of her from the web and started sketching. Ultimately, I created my own amalgamated image of a stylized Jo using all of these images as referents but, in the end, creating something new with pencil and paper.

JK Rowling drawing by James Hough

From Drawing to Stencil

A guiding philosophy of the Jim Public website is the mission to create high-quality, hand-made, affordable artwork that is fun for me to make. I love working with color, and I love spraying paint, so stenciling has become a core technique that I use to fulfill this mission. Stenciling is a way to make multiples (which are affordable) that are more hand-made than digital prints.

So, with a finished graphite drawing in hand, I scanned it into Photoshop and manipulated the image so that I basically had four-color separations. I then experimented with color palettes until I found four colors that looked nice together and worked with the drawing.

JK Rowling portrait stencil layers, by James Hough

From Stencil to Painting

Each color layer of the image actually needs two stencils for me to achieve 100% color coverage, so I cut out those eight stencils and registered them to an 11” x 14” piece of watercolor paper so that the image would line up as I added each layer.

After mixing my acrylic paint to the right colors and consistency, I made an initial run of ten JK Rowling Portraits with a cheap airbrush.

Conclusion

JK Rowling is probably the author whose work I’ve logged the most hours reading, even if you don’t include the audiobooks. The Harry Potter books hardly need any more endorsements, but I am still amazed at how perfectly they achieve what they set out to do: they narrate a hero’s journey with the school-setting charm, humanist ethics and inventive (but somehow not annoying) magic. I am grateful to have Rowling’s work as read-alouds for my kids, and I hope to get to read them to grandkids one day, if my own children don’t call dibs.

The JK Rowling Portrait is a limited edition, hand-made stencil painting that you can buy from the Jim Public shop.

Fuzz Dots: Abstract Art That Is Warm and Fuzzy

Fuzz Dot 1 airbrushed painting by James HoughFuzz Dot 2 airbrushed painting by James HoughFuzz Dot 3 airbrushed painting by James HoughFuzz Dot 4 airbrushed painting by James HoughFuzz Dot 5 airbrushed painting by James Hough

The Fuzz Dot paintings above are original works that I’ve unearthed for my website’s 10th anniversary. The pieces themselves are straightforward enough: they are 11″ x 14″ original airbrushed paintings on heavy watercolor paper. But even the most simple artwork can contain multitudes. There are several art ideas at play in these little works.

Why Fuzz Dots?

Non-objective painting is alive and well.

Fuzz Dot 1 airbrushed painting by James Hough

Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Picasso, Malevich and more artists from 100-150 years ago started to transform the surface of artwork from a fictional window through which you see a picture to a flat space where you see the artist play with paint. Since then, artists have had a blast reducing painting to pure color, pure shape, pure line, and so on.

What I find amazing is that this exploration of painting as a non-picture is ongoing, exciting and explosive! The Fuzz Dot paintings are just one example of pieces I’ve made that participate in the huge arena of non-objective – that is, fully abstract, with no reference in the real world – painting.

Non-objective painting can be off-putting.

Fuzz Dot 2 airbrushed painting by James Hough

As gentle a soul as Agnes Martin seems to be on camera, encountering her work out of context can be trouble. Most of her work that I’ve seen looks like straight, delicately-drawn pencil lines on a white canvas. I have come to appreciate what she has to say about beauty and the sublime through her painting, but the paintings aren’t for everyone.

Fuzz Dot paintings are one of my responses to the fact that non-objective abstract painting can be cold and uninviting. The layering of color and those blurry non-edges just evoke a coziness that I like to look at.

Layers of color are beautiful.

Fuzz Dot 3 airbrushed painting by James Hough

Much of my artwork is, in part, about enjoying the beautiful, subtle, infinite effects you get when you layer multiple colors on one another. The Renaissance period in Western Art is characterized by the invention and master of glazing: layering translucent strokes of paint on top of one another to achieve a blended, luminous effect. In order for an artist not to blaspheme by portraying Jesus, they had to invent an incredibly sensitive and gorgeous method for portraying the spirit-made-flesh, and they did it!

