Chinese Brush Painting
The following slab work shows the end product of a design
problem I have worked to resolve for years. I wanted to
make a product that people would enjoy, that I would enjoy making,
that would get better as my painting skills grew over time.
They are framed in black. The "Chop" is my studio symbol:
Two people holding a pot. It can mean three things:
One, the transfer of knowledge of pottery from teacher to student.
Two, one person giving another a piece of pottery.
And Three, two people working together on one pot.
This chop is about 1 inch by 1 inch and provides scale for
these pieces. They stand away from the wall surface and
can be used as small trays.
The frame of reference is the canvas, and the canvas "cloth"
is the frame. The subjects are nature, the life cycles,
behavior, and beauty in natural forms.
I hope you enjoy them and I invite and welcome your comments.
I am working on a posting of the Online Critique Results.
I will include illustrative pictures of subsequent work
to indicate what I got from the critique and how I applied
some of the useful information.
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Bees and Plums
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Shrimp
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Octopus/Kraken
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Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle
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Frog, note the tiny dragonfly that has caught his eye.
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Wisteria and a honey bee
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These two pieces are examples of a colorless style that is traditional sumi-e
Dragonfly
Caterpillar
Praying Mantis
Goldfish
Peas, one of my favorite things to paint!
Influences, Crossroads, and Highlights
In the mid 1990's, I made pots and then collaborated with Hsi-Mei Yates,of Taipei, Taiwan. She has painted for about 25 years
and worked as a pottery and porcelain painter for five years
in Taiwan before moving to America.
Hsi-Mei lives in Virginia now
and works as an artist, selling her watercolor on rice
paper paintings.
She has been my teacher in painting since we met.
The techniques are different than any that I had learned
from American artists. Some of the methods of chinese brush
painting on pottery still don't seem like they should
work, but they do.
The decoration follows the form and much
of the work you see on this site is painted in
this manner, although now I both make the forms
and design and decorate the work.
If you have never worked with someone else to form a
piece of art, you should try it; you find out a lot
about yourself and find that you have strengths and
weaknesses as an artist that you could never discover
working solely on your own.
Please email me with your comments, questions, or critique: