Strange World

SOLD

Vanity

SOLD

Scudder Beach study

SOLD

after degas study

Sold

the mind of Dali

This is my rare oil study of the mind of Dali. This is not an abstract painting. But a study of genius/ neurons in an abstracted sense.

on ebay soon.

alex

Frames

One of my biggest collectors sent me this today. He framed my work and did a real nice job. I love to see my work framed. If anyone can send me photos of the framed pieces I would be thankful.

alex

Citizens Against Government Waste

Again I shy away from politics on this blog. I personally think that to identify too strongly with a party (left or right) blindly is simplistic. I think the government is a big, wasteful machine whose only purpose is to take away your rights and money. I do free illustration work for the Citizens Against Government Waste---a non partisan group dedicated to eliminating government waste including the greatest evil we face which are "earmarks"... earmarks are spending projects added to random bills at the last minute by anonymous politicos that are not required to have any transparency. I believe that you should have to ID yourself before you add an "earmark" to a bill as they are just another way to waste money on projects that are for special interest groups. If you want a good glimpse into government efficiency go to the post office three times a day... I hope I made sense of this issue....now back to the regular programming...

alex

Marshall Arisman

In my opinion there was only one professor worth a damn when I was in art school. His name is Marshall Arisman. He is a famous illustrator and amazing fine artist. He is the closest thing we have today to William Blake or Alfred Kubin. Although he is very successful as an artist I cant understand why artists who are putting sheep in Formaldehyde are selling works for millions and Marshall is not understood more by the art world...It is always the great geniuses that are understood later in hind sight. He did have a recent stellar show in The Museum of Mainland China for his sacred monkey paintings, so maybe the world is waking up. A few years ago we went out east on long island with my brother to find buffalo. I wrote a published article about the journey for a magazine. I wished this image could show the colors better of this "black elk" painting.

Glass Art Cartoon

I mentioned the other day about my interest in the idea of where do cartoons and humor fit into art..I often play around with cartoon imagery in my paintings and I am still on the fence about the results. On very rare occasions I explore the cartoon element in my glass art...Here is a piece I made last year. It is a carved image on a 28 inch round glass.

Photo by Chris Appoldt.

justice

I try to keep negativity and politics off of this site. But I feel a need to chime in on something. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Paris Hilton, I think she is not being treated fairly. Everyday people of all races and all walks of life do horrible things, even horrible violent crimes and do no jail time. There are people with many DUI's who have never spent any time in jail. The justice system should not pay attention to who she is or how famous-- that is not what are justice system is about. I do not have a judgment on her or her life style but I would hope our courts would be above "television justice."

dumb as a painter

There is a great expression I learned from Dali it is "dumb as a painter." The meaning behind it is that painters and artists are usually (hopefully) good at what they do but when it comes to anything else in life they are barely functional. Dali could not even take a cab himself or handle money... I just went to CVS to buy a can opener because I have lots of cans of tuna and no way to open them. I get home from the store and look in my bag---two new cans of tuna, one sobe energy drink, oatmeal and no can opener. I look at my receipt and there is no can opener on it. Looks like I will be eating pizza for lunch again. Damn CVS.

emails like this make it worthwhile...

Alex,

I just received my package of art and I have to report back that Im quite content with what you delivered. I had been out bid soo many times on ebay I decided to say "screw it" and send you a personal note along with a check so you could pick what to send me. The result was perfect as I received an ophelia print and some sketches. The more i've been seeing your stuff on your blog the more i love it. I have a huge wall in my house that I would love to hang a painting of yours. What I plan to do is hang sketches around a bigger piece of yours. So now I just need to find the perfect large scale painting of yours. In your letter it said Im on the VIP list and would be notified early of pieces up for sale but I have yet to get any email so I figured I'd just reach out and ask. What Im interested in is a color painting on the larger side of medium size that I could buy and hang on my wall along with the smaller sketches you sent me. I really love your "Strange World" pieces as well as the Vonnegut and New Zealand painting I saw on your blog. Any paintings up for sale that I could preview or buy outright now that fit that description?

P.S. -- Thanks for doing the 10 buck art site. You enable art lovers of all income levels to have a sanctuary in thier homes!

All the best,

Santa

Santa does not drive a sleigh. He drives a big brown truck and has a brown uniform.

6:50 saturday morning...

Overslept--time to make the artwork..going running then I will be back posting and painting...

roger waters

And the moment of clarity faded like cheerleaders.



RW

autism

There was a seriously autistic man, an african american kid screaming at the top of his lungs in penn station. He had two "handlers" trying hard calm him down, they were stressed and tried to keep him quiet to no avail. I stopped into carvel and bought him a chocolate ice cream cone... He stopped screaming.

Back home

Had a great lunch in the city...all the beautiful angels are married. I will be working all night tonight on paintings and postings so take a peek before you climb into bed around 11 or so.

alex

Cell Phones

I would like to thank all the people who are kind enough to share their cell phone conversations with me on the Long Island Rail Road. Ever since my Ipod was stolen I have been blessed with the kindness of strangers who are concerned that I may be in need of auditory stimulation of some sort because I do not have little white earplugs sticking out of my ears. I get to hear all about business deals, frat parties, and other important stuff. Thanks for caring about me america!

off to the train..

Does Humor Belong In Art?

The mind of Gardega does like to ponder this question...If you look at the sketchbooks of picasso and other great artists, Dali, even Leonardo and Degas you can find many "funny" sketches and cartoons...Yet when It came down to their to finished works, they are always pretty "serious" looking things. The cartoonist/political humorist Honore Daumier was a huge influence on "fine artists" including picasso. He was also an amazing draftsman. I love the work of Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson and edward gorey who are considered merely cartoonists. The thing is that humorists must be very clever. Most artists are dumber than tree stumps and have the sense of humor of a bazooka gum wrapper. Dali said the only truly great artists are the ones who can write. (He was an amazingly engaging writer.) I believe that goes as well for humor..Comedians are always smarter than actors who are sometimes smarter than cabbage. I actually think Chris Elliot has a great under- appreciated mind. I will post some humorous pieces, I have been hesitant to do so..Maybe you can let me know if you like my "cartoony" work..please yay or nay on these works! If you do not respond I will stop posting my cartoons.

Good morning and its fri.

Good morning America...It's friday, which is the same thing as a monday when you are self-unemployed. I have a client lunch in NYC but I will be drawing away the whole day. If by any chance you have not received your art yet it will be there ASAP! only have thirty orders left to fill (from the original chaos) and pieces recently purchased on ebay or by check will go out soon after that. If you have received your work please let me know you are happy or otherwise. So far everyone has been very happy! Please feel free to even drop an email to chat..

off- road drawing

I drew this yesterday, after fishing. My friend Terry has a 1972 toyota land cruiser. Anyone who has ridden in one knows that they bounce all over the road. I decided try to start making drawings when I am in the old land cruiser. I call this my first "off-road drawing."..I find a craggy old tree is well suited for an "off- road drawing." I will be kind on these pieces and sell them for ten dollars as opposed to bidding..up on ebay soon.

my latest work

I painted this tonight at sunset on a long island beach, not far from my home..I had not been to this place in 20 or so years. What a peaceful place... this is a gift to my friend peter from high school, an avid fisherman..I think this piece is a damn good one.

thanks john!

Hi Alex:

I received your package yesterday and inside was the beautiful Ophelia and a wonderful water color of a young lady that reminds me of a character out of the novel Pygmalion. Thank you very much. I may be calling you in a few days about something that might interest you.

