bnagel

here is my most recent painting entitled Natural History.  The title might not seem to make much sense but it’s intended to be just one in a series of paintings.  The series, called Human Nature, explores the relationship between people and nature in their everyday lives and at their homes.  Many times people only view nature as the pristine wilderness untouched by humans.  As soon as we touch it, it becomes tainted and unnatural.   I think this view is dangerous and leads to a disregard of the nature around us.

In school (architecture school at the UofM) we studies the history of suburbs and how it was basically a desire to get away from the dirty cities and get back into nature.     And, while nature had been viewed as a dangerous and savage place before, it soon became romanticized during suburbanization.  In the past, people built walls to keep out nature, now they build walls to keep out the city, and the traffic.  Anyway, I should stop now because I could ramble on for hours.

This painting is essentially about technology and nature.  We try to escape the city and civilization but we still need to be connected.

Natural History – 20×16 – Acrylic on canvas

Here is another quick 5×7 study painting.  much like in my illustrations, in this painting I  experimented with blocks of texture and blocks without texture. In my illustrations I usually do large portions of white mixed in with strands of textured or detailed elements.  For this painting I used the fence to divide the painting into three parts. I also like how the flatness of the fence makes it almost seem proud of the painting.   I like the concept of this and I think I’ll try to work it out on a larger scale.  Probably not with this image though.

Fence – 5×7 – Acrylic on canvas

When I was younger my dad belonged to a flying club where a group of people shared a small private plane at the local airport.  Once in a while, we would go on a trip that would only last for a few hours up to northern Minnesota.  On these trips it was my job to be the navigator.  I’m sure he knew where he was going and didn’t need me to navigate but I had a lot of fun reading the map and finding landmarks on the ground.  Now he just uses a little  GPS devise.

My most recent painting.  I’ve been working on compositions so I thought I’d experiment with some smaller paintings.

yellow house 5×7 acrylic on canvas

I thought this was appropriate with all the talk of swine flue going around.
I would have liked to have spent a little more time tightening up the background to get more of a contrast between the dirty pig and clean room but I sometimes I just have to go with the first sketch.

Update: I really hate when I forget to upload my thumbnail to Illustration Friday.

I’ve been busy with a side job lately I havn’t made time for IF in a few weeks.  so I’m a little last minute on this one and its not really a pattern. But I got it done.

I’m also not sure why Wordpress is not allowing me to display larger images.  I’m going to have to fix that.