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Showing posts from 2012

Boy's Day in Japan

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When I was small and lived with my parents in Kamahira Japan there was this festival once a year where all the men in the family raised a "fish flag". It was bright and colorful and meant to signify all the males in the family. I had the honor of raising it for my home. The smaller fish is meant for those males who are children while the larger fish are for all the adult men in the household. It is a celebration that is particular to Japan and I think it is a nice one. We don't have anything quite like it say for the exception of Father's Day, but that doesn't include all men/boys as the Japanese holiday does. I had a black and white photo my father Lou must have taken while I was raising the larger fish flag with the help of our household gardener. I remember that this job was just sprung upon me and I just did as I was told until the gardener or my day (I can remember who exactly) told me just what those flags represented. Once I knew I felt quite

Secretary Sands Rd View Eastward

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I was fortunate this past weekend what with the warmer winds blowing favoribly in our mountains the desire to go out and paint while the palette was fresh and the land calling hit me saying "it's time to go out and paint". Such was the calling, and the result is as pictured. The fun was in the making of this painting, it all came together into this Thomas Hart Benton styled landscape although I wasn't trying to imitate him it does hint of his work. I loved his flowing mid-western hills and waters in the paintings I've seen of his, he had quite a unique movement in his manner of painting the land so much that it just moved one's eyes all along the stories of his paintings. He always told stories in his work. He's known for using local folklaw and putting it into form in his paintings. But he also had a nice way of depicting the lands of the mid-west, something I found and still find very appealing. So I guess I had it in the back of my mind when w

My First Work at Miller School

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Although I am rather new to 'Plein Air' work, I am event newer to working in the countryside, I am a city painter when working outdoors. Buildings and industrial structures are mostly what I've been painting while living in the city. Working on an open field of grasses, trees and lowlying plants is rather an new and challenging task for me to manage with any degree of success. My early attempts are those which I hope my audience with be looking at with some forgiveness for it's ruffness. It's a subject that will take some time to become masterful with, and afterall we never really master our subjects, because we only learn to live with our mistakes. I will keep working on it though, because in the efforts of it comes gratitude of what I am trying to depict. I know people enjoy the end result and rarely see the faults that lye within those canvases, but I see often see the struggle in the painting before my eyes...but sometimes I am ok with it, those times ar

'Plein Air' Event at Miller School

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The open invitation to come and paint in the outdoors truly both interested and drew me to go to the Miller School a few weekends ago for a "Plein Air" event. They opened up their back fields to artist of this area of the world for painting. I went. I enjoy a two days of work in the warm sunshine and the cool breezes of early autumn. The results where shown in a gallery on the backside of the Main Building of the school. I met others who had come to paint on those days there at the Opening last weekend. I felt moved while painting to 'get it down' and my work was rewarding to me. Here pictured is the result of my efforts.
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The River

More of the Rockfish's Beauty

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Just found the need to show off a little, by posting a few more photos of the River below...the Rockfish River. It runs from the Blue Ridge mountains down to the James, it isn't all that long but it makes up for it with it's quality of beauty.

The Path is Done

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The river below me is fasinating! It flows over a dam just below. The rush of water can me heard if one makes the effort to listen well. The river is always in motion headed down to the James River just north of Scottsville. It has a smooth running motion which is consistant and very pleasing to watch. Here I took a photo from a spot that I cleared out so someone like me could cast out a line and fish some afternoon or evening. Large birds also tend to follow the river both eastward and westward towards the mountains. It is something I 'm glad I now have a path to it.

Abstraction

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I was just kick'n around with my brush and easel with canvas loaded aboard and I just started painting whatever came into my capricious small mind. This is a take upon an infinity loop taken to a design level with the support of a similar background design. Don't get too caught up in the color, everyone says to me "your paintings are so colorful" so I kind of know my palette is kind of "high key" but I like having something on my wall that is pleasing to look at, this wasn't always the case with me. There was the time in my youth when I wanted to lecture my audience about the horrors of being overweight and exceedingly fat. But I've put that doctrine away, and I see where the artistic medium isn't really the most effective or desirable place to being stating that idea, so I stopped doing so long ago. I do now see art as a way of not only remembering "what is their" but also rendering in a likeable lovable way so that it pleases