Cordially,

John

shipping day

Trying to get out another 60 pieces today...If anyone has received their packages can you please email to let me know. Please feel free to let us know what you think of the work as well.

alex

horseshoe crab

From an early age I thought there was something very unique or sacred about this animal. I used to draw and paint it a lot. It is a horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), Technically they are from the scorpion or spider kingdom. I eventually found out that the copper-based, blue blood of the horseshoe crab is a vital ingredient used in testing the purity of medicine. In nature very unique looking creatures often have very unique properties, medicinal or otherwise. Not unlike Dali.
In 1967, Dr. H. Keffer Hartline received the Nobel Prize for his research on horseshoe crab vision. He discovered how sensory cells in the retina help the brain process visual cues, enabling horseshoe crabs to see lines, shapes, and borders. This mechanism, called lateral inhibition, allows horseshoe crabs to distinguish mates in murky water. Research of this type is helpful to understanding human eye diseases like retinitis pigmentosa, which causes tunnel vision and can lead to total blindness

blue bather

happy birthday Jesse.

gmail

gmail is down so I cant read emails at present so I am going to start drawing and painting all night.
If anyone is bored or has questions they can call me as painting and talking goes well with my ADD.

917 400 1317

cynical?

I had a very nice girl from san fran tell me my blog was getting cynical. I think I was getting over worked and sleep deprived. Here is a happy childhood drawing I made at six to lighten up the blog! I couldn't draw something that happy today if I was paid to..Picasso said all his art was an attempt to recapture what he knew as a child before he lost the light in his eyes.

after picasso

reposted by request of client.

Strange world---flight of shadows

Sold

$200.00

Strange world---before the flight

One must warm the waxen wings before taking flight into the unknown...If you fly too close to the sun the wings of life will melt and Icarus will sleep eternally in the sea of shadows. Not for bid, yet, email me with offers.

After Degas--woman in dress

This piece is in decent condition and is from my degas copying period...I am not going put this on ebay until tonight so If someone wants to make an offer on it..please email me today, I will be carving glass in Brooklyn today but I shall return later. It is better shape than much of the stuff from this period. (I personally like to see art/ drawings that show a little age as they give you more of a sense of being from another time.) When I was in art school nobody spoke of Degas but they sure raved about the soulless dribble that bled from the hand of that painter of aristocrats--- Sargent.

10 x 14

charcoal and watercolor on honey colored paper with white gouache highlights.

link below:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290126308864&lk=URL

alex

High School Drawing

I just found this, I made this in 10th grade for our high school literary magazine "Grok." It brings back many memories . I don't remember the accompanying poem. Not for sale.

alex

Conceptual Art

I wonder what most people think of "conceptual art." Is it the emperor's new clothes? Is wrapping a brick in tin foil an act of genius? I refuse to tell you my opinion of such art, Instead I made my own piece of conceptual art to answer that question.

voyeur

I was thinking about the idea of opening your life and art to strangers. It is quite strange to write your daily thoughts and work and expose yourself on a blog...It is hard to deny the effect of the internet on art. There is something voyeuristic about reading someone's daily thoughts etc. My cupboard is presented to you as an example. Not all art is painted or sketched.

I drew this tonight

I can only attempt to catch a quick pen- sketch like Rembrandt. I look at his landscapes and see the economy of line and the way he gave you so much with so little. A tiny squiggle by rembrandt could give you a face, a shoulder and even an expression. I drew this tonight at a secluded park on the shore. very calm night, sunset.

ebay link below:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290126137578&lk=URL

strange world---western sky

this is one of my favorites. enough said

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290125977523&lk=URL

question I was asked

A new client asked if this was a finite venture, If I would run out of work etc.. Not in this lifetime...I am in for the long haul and now I have some more time to paint and post and less shipping. I have tons of work and will continue to share it.

alex

Flower Study

Here is a rare study released by me of wisteria...I have been studying wisteria for a while because I want to understand its structure so I can carve it into one of my women glass portraits..Here is a nice drawing in blue pencil on paper..it is about twelve inches high...sorry the photo of it is a bit dark. I get so mad because I missed this seasons time to draw wisteria because I was so caught up.

link below

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290126135732&lk=URL

posting and painting

until I drop asleep at my table I will be painting and posting tonight.

