“Woman With Jellyfish,” oil on canvas, November, 2013, 24” x 30”. Click for a larger version of the painting. [I revised this painting on December 19, 2013, and the new version is shown here.]
I’d gone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with my wife, and we’d looked a big tank of sea nettle jellyfish. I made a little photo of my wife by the tank, and at first I wanted to paint that. But in the end, the woman in the painting didn’t look at all like my wife, and the painting’s viewpoint suggests that either we’re looking out from inside the tank at the woman, or maybe the jellyfish are floating around in the air instead of being inside a tank. Once I realized the woman wasn’t going to be a portrait of my wife I gave her green hair and made her look kind of cantankerous and space-punk. Maybe she’s “talking” with that big jellyfish.
Possibly she’ll turn up in a story or novel that I write in the coming year…now that I’m done with The Big Aha.
“Eyes,” oil on canvas, October, 2013, 20” x 24”. Click for a larger version of the painting.
This was an easy painting to make—I just did a lot of eyes. I didn’t particularly try to make them scary. I was more interested in them looking alert. I had fun with the colors, getting all the shades to be fairly even intensities of mild pastel colors. I think I might do a painting of “Snouts” next, with pig-snout disks.
As always you can find more info on my paintings at my Paintings page.