Landscape of a Rockfish River Rd Farm

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Art can be redux and made anew. These are new paintings that came about from older work. I simply picked up my work on them right where I left off. One is simply a landscape I began at the beginning of this past summer, then I let it sit on my wall until it bothered me enough to pull it down and take another look at the thing. It simply screamed out for a new approach and for me to take it their, now!! Now after having worked on it for a good while I feel like its at a stopping point and I can move on to other canvases. The painting is of an open field on Rockfish River Road down near the James River in Nelson County where I now live. This scene is of a farm on land just off the highway, the land is vast and the scene was very open as well leaving plenty of room for a nice open skyline to put rendered. I enjoyed working on it. It was a warm but not yet hot summers day. I began around noon on location and finished up about two and a half hours later on. Then put

The River

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The River view is terrific and very calming as I mentioned. It is scenic where I've chosen to place myself. It is what it is. It's new for me, yet in truth I've been here before, I just didn't know how to stay and work here. Now I feel I am ready to give it a "go". This river is just below my home and it is something else.

Path To the Rockfish River

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Forgoing art, I got into making this path to the river down below my house in the country or as some have called it "my home". Being one who's never owned his own place ever in his life this idea of cutting a path through the woods to the Rockfish River down below seemed ideal. I didn't have to ask anyone before hand nor did I have to do it on any time schedule, so I got to work on it this past summer. Only lately have I gott'n the notion that I was nearing the end of it. I can now walk to the river's edge. I simply want to put in a few more stones and be certain that those stones I've placed are secure in their spot. It's very calming to walk down to it. It has a sense of serenity which I've been looking for but seldom find in a physical spot on this earth but this river has it.

The Country is Different in Some Nice Ways

The days in this small country community are very different than living inside the boarders of Charlottesville: it's completely dark at night, and it lacks the noise of motors. And there are other ways it's different but I write about those two, those two ways really make this a nice change from city life. I like all the people I met in Charlottesville and I miss being able to see people by happenstance yet it's the peacefulness that comes from the absence of people that is so appealing living here. Its not that there is no-one, people are around but they seem to keep to themselves and not wonder around. I have to admit I don't go around off my property, at least not yet, that is something I might get into sometime later on. The property is keeping me busy. Building a path seems like an easy idea to put into play, but it's not always the case; my path from my back porch to the river down below has been a work of love but yet it's difficult and tedious.

"End of Summer, Now Looking Back...."

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Today is my final day of 'summer break' as it's known today. We use to call it 'Summer Vacation' but times change just as the people in these times changed too, most folks w eren't around n thosedays, but that's ok. Having a look back on my art production this summer I can easily say I didn't get as much done as I wanted to but it's also the case that I got twelve paintings done...so not all that lazy of a summer. The most fun stuff happened when I was in the middle of a pasture painting what was just over the edge, the flowers were blooming, the bees were buzzing and the sun was out...what could be more involving than that!! It felt good to be alive, it felt good to be painting, heck it just felt good to be doing what I've always wanted to do, live like Vincent Van Gogh during his outdoor painting adventures. And now I think I have had a brief taste of it. Now what? Next comes the fall and winter indoor painting season when

Walton's Mountain , the Making of It

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My Mountain paintings this summer have been a real change for me. I worked on them over and over but I still feel I could do another canvas of them all over again. The good thing is that I was able to spend the day in the open air among the flowers and greenery that I was working on. It's been told to me that this mountains include Walton's Mountain which is the basis for that now older TV show. It is fun to paint these mountains. They are big and they are nearby so one can easily see them while working on them. The thing is that there is so much of them. It's hard to see so much at the same time and then try to figure out how to paint there "nature" or paint the many small things in both color and form so that it looks and feels like those mountains I am seeing. My perception grows with the more I am looking deeply into those trees, seeing the "why it looks that way" and then translating that into my paint on a canvas. It may not be rock s

The Church Covered With Ivy

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The best of life can sometimes be so subtle and quite when one is a visual artist. One sees buildings, people going about their lives and places sometimes speak quietly of there character and wisdom such is this building of worship in Schuyler. Schuyler is my adopted town of choice and of strength. In it's silence it speaks to me louder than a public city bus leaving the Transit Station for a run loaded with passengers. This particular building has that kind of a voice with me, every time it is in my vision or my car somehow passes it by, it speaks with reverence of the Holiness of my adopted town. That's why I felt I needed to try and paint it. I hate painting ivy. But I needed to try it. Ivy is all pretty much the same color at whatever time of day in which it is viewed. As boring as I felt this painting would be to make, I can say with certainty it wasn't boring to me as I labored putting it's image onto canvas. Such as it was, it turned out rather well I

Red Church (again)

