The Electron takes a break from whining, to bring you some welcome news of art success. I am just back from Balticon, the annual regional science fiction convention in Baltimore, where I displayed my art on a panel in the art show, along with many other artists and craftspeople. Though I have not been at my best either physically or mentally these last few months, I somehow have managed to crank out quite a lot of art, some of which you have seen on this Weblog. The "2K" painting which I presented to my father as an eighty-fifth birthday gift is now hanging in my parents' house, in a prominent place. Once I returned from Massachusetts, I immediately set about making art for the Baltimore show.

I have always done geometric abstractions, but I never had the confidence to make them large, let alone exhibit them at a public show. A number of factors have permitted me to work on this style as a new direction in my art. Some of these factors are technical: I have found that I can work on prepared pre-stretched canvas, sold cheaply at my local Aaron Brothers frame and art supply store, which is conveniently and temptingly located right next to my Trader Joe's workplace. I used to depend on bendy, fragile illustration board, or heavy Masonite which I had to prepare with white primer (known to artists as gesso). I also have new acrylic paints, expensive ones imported from Fratelli Maimeri of Italy, called "Polycolor," which give a super-brilliant color and very flat, unreflecting surface. This makes it really easy to photograph, with no light glare on it. And the wood-framed stretched canvas is so light that I can paint a larger picture without having a heavy board to heave around and drop on its corner, or on myself.

Other factors are artistic and, I guess, aesthetic or even philosophical. I have always painted space pictures, usually with my airbrush (precision paint sprayer) on a black background. I stopped painting them some years ago because it seemed that I was doing the same thing over and over again and not selling them for very much money. So I turned to doing those super-detailed architectural fantasies which you can see on my main Website at pyracantha.com. But again, there are only so many onion domes and minaret towers that I can do before I start repeating myself. Then I got "converted" to math and science. Math and science provide me with lots of good-looking lines, shapes, and curves from conic sections, graphs, and general geometry. So I took my old style of geometric abstractions, which I had only done in miniatures, and made them out of my mathematical forms. Then I stuck them together with space art, done the old-fashioned way with airbrush, spatter, and some brushwork detail. The acrylic work for the geometric shapes is done by hand, not by airbrush. My idea is to make art that has the qualities of mathematics and physics: brilliant, precise, mathematically determined, and forceful. In fact, the sketch for my most recent piece was done on the computer, and in a kind of reverse technological twist, the final was done in "conventional" paint on canvas. And there are plenty of permutations of image ideas so I won't have to repeat myself too much.

There is also the downright practical advantages of painting these pictures. They go quickly. I could spend up to five months painting one of those obsessive detail-fests. They impressed clients, but they drove me crazy. I can do a geometric abstraction in a few weeks at most. Maybe art that goes quickly is less profound or less valuable or even less "serious," but I just don't have the time to be profound, especially when I have a deadline.

The first really good result is the picture I just completed, which is entitled SPRING THEORY (yeah, string theory done in the spring.). Acrylic on canvas, 15" x 30". You're invited to view "Spring Theory" here. Since I have no real (i.e. mathematical) knowledge of string theory, I am using it purely as a "spring"-board for image ideas.

I finished this picture on Thursday before the Friday opening of the show. By Friday, it was on display, and by Friday night, it was already sold to one of my best collectors for a good price. It was one of the fastest turnarounds I've ever had, from studio to sale in less than two days. Needless to say, I'm pleased.

But that wasn't the only piece I displayed. The major work on my panel was an art quilt, which I designed and my very talented friend Sally Byers, the "Threadwitch," sewed into a quilt. This is not the first art quilt I have designed, but it is the first in my "geometric" style. The title of the quilt is CARTESIAN SOLAR CROSS, which combines Christian, mathematical, atmospheric, and astronomical elements. Every conic section is incorporated into this piece: ellipse, hyperbola, parabola, and circle. There are also straight lines and other mathematical curves. I did the original design in markers, and turned it over to Sally for the really hard work of quilting. She not only matched every color and designed section, but she added iridescent fabric to match my metallic paints, and details and textures in machine embroidery. The quilt is 56 inches by 38 inches (142 x 97 cm for you metric folks) and it was much appreciated at the Balticon show. Sally's and my quilt treasure is not for sale, at least not yet. Please have a look at the Cartesian Solar Cross Quilt.

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