Note

Mr. Gordon,

I have been sending you updates to the same email address you have been using to contact me....It seems you are not getting my outgoing email replies. (I have started your painting.)

you can call me if you wish 917 400 1317

brilliant!

Five orangutans at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany were each shown shelled peanuts. The nuts floated out of reach inside a clear 10-inch-high plastic tube quarter-filled with water.

All of the orangutans collected water from a drinker and spat it inside the tube to float the peanuts high enough to grab them, averaging three mouthfuls before success. In their first attempts, the apes on average took nine minutes before they got the nuts, but they only needed just 31 seconds by their tenth try.

new painting---in the humdrum

In the humdrum...

very calm moonlight scene.

15 x 22

for sale...

My studio

This is where it all happens (or doesn't.)

Bronx Cover

This just printed...I had never been to the bronx zoo before...To research my first cover for the bronx, I went with my sketchbook and camera. This is my second cover...

Study for glass design

Here is a drawing I made for a glass etching I will attack next week...I am going to add wings to helmet-- so I will either draw them separate or overcome laziness and re-draw the whole thing. This is a very large drawing.



22 x 30

pencil on 3 ply strathmore paper.

100.00 dollars

email me if you want it before I put on ebay.

alexgardega@gmail.com

going running--back soon.

still waters

Today's moon is 1% full, a waning crescent. Tomorrow we have the new moon.This is a painting of the full moon. I always preferred to keep people smaller than my landscapes as I find nature more important.


This is for sale by clicking below:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290138996079&lk=URL

Friday

Good morning. New works up today for sale!

almost finished

Sometimes I will "drop in" a piece into a frame when it is almost finished to have a look. I am happy with my new painting, have a few layers of oil washes yet (to enrich the tones.)

alex

barry

Mural come soon , barry!

random cool fact of the day

window washers at the top of empire state building were complaining about being bombarded by "pellets." The pellets turn out to be barley blown in from the midwest by the winds.

what this has to do with art I have no idea--- but its damn interesting!

Alfred Kubin!

I like this image as much as any Dali or Picasso. This piece Is a timeless masterwork! I wish I owned the original. I have my own ideas about the meaning of this piece. Anyone wish to email me comments about it?

alexgardega@gmail.com

Artist of The Day---alfred kubin

Alfred Kubin was born in 1877 in Austria. He was an amazing artist mainly because he had such an amazing imagination. His technique was a bit klunky at times but he more than made up for his lack of technique. He was known for his dark, spectral works. Very few artists know about him, I try to spread his name around when I can! He wrote a book called "the other side"-- which I am dying to read. He lived the life of a recluse in an old castle (not unlike myself-- minus the castle)

Please google him to see his work!

bevy

Feel better, Bevy.

howdy

with my assistant away on vacation I feel like a man groping about in the dark trying to find folders and such.

step 5

Here is where the painting stands now after much struggling and "wiping out" sorry about the flash reflection on the lower part...I now have something I like and can work with as far as adding darks and some minor details....My cable went down last night so I could not continue uploading so I had to eat sushi instead and when I came back I hit the painting for all of ten minutes and pulled it all together.

I often go through a terrible depression when I am painting. This painting is no exception, (except people are watching the process.) If I am painting a beach scene or some such thing it is usually less drama for me but when I dig in through my guts into the internal landscape I usually get "the fear" (as hunter s thompson often called it.

three hours later

It has taken me three hours to find something..All I need is something that visually works and then I work out from there..this small section finally works for me.

step 6

Build it up and strip it down until you find a moment that works..

onwards, young flying things...

For me painting is often a seriously painful battle. If you are not really fighting your way through a piece then you are probably "painting by numbers." Painting always seems like the end of the world to me even though it is only 50 dollars worth of art board you risk losing. I can barely bring myself to show people a piece when I am in the "fighting" stage. It is like a writer showing the first draft...Coaxing dreams from the ether requires you to get into a certain emotional state, if you are going through the motions then you might as well just paint portraits of rich people. (not that I wouldn't paint portraits of rich people I would just charge them enough so I can avoid my impulses of replacing the family dog with a horseshoe crab) I would rather drink coffee (which I have never tasted and have a phobia of) than show this work in its unfinished state.

step 4

I think there is an analogous relationship between paintings and sleep. Without sleep there is no dream. Anything can happen in a dream, even death. Now we have established possibility in our painting---We carefully must coax the dream from the piece, a sleeping canvas is easily woken and the dream destroyed forever. Architects are bad dreamers as they plan out everything beforehand with science and math and cold precision. Alex is a good dreamer because he lets the painting work with him and does not use a slide rule which are noisy and awake the painting.

step three!

Alex now adds reality too his Tabula rasa (blank slate) in the form of a toasty- warm oil wash of burnt umber, black and burnt sienna. The gesso beneath is very smooth and sanded with 12oo grit sandpaper, just enough tooth to hold onto the paint! I am using linseed oil and another secret ingredient to give life to my underpainting (which is in fact not an under painting at all but a primary and upstanding member of the masterpiece community.)

Step Two----three colors (Holy Trinity)

For this masterpiece, Alex will use only three oil colors! Burnt sienna, Burnt Umber and Mars Black are all VIP'S ; White, for all her beauty, is not invited to this party. You will understand later why white was left home alone. I am using a glass palette with plenty of room for my holy trinity of colors to stretch out and breathe. The next important step is when I put on my Peter Gabriel Passion CD.

Commision

Someone sent me a nice amount of money to paint "whatever I want" for them. I thought it would be cool to take your through the painting process and expose my "dirty- laundry- room" full of secrets. First I am starting with a beautiful Art Board, a 16" x 20" maple painting board with a cradled backing. I was sent two boards by my friend Mary who is a westchester DJ (WSAN) and collector of my work and all around great person. First I coat boards with gesso, I water it down to milk like consistency and sand between layers with super fine sand paper. I use milk- like consistency because I am in the embryonic stage of creation and milk is most important to help give birth to genius. I get my panels from Art-boards.com in brooklyn. They are works of art in themselves!