Thanks Andrea!

one of my favorite clients just sent me a Winsor and Newton series 7 brush..It is the small number one, perfect for Dalinian detail! I cannot thank her enough! cant wait to break it in..christmas in june.

Update...

Most work has been shipped..wrapping up a twelve hour day so I can start painting all night again...only a handful of orders left on desk...Sobe energy drink should sponsor me for keeping them in business. If you have not received your order yet just hang tough it will be there soon! Also, we have a delivery confirm on every single item shipped so we can tell when it was received by your eager hands.

alex

Sometimes I try to copy Dali's line exactly to help me understand his mind!

not for sale...

william tell, cane toads and the myth of Dali.

I just read that the Australian cane toad wiggles the middle toe on its hind legs to lure in the young young toads in order to cannibalize them. This parental act of cannibalization was a theory much explored by the Divine Dali. Instead of toads with wiggling toes Dali often used the story of William Tell with himself as William Tell..Instead of placing an apple on his head to be shot off by the cannibalistic father figure, Dali being the surrealist par- excellent placed melting pork chops on his shoulders. Dali was fond of the Freudian quote "He who does not slay his father can never become the hero!" Which in turn leads us to the myth of Oedipus...one must think about these things when one reads about cane toads.


straight from the mind of alex to you.

Good Morning

I slept from 12 to 3 last night and have been working away ever since. They are starting to know me now at 7-11 now as I get my 4 am big gulps and NY post there every morning. I am so excited to get the final big batch of art out today so I can start painting again and even try to breathe a bit. I tried to fill orders according to peoples requests as best I could but very often it became a matter of just getting art out to people. If you really had your heart set on a style or piece, let me know and I will try to accommodate. I had to balance trying to read each letter sent as far as style requests etc and getting the work out in a timely manner. In some cases I have enclosed a water color instead of three sketches and I hope that is okay with people as the watercolors are more valuable. I need to take a painting trip and re-charge soon. Today I will surprise my assistant with a raise for all her hard work. In the future if someone sends me 10 to 50 dollars I can only promise to give you art--- I cannot look through my work to fill requests unless you send 100 and up. there is just not enough time. Most people paint and draw to music, I prefer to paint to late night infomercials.

hello

barry and mary and andrea!

This is now up for bid on ebay.

All info on ebay..

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290125668888&lk=URL

my first glass sculpture

(I shudder to even look at this piece) all I can see are the horrible errors and shortcomings.. I made this piece to teach myself how to carve glass. I did sell this this piece eventually for $10,000 dollars. However, I had long ago dropped out of art school (I had made it in a desperate attempt to pay for school--- such is life!) the thing that interests me about this piece is I later found out that this is an "alchemical symbol" I found that many of my works and pieces were based on alchemy without my knowledge of it. My later studies of Carl Jung made sense of this phenomenon. Alchemy was the root of much great renaissance art, a fact still unknown to many of my art school classmates and professors who think "sacred geometry" is a small country off the coast of sweden.

Glass Art

This is me sandblasting glass. I taught myself to do this while I was in art school because I thought it would be a way to pay for my studies. I use a breathing compressor and a lot of equipment that causes me problems as I am not very handy outside of making art. Everyone who I approached as a kid to learn this art slammed the door on my face so I vowed to become the best. It took me 15 years to learn to make a face in glass that is a real likeness of my model or subject.. I hate the actual process because it is highly difficult and easy to ruin a piece you spent a month on, but the end result makes up for the hellish process.

(Of course I think this one is "hogwash." I am perfectly capable and willing of speaking well of myself.)