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There is something to be said for examining an object at all times of the day somewhat the way Monet did with Notre Dame in Paris when he made multiple paintings of the same building only at varying times of the morning and afternoon. I feel each of his paintings is unique and stand alone as wonderful works of art. I felt this way when coming upon this scene of the Red Church among the fields of green and umber grasses. I worked and worked on it. I went back time and time again to the farmland where I got permission of the owner to stand firm and paint, doing so I came up with these three paintings of the same Church yet each one stands by itself as a finished work of art. I do not apologize for doing the same scene over and over again. I do however need to move on from it, I found it to be a unique and certainly topical subject for this area of the country. This is known among some as "The Bible Belt" and for good reasons, for many these Churches here are the cente

Train-Stop

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The County I live in now has some wonderful features to it, one featured place is a road crossing of the main Railroad tracks it has a small house beside it. I feel this small house might have been a working feature when this soapstone mine was in bigger production. I feel this might have been a crossing guard station house for a person who would warn traffic coming across the tracks with loads of soapstone. I don't think it was a complete train-stop but it might have been. I see where there is enough cleared land to have had some sort of loading dock for the soapstone heading northward to be sculpted into building facades or other structures. But in these times all that remains is this crossing guard house which still has a rocking chair on it's porch which one can see if one looks close enough at the photograph. This small crossing is on the Rockfish River Road just east of the main north and south highway cutting through Virginia's midsection better known as Ro

Red Church Among The Green Earth

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The area here is surround with some wonderfully lush greenery. In my last painting of a striking red brick Church sitting among fields of green foliage got me to put out my easel and paints. I got to work on a very beautiful morning and spent four and a half hours painting it. The work certainly paid off for me. I did hit the sky up with the movement of pigment giving it a feel of moving air but most of the painting was done on the spot where I began it. The location is just off of "Irish Highway" or what is now Rt 6 about two miles east of Rt 29. It's my third painting from this spot. I've worked looking east and west, the scenes were very full of details which I enjoy painting. I certainly became immersed in the making of all my paintings that I did on this location. I am hoping to do more pastoral paintings because I am very pleased with these landscapes but I just don't know if I will have the energy or if the temperatures will hold themselv

Biking During the Past Forty Years

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a good look at the O-Hill trail. It has been used quite a lot over the years. I heard from a reliable source that it started as an equestrian trail and not as a biking trail. I am pleased that bikes were allowed on it without being outlawed from it as can happen from what I've read in magazines from the west. It was an outstanding day for riding yesterday, I enjoyed getting up early on Sunday and taking off on a pristine morning with clear light shinning and helping me to see. I took my camera with me. The rider on the trail is just someone I ran into on the rim trail who didn't mind having his picture taken. What's good is to be healthy enough to make it up the hill to these wonderful trails. Not all people of my age are so lucky. I count my blessings as I look at these photos of my trail riding. So far, I've ridden on Walnut Creek trails, The GW Parkway trail, the Hanncock Maryland trail (24 miles of it) a

Observatory Hill Of U.Va.

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This hill and woods are part of the University of Virginia's Observatory Hill. It houses the planitary observatory and it also is know for it's hiking, and biking trails. I have often ridden on them and enjoy seeing it from this point of view. The biking/hiking trails run from the water tower arond to that building way to the left of the hill and of course they run up to the Observatory itself. Once one is on the trails a person can run all over this hill on a network of trails that run around/ up and down the small mountain. As you can see it is right nearby the stadium where U.Va. football has it's homefield. It was a joy to fly over it last year and snap this photo of it.

"Irish Highway" (Rt 6) 'n Nelson County ,Virginia

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Nelson County has a wonderful road that runs through it that goes by the name of "Irish Rd". It's otherwise known as Rt 6 but to those in the know it's "Irish Road'. The scenic highway runs though some of the most wonderful old farming land in the low mountains of the Piedmont for the Blue Ridge mtns. It is a winding, and somewhat unexpectedly ruff and also somewhat hard to drive road. It's only two lanes all the way from it's beginnings in northwestern Nelson County to it's endpoint in Richmond....I might be wrong but I think it's one of the most traveled highway in this part of Central Virginia. That brings me to me sitting in a field surrounded by grassland and wildflowers with an ideal view of the rolling lanes of Rt 6 sitting just over the rise...and so this painting came about on a hot summers day. In fact I believe it was on the very first day of summer for the year it was painted. I did it in two sittings both lastin

Beautiful Landscape in the Works: "what it takes"