Each of the twelve shapes in a Fuzz Dot painting is made of at least two airbrushed layers of paint. The effect is that each fuzzy dot passes as one color while actually being several simultaneously. I just love this, and I think you might, too.

Structure and looseness are equally appealing.

Fuzz Dot 4 airbrushed painting by James Hough

Agnes Martin’s work is very meticulous and organized, while someone like Willem de Kooning painted in a style that feels much looser, even if he is constructing a careful composition in spite of the slashes and dabs of paint. Fuzz Dot paintings have a little of both: I create a careful, slightly oblique grid then freely paint the circles without stencils or even touching the paper.

Painting without stencils, in 2011 when I made these pieces, was a freeing experience, because I had been making stenciled portraits and gestural abstract paintings, and I just needed to work with color and relax.

Finally, working intuitively can pay off both for the artist and the viewer.

Fuzz Dot 5 airbrushed painting by James Hough

Beyond knowing the general placement of each dot, I never had a plan when I started one of these paintings. Through working slowly, responding to the color and size of the dots I just painted, I slowly built what felt like a balanced composition of colorful, blurry dots. Artists of all kinds know the flow state of this kind of deep work, where you are using your instincts – honed by experience and education – and simply responding to the artwork in front of you until you feel it is finished.

This way of working on instinct does not always yield a product that is user-friendly, but in this case, the Fuzz Dot paintings have been artwork that people continually enjoy looking at and talking about.

In conclusion:

I have been heartened by the reaction that viewers have when they see the Fuzz Dot paintings. They situate themselves nicely both in art history and in front of your eyes. I have experimented with how I can explore the Fuzz Dot without making unnecessary, uninspired copies, and I hope to make some and put them out there for you to see soon.

In the meantime, at the time of publishing this post, two out of the five pieces are still available, so consider adding a Fuzz Dot painting to your collection.

10th Anniversary of jimpublic.com

collage of James Hough artwork with classic European paintings

I started this website ten years ago and posted my first blog on January 19, 2011, titled Come on in, the party’s just started! The post consisted solely of the above picture.

I was clearly full of pep and vigor about the accessible and affordable artwork I intended to sell to people who don’t have art budgets. Using airbrush and handmade stencils, I made fan art portraits of some of my favorite authors and gestural abstract paintings with stylized versions of oil paintbrush strokes. I also painted pieces I called Fuzz Dots, which were blurry, colorful dots airbrushed onto a white background in kind of a tweaked grid pattern.

2011 feels like it was a very long time ago. I continue to paint, but most of my energy has gone into becoming a better cartoonist, and I have self-published three books since 2013.

But looking back at that first batch of Jim Public artwork in 2011, I am so happy to discover that I still like the art. These works on paper have an optimistic lightness to them. Hoping that if I still like these pieces then maybe you will, too, I just built an online store where the remaining pieces from 2011 are available for you to browse and purchase.

My three books are available there, too, and I have more paintings and fan art coming soon, including illustration-style portraits of Lorde, M.I.A., Taylor Swift dunking on Katy Perry, Sleigh Bells, Dallas singer-songwriter Maya Piata, and more.

Check out my store and help me celebrate ten years of jimpublic.com! The online store is brand new, so if you run into any problems with it contact me so I can take care of it.

Visit the Shop

A Few Digital Sketches, Soon to Be Finished Paintings

Below are a few digital sketches that represent a snapshot of what has been going on in my painting studio lately. Working digitally like this has the huge benefit of offering infinite flexibility when working with colors. I also love to dig for intuitive geometric compositions in my paintings, and Adobe Illustrator is well suited to this kind of sketching.

two horizontal painting studies, 2016, by James Hough

This sketch should be a finished painting by now, but I keep revisiting it, tweaking the colors to try to achieve the balance of light/dark and intensity that it needs. I ended up going with the top design with the chain of small rectangles running across the diagonal.

Red, Pink, White, Blue painting concept, 2016, by James Hough

Continuing to play with the red/pink/white/blue palette and simple—bordering on obvious!—geometry.

Austin painting commission concept, 2016, by James Hough

I am currently making the painting that is depicted in this digital concept photo. I created the palette after spending some time at the collectors’ land in west Texas, home of big skies, cedar, mesquite, and earth. When finished, this painting will be an important piece of the collectors’ newly remodeled home!

Orange, Green, Red painting study, 2016, by James Hough

This sketch did not make the cut for the above commission, but it has found a place in my painting queue. It uses the west Texas palette, and does some of the things with simple color, light and space that keep my eyeballs coming back to look again.

Prints Available at thefailurestore.com

Sean Slattery—one of my favorite friends and artists—has created an online portfolio/retail store, and I am so happy to be a featured artist on the website! It is called The Failure Store, and it has lots of Sean’s artwork along with his collaborations, including a tiny sample of works for sale by Ripper Jordan, which I was a part of with Sean and artist/friend David Ryan in Las Vegas.

Here are the things by me that you can pick up there. Each one is a digital print, 11″ x 14″, signed and dated by me on the back.

james_hough_miajames_hough_lorde140502-soccer-ball-web-ready-11x14james_hough_dan_and_phil

Thanks for having me, Sean!

Silly M.I.A., illustration by James Hough, 2015

james_hough_mia

This is my personal favorite of the Fujikawa-esque fan arts I’ve made. It brings together M.I.A.’s loudness and Gyo’s softness, and I just kind of like how all the pieces came together.

Now I need to take some time to finish coloring a piece with the working title, “Bad Blood.”

Dan and Phil, Jumping on the Ultimate Bed, illustration by James Hough, 2015

james_hough_dan_and_phil

My daughter is devoted to Dan and Phil. It wasn’t practical to fly them out last December for a Christmas surprise, so I made a Gyo Fujikawa-inspired fan art as a gift. I owe her friend Ashley a debt of gratitude for consulting with me to ensure that I didn’t mess up any details!

It turns out that Phil’s colorful bed set is available at IKEA, so my daughter’s bed now sports the comforter and pillowcase that you see on the right. Nothing against Dan’s monotones at all—Phil’s palette just works better on her sky blue walls.

Lorde, Riding the Bus with the Knees Pulled In, illustration by James Hough, 2015

lorde riding the bus with the knees pulled in illustration by James Hough

Sometimes when you love a thing you have to do something about it. I love Lorde’s music, and too many times I’ve expressed my feelings by listening to her too much. So, to keep me from overdoing it on the tunes, I made some fan art!

I also love Gyo Fujikawa, so I did what I could to channel her line and color, and her light touch:)

3-D Cash Sculptures Passing Each Other in the Mail

My brother turned 30 just before Christmas. He is an artist, jeweler, and gemstone enthusiast, so with a little inspiration I arrived at a novel way to send him his birthday cash: those decade birthdays call for extra recognition, right?

30 Dollar Polyhedron James Hough

So here is the 30-sided polyhedron—constructed from 1-dollar bills—that I sent him as a late birthday gift. Late as in post-Christmas. Which means that my brother’s late Christmas gifts to my family must have passed my gift to him in the mail, because we each received our packages within a day of the other.

Cash Origami by James Hough's Brother

He sent us a cash butterfly and a cash elf boot! We were both shocked and thrilled that our minds had gone to the same obscure place when we decided what gifts to send each other. Neither of us had sent or—as far as I know—even made anything like these cash constructions before!

p.s. I should note that though my gift to him was larger in volume, his was larger monetarily:)

Our first quilt

Portrait quilt, 2014, by the Houghs

My wife’s ancestors were pioneer farmers, and we are carrying on one of their traditions.

Quilt-making!

We began this one—our first—about 5 years ago then put it on hold for a while until we got some big quilting frames last Christmas. And now we have completed it.

The design comes from a photo of our daughter cuddling our son when they were about ages 6 and 1. If you back away from the quilt about 50 feet you can see the image, which is hardly practical, so we content ourselves with wrapping ourselves in our new blanket knowing that the design is a picture of our kids, even if we can’t tell up close.

Here’s a tiny picture of it, which shows the image a little better.

Portrait quilt (small image), 2014, by the Houghs

Believer, 2013, by James Hough

Believer, James Hough, acrylic on canvas, 31" x 47"
Believer, 2013, by James Hough, acrylic on canvas, 31″h x 47″w

My most recent painting takes a turn toward representation. I used additive and reductive painting techniques to create the image, as I have been doing in my non-objective works, but this time I was evoking a still life by Henri Fantin-Latour, whose intimate paintings are so quiet, yet sculptural, in the way he uses light and shadow to create space.

Plus, finally seeing the Cy Twombly Gallery at the Menil Collection was a huge inspiration as I approached this painting. Looking at Twombly and Fantin-Latour is humbling and uplifting at the same time, and this painting owes its swirling circular shapes and its palette to both painters.

Starving Artist, by James Hough

Starving Artist, Jim Public Presents, Volume 1, by James Hough, header image Starving Artist, Jim Public Presents, Volume 1, by James Hough, cover image Webcomic Buy Starving Artist for Kindle

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW ART-THEMED COMIC BOOK RELEASED IN DALLAS
Jim Public, the enterprise of artist James Hough, publishes Starving Artist, a comic book about art, family, and hamburgers

DALLAS, TX — Jim Public is proud to announce the publication of the new comic book Starving Artist: Jim Public Presents, Volume 1 by Dallas-based artist James Hough. The comic tells the story of Jim, an artist and family man whose aesthetic ambitions are vitally linked to his domestic and gastric aspirations.

“Jim has a plan to sell a painting and use the cash to take his family out for burgers,” says Mr. Hough. “Starving Artist is a slice-of-life story that connects the artist’s career to the artist’s home and family. It is an Anti-Myth of the Artist.”

The reader first sees Jim floating pajama-clad through his dreams of fame, fortune, and food before he is abruptly awakened by an early alarm clock. From there he makes his kids breakfast and kisses them good-bye, setting off to exhibit his painting on the downtown Dallas streets.

The story is semi-autobiographical, much of it based on Hough’s experiences as the proprietor of his mobile gallery of contemporary art, Jim Public’s Truck.

“The gallery continues its mission ‘to present artwork in unusual, spontaneous, and neighborly ways’ with the publication of Starving Artist,” says Hough. “The comic exists digitally and in the traditional paper format, and it costs the tiniest fraction of an original painting, for example. It is an extremely accessible piece of art, a bit spontaneous and very neighborly.”

The comic also features Hough’s new painting Burger Night and a bonus educational chart entitled “All Art Is Abstract Art,” which includes the artist’s renderings of famous paintings from art history organized into a concise lesson on abstract art.

Starving Artist: Jim Public Presents, Volume 1 by James Hough is available on paper at jimpublic.com/books and digitally at eBookstores everywhere.

Smashwords link logo Apple iBookstore link logo Amazon kindle link logo Barnes and Noble Nook link logo

I got lights!

Last Saturday, now that it’s already getting dark here in Dallas by 6pm, it was time at last to figure out how to make a self-contained lighting system for the gallery. One portable power device (designed to jump start your car) and two 12.5 watt LED lights later, plus some wood, screws, spray paint, and work light fixtures, I had my solution!

Jim Public's Truck with Bump, November 17, 2012, Dragon Street, Dallas TX

Henceforth the gallery will be a bright jewel lighting up those nights that I hit the road to show some artwork.

It was a chilly evening and more sparsely attended than spring and autumn gallery nights in the Design District. Standing out there in the cold and peaceful darkness under the new lights, I felt a particular surge of good feeling that I usually get only when I’m out in our front yard in December, enjoying the quiet glow of our Christmas lights at home.

After Dragon Street I drove to the Fair Park area to Ash Studios, where Fred Villenueva had invited me to a Bring Your Own Art party he was hosting. It was a fun time. I enjoyed the rare chance to bring my work with me, by way of illustrating quite directly what I do when getting acquainted with people at the party. When asked what I did, the questioner and I walked around the gate and there it was, the thing I do.

Bump in Oak Cliff

I took the truck gallery down to Oak Cliff last Saturday and enjoyed a beautiful day. Some friends showed up mid-afternoon and we decided to drive the exhibition of my large canvas Bump around the Bishop Arts District, in search of food, drink, and, eventually, pie.

Up until Saturday I had not driven while displaying artwork, but the coziness of the Oak Cliff community and the security of having a friend in the bed of the truck keeping an eye on things were enough to get the gallery past that milestone.

Currently I am designing a new wall that will be easier to assemble and strike and that will also give me options for displaying artwork while driving. Always, Jim Public’s Truck is about fun and accessibility. So the mission continues…

Jim Public's Truck, Bump, Oak Cliff, Dallas, TX, November 3, 2012 Jim Public's Truck, back room, Oak Cliff, Dallas, TX, November 3, 2012 Jim Public's Truck, Emporium Pies, Oak Cliff, Dallas, TX, November 3, 2012

A Dry Heat paintings

Now that I am preparing for the next Jim Public’s Truck exhibition, it is time to post images of the nine paintings that make up the series I showed last month.

The paintings that comprise A Dry Heat are plexiglass panels that I put in watertight vessels full of acrylic paint and water. Before submerging each panel in paint and leaving it in Las Vegas for two years to evaporate fully, I did some mark-making in the white, gessoed underlayer, so each painting has words, pictures, or impressions beneath the color and design left behind by nature’s patient hand.

A Dry Heat, The World, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, SONEV, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, One More, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, Obselete Questions, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, Love And, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, I'm Sorry, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, Hands Feet, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, Forever In, 2012, Jim Public A Dry Heat, Dam, 2012, Jim Public Jim Public, A Dry Heat vitrine, progress shot 3 Jim Public, A Dry Heat vitrine, progress shot 2 Jim Public, A Dry Heat vitrine, progress shot 1 Jim Public's Truck, A Dry Heat, DADA Fall Gallery Walk, Dallas, TX, September 22, 2012 Jim Public's Truck, Dallas Design District, A Dry Heat Jim Public, A Dry Heat poster 120823

Jim Public’s Truck will participate in the DADA Fall Gallery Walk on September 22

Jim Public's Truck, Dallas Design District, A Dry Heat

Jim Public’s Truck has been invited to participate in tomorrow’s Dallas Art Dealers Association Gallery Walk. I will be parked at 960 Dragon Street from 2 till 8 pm on Saturday, September 22, with A Dry Heat, the ongoing exhibition of paintings made by evaporation in the Mojave desert. I’m looking forward to a beautiful day and I hope to see you there.

Jim Public’s Truck presents A Dry Heat

Jim Public's Truck presents A Dry Heat, banner, September 2012

August 29, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JIM PUBLIC’S TRUCK PRESENTS A DRY HEAT
The portable gallery exhibits new paintings rendered by evaporation
Opening reception: Saturday, September 8, 3–8pm, parked somewhere on Dragon Street, Dallas, TX, quite possibly on the 1001 block between Payne and Howell

DALLAS, TX – Jim Public’s Truck, Dallas’s portable gallery of contemporary art, is proud to present an exhibition of new work by the eponymous artist, Jim Public. His new series, A Dry Heat, comprises nine paintings that Public began in 2010 when he lived in Las Vegas. The artist built a watertight vitrine with nine slots in which he suspended plexiglass panels and poured acrylic washes, submerging each panel in a different color of watery paint. Over the following two years the dry, Mojave air evaporated the moisture from the vitrine, leaving behind nine completed paintings, each a record in pigment of the inexorable natural processes that rendered it.

“These paintings come out of my effort to make pictures and objects without exerting a lot of control along the way,” says Public. “I am skeptical of exercising too much power during the art-making process like some kind of aesthetic tyrant. The world is bigger and lovelier when you relax.”

The paintings of A Dry Heat embody a collaboration between the artist and the arid climate of southern Nevada, and, two years having elapsed during their making, they also represent a time capsule for the artist.