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
Blaise Pascal

my favorite quote

I memorized this when I was 15 and it is still one of my favorite quotes.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal

art school

It took me a long time to reconcile with the fact that I had to drop out of art school due to financial reasons. I moved out on my own at 17 and had to pay my own rent so in art school it often came down to me buying a tube of paint or going hungry. I was also scraping by supporting myself at 17 by making glass carvings so I reluctantly decided art school had to go. I used to go insane when I would see kids filling up their bin in the art store with 60o dollars worth of paints and 100 dollar brushes while I could barely afford to feed myself. I spent a lot of years burning with the fires of resentment that I had to put up with all that "shit" while they would go back to their nice dorm rooms or the parent's jersey mansions. I also felt I had to make up for what I lost in those years in any way I could. In retrospect, I can see that I would not have chose it any other way in life. As an artist, one can always learn more technique, you can always learn some slick new painterly tricks-- but you can never make up for a lack of having lived or a burning fire in the belly. I cannot count the number of artists I know that hide behind the wonderful "system" and technique they learned in four years of art school but never learned that art is about life and living and surviving and that art based solely on technique and devoid of life and soul has a stench that even the untrained masses can smell when the wind blows the right way. I did not mean this to be a "rant" but rather an "observation."

Great day and good news...

Today we were shipping machines and by tomorrow at 4 pm every single piece of backlogged art will be shipped!! It has been an incredible amount of work and exciting at the same time! I am planning a trip to the west coast very soon to continue my strange worlds! I would love to meet anyone who has bought my work or has an interest in buying my strange world that I paint while out there in Santa Monica! If you read this rest assured your art will be in your hands soon and I thank you for supporting me so much! I am doing an night all drawing session tonight to celebrate and also because If I don't start drawing again I will turn in to a stressed out mess and start running through woods jabbering about like some crazy loon...I have some new press coming out that may be national and will bury me again but until then I will doing what alex likes to do--- make art!

Strange World-- heart of the sunrise

Here is another "strange world" I will explain it further when It goes on ebay later today... sometimes less is more.

Strange World Sunrise

Here is a nice sample from my most popular series "Strange World." These were painted on the beach in Los Angeles during my lost weekend. I am not putting this one on Ebay just yet, you can email me if you're interested.


It is a 11 x 14 watercolor

rainy monday..

I hope "Y'all" had a nice weekend....today will be focused primarily on shipping so updates will be a little less regular today..If anyone has any questions about your work received or even work you are waiting for---- today is a good day to email or call and ask us about status etc.

all the best

beautiful words

" The line of suture, the point of junction between the real and the fantastic is impossible to grasp;
it is a vague frontier which not even the subtlest analyst could trace, such is the extent to which the transcendent and the natural concur in art"

---Baudelaire

Blue Nude Female

Again, this is a drawing from "back in the day" and is a nude-- old master study on blue paper. I am not placing up for bid but if anyone emails me I will consider offers.

alex

Male nude on green paper

Here is a nice male nude on green paper..It was long ago and far away..Don't know the name of the original artist I copied...about 10 inches high. I am not putting these up on ebay as I will probably send them to customers who already bought work sight unseen..If anyone has interest in any of these pieces, please contact me before I ship them out...


alexgardega@gmail.com

new pieces are up

I have loaded more work onto ebay...I am trying to get 20 pieces up today so I can focus on some other stuff that is pressing. Look under ten dollar art on Ebay and you will find the work.

alex

radiolaria

Here is a glass carving I made in 1999. This piece was one of two stolen from a club in NYC where they were going to be displayed.
The trick with this piece was to create a 3D effect on a single flat plane of glass. I miss and wish to re-make this piece.

alex

sunday

Good morning everybody...will post a lot of work today. I am going running again for the first time since this thing started (was it ten days or two years)..if you run everyday then you stop cold turkey you really feel less than great. But what does this have to do with art you ask? It is called the art of waking up at 7 on a sunday and not having much to say because you have not prayed to the gods of pepsi yet.