I was outside painting in the middle of a field at noon today and I had to stop after a few breaks in an airconditioned car to keep off the fainting. I would have brought a camera and had a photo of the really beautiful spot but it was too hot even for a sensitive instrument such as a phone or a electronic camera. But I did get a good start to this new painting and I hope to head out tomorrow morning to finish it up. This summer has been just great for all the new visas to paint here in Nelson County, Virginia. It mountainous and very green. The people here are very helpful and curious as to what I am doing and painting. I welcome them and answer all their questions and volunteer some information too. Thankfully no one has run me off their property. The folks have welcomed my presence and been quick to give me permission to set up my easel and paint on their land. It's been just exceptional this summer. I don't feel like painting buildings anymore, the foli

Waltons Mountain

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The second version of Waltons Mountain was a little less pushed and came out with a bit more fineness to it. It was painted in daylight and had an artist who had taken the time on the day before to see just what the scene was made up of. (I painted the same scene the day before) and this second time I knew I wanted more than green to be used on my brush. So I got to it and with a couple of hours I had a finished painting...the one seen here

Trees

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The mountains nearby are also very interesting subject matter for my palette and brush. I painted one with a storm coming down the way towards me. The mist was very pleasing but it kept getting just a little more intense as time when by. Finally I felt enough that I had to pack up and make a run for it. I did get this rather unusual painting up of a dark sky with some very tree filled mountains.

James River Rd art

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The views around here are spectacular and meant for my brush and palette and so here is one version of a landscape scenery near here down at the James River area. It's just off a road that parallels the James north of Scottsville in a little place called Howardsville, where there is a barge crossing of the river. One of the few left in the country but it's their....anyway I saw this beautiful composition and had to paint it and so I did....more than once too. This is the larger version, it's maybe a foot and a half by two and a half feet wide in size. I like it and had a good time painting it.

Sunday n' Nelson County, Va.

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Painting on a Sunday is always going to be kind of a spiritual experience and painting nearby a Church service is no doubt going to bring into being the Church building as subject matter for my canvas. That's how I got going with this particular painting. I was out in the middle of a field with nothing much more and trees and sky to paint but there was this Church that stood far away but very visible, it was red against the green of foliage. And so this painting came about quickly but most assuredly the composition made itself.
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Resting after a day's work; I am in the middle of making a new painting dealing with mixing an abstract idea of balloons and a figure on a cell phone with blending in a setting sun with shadows added. I like giving myself problems then getting to work solving those very same problems in paint. Soon to be working on a daily basis my summer break is only two weeks away and I am planning to get outdoors to show the great countryside of Nelson County to the world. (or whomever takes a look at this blog) So stay tuned, and be patient with me the work will be coming fast and furious soon.

Vincent

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The summer break had me thinking about Vincent Van Goth, the artist truly knew little about rest, he works number in the hundreds when there is nearly enough time for him to have finished but a few paintings. As a friend put it; "if anything he was a workhorse" he produced nine hundred paintings in just nine years, it's taken me decades (more than one) to do life and finish more than seven hundred, here in this work of mine I remember his style and efforts. As most people do, when one not well versed in art thinks of their favorite painting the painting "Starry Starry Night" most often comes to mind. This is my tribute to him and his work.

Trees 2012

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Sometimes it pays to simply wait and let the clouds part from our view. They have to evaporate ya know and it's not something one can force. So sometimes when one is stuck from having subjects to paint one falls back upon old subject matter, that's where this painting comes from, it's a tried and true subject matter for me. I think I'm getting a little better at it now. If one compares it to some older tree paintings I do think this one is a little better. But I'll leave that to history to judge, that is if history wishes to remember me and my art in the first place. It's kind of pompous of me to think that people would but people have been very kind and they do surprise me from the perspective of who and how they like my artwork. So I'll stand aside when it comes time for those who appreciate my art to talk about it.

Family Of Trippel Painted by Fourth Generation

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Looking at art one sometimes comes upon an idea when visiting an art museum, such was the case of how this painting came about; One day I went to the back galleries of the Philadelphia Art Museum when I was living up their, I happen to come upon some B/W paintings done by Robert Indiana. They were somewhat eerier due to the fact that they were all of people long since dead plus they were all painted in Black and White no other colors at all were used by R. Indiana. The paintings were taken from old family photo albums and executed on large canvases but had no other colors other than black, white and gray. At first I thought that they were rather ugly and had no "life in them" but they did stick in my mind and have done so for years now. Funny thing about art, sometimes one finds work that is sired upon one's memory and no matter what one does to forget about a painting, a film or a book one can't do so. Such were this series of paintings that were hanging in

New Oil: "All of a Sudden: He Just Floated Away"

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I enjoy my life much more today because of a fellowship call Narcotics Anonymous, it's responsible for my reclaiming myself and my life. Two of my closest friends from years ago said to me (in all confidence now) that they thought I was insane. My trouble was and still is I don't see through their eyes but I live within my own skin and thus I make myself as comfortable as I can and I feel sane or that I have a healthy approach to life, mentally I feel really good and always have felt healthy. But when one realizes that it's not just oneself but others who create 'reality' one can see that as Oscar Wilde said "no man is an island" . With that said, I felt ok but my existence around me didn't see me as being so healthy. Well nothing changed that until I got clean in NA. It's then I had a look at myself and what I really had done instead of what I was thinking I had done and appeared. My two good friends were brave enough to tell me the truth

Mov'n on with Art

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It's been too long since I last put down an entree into this blog but I'll tell ya moving will make one exausted if nothing else: that's my excuse and I'm stick'n to it. I have finished one painting and I'm working upon completing another and I ought to be done in just a few days. School is crank'n along too, there is words being spoken about 'graduation' among other end of the school year rhetoric ....and so my thoughts are turning to the subject of "what are you going to be doing this summer?" And with that I will turn my thoughts to plans for what is going to interest my brush and palette during our summer break. But first there is this canvas I am working on now, it is a joy to be doing so in such a fine spot as my new home is,,,how wonderful a feeling it is to paint in sunlight from a large window in the morning with an idea of where one wants to go with "it". Until later on...when I post my newest one... most like

Home

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Here it is!

Country Move: New Studio Begun

My new studio/home is truly something I didn't see in the cards yet I was able to work it out with the help of some friends to buy it. There were more than one reason to buy this place yet I find it truly appealing just because of the amount of natural sunlight it gets. During the morning I am able to see the sunrise, and in the afternoon the front room gets plenty of sunlight as well, so it's perfect for my needs as an artist. So I've already got a canvas underway and it's only been during my first week of being here. The house is in a remote location so I won't publish it's whereabouts but it's safe to say that I still get into Charlottesville for work and now that I drive so far I am very conscious of how little driving I use to do when living in town. I truly saved myself from burning a lot of fuel over the last ten years by biking to and from work as often as I did. Now I guess it's someone else's turn to ride and my turn to conserve whene

"My People" What It Means For Myself

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Art should reflect the times and place and people as well to where it's made. It also ought to show some of the personality of who made it in the choice of what is shown in the manner of the content of the work. And so I figure others may know me better than I know myself sometimes because I am discovering myself when I simply draw from my inner consciousness , it is then that I can in some manner transcend myself and my own conscious views into another choice of 'what is real' for me. This is how I see art as a very real therapeutic aid to bringing out my inner spirit and it's relationship to this earthly plain of living, and existence itself can often be interrupted when I draw with my free stream of consciousness. It is then that I draw what have become know as "my people" or with some " JT's people" which and whom show up in my work on a regular basis for my entire artistic career. It's wonderful to have the freedom to explore

Downtown to Read at the Library I Saw....

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A day at the downtown local library was truly an eye opener. I went to look up the newest issue of American Artist magazine which I truly love but just don't have the warewithall to have a subscription. The stay at the table I was at was quiet and truly comfortable for my pursuing my magazine but upon finishing it I saw an unusual site at the tables beside me. Those men who were sitting had books open but were simply sitting still and quiet but they were also staring off into a far away wide open space. It was eerie and I took a long second look to see it in a perceptive manner as to not miss anything, then I got up and because I was done with my article I left the library. It was later on at home I picked up my pen and drawing tablet to render the image of what I had just experienced at the downtown library. How unique and eerie yet very moving in a manner that Potemkin was a moving film. That is what I have posted as my drawing for this article. Life is what it is

Faces for the Fun of It

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During the time between art shows I am buying a new home in Central Virginia southern section south of Charlottesville. It's a place that I lived in years and years ago almost very lost to my thoughts but not entirely, it is a new home. It is a home that can be said that it was an unexpected gift from living life on life's terms. I am not able to find my art equipment and pack for moving at the same time so I have turned to drawing. Drawing is very immediate and portable thereby it can be done with very little equipment and on the fly as it were, that is where my expression has let itself to show up lately. I have enjoyed playing with my imagination and the characters the lye within it, it is a group showing of 'my people' as my fans have put it in days past. These faces are simply exercises in examining various styles of features people's faces have and in as much they often don't seem to be sensible, but I never let that hold me back. The fun is of