“When I first took out the paintings to look at them I saw the phrases and designs that I had made in the substrates before adding the paint washes. I remember thinking in 2010 that these marks would be like artifacts from the past, but I did not consider that the artist doing the excavating in 2012 would be a changed person, one who might no longer love these phrases and designs. In other words, for me, looking closely at these paintings is kind of like looking at an old yearbook: we can change how we feel about the past, but we cannot change the past itself.”

The nine paintings—direct products of physical law acting over time—will debut at a reception for the artist on Dragon Street in the Dallas Design District on Saturday, September 8, 3–8pm.

Jim Public’s Truck is a contemporary art gallery committed to presenting artwork in unusual, spontaneous, and neighborly ways.

Jim Public’s Truck, my mobile gallery, is in gear

Thank you to everyone who stopped to look, ask questions, and say encouraging things during the gallery’s first event this past Saturday. The debut of Jim Public’s Truck was a lot of fun for me, a great experience. I am proud of the gallery and excited to experiment with its possibilities.

I love when art is serious yet informal, straightforward but not simple, fun without being obsequious. These are the qualities I’m after when I make stuff and do stuff.

I look forward to the next event!

Jim Public's Truck, Dallas Design District, July 28, 2012, sign Jim Public's Truck, Dallas Design District, July 28, 2012, ready for first event Jim Public's Truck, Dallas Design District, July 28, 2012, installed Jim Public's Truck, Dallas Design District, July 28, 2012, talking to some art fans Jim Public's Truck, Dallas Design District, July 28, 2012, from behind

Announcing Jim Public’s Truck

Jim Public's Truck, sign in progress, July 23, 2012

July 23, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW MOBILE ART GALLERY DEBUTS IN DALLAS
Jim Public’s Truck will present exhibitions from the bed of a pickup truck
Opening reception: Saturday, July 28, 5–9pm, somewhere on Dragon St.

DALLAS, TX – A new contemporary art venue, Jim Public’s Truck, will open on Dragon Street at 5pm on Saturday, July 28, in conjunction with Design District Gallery Day. The exhibition space consists of a white, modular 8’ x 7’ wall and a blue 2001 Chevy Silverado. The proprietor is Dallas-based artist James Hough, who works under the name Jim Public, and who has designed the gallery to fit comfortably within a parking space, making the operation both compact and flexible.

“Any place where I can legally park can now be the site of an art exhibition,” says Mr. Public. “Like most galleries and museums, Jim Public’s Truck follows the convention of using white walls and pedestals for displaying fine art, it just does so on the back of a motor vehicle. I am not reinventing the wheel, just putting a gallery on it.”

Building a truck-mounted, artist-run gallery space is part of Public’s broader effort to conduct a grassroots art career, one in which he can cultivate a closer relationship with his audience.

“I admire how comedians and musicians can tour and gig if they’re willing to put in the work. They create an experience and build an audience all while practicing their craft. And there are bands like the Flaming Lips who strive to connect with their fans in unpredictable and intimate ways, like creating music using fans’ car stereos or cell phones, taking their art out of the studio and off the stage. They are writing their own rulebook—sometimes tearing out the pages—as they go. This is what an artist does, and this is what I am doing with my gallery.”

Jim Public’s Truck will debut with the exhibition Jormungand Releases His Tail, featuring Public’s painting by the same name. Public’s recent work is rooted in the pictorial tradition of second-generation abstract expressionists such as Joan Mitchell whose paintings straddle the border between gesture and chaos. Using abrasives to cut through built-up layers of acrylic, Public adds and removes paint over weeks and sometimes months until the painting reaches a point of what he calls, quoting Richard Diebenkorn, “rightness.”

Jim Public’s Truck is a contemporary art gallery committed to presenting artwork in unusual, spontaneous, and neighborly ways.

Group Exhibition Event in Dallas

406 South Haskell Avenue
Dallas, TX 75226
Sunday, March 11, 2012
6pm to 12am

My friend James Whitmire invited me to participate in this one-night art and music event in downtown Dallas. I will be showing prints of some of the drawings I’ve made of my neighbors standing in front of their homes, as well as one intensively sanded abstract painting.

I hope to see you there!

American Dream by the Occupy Dallas Culture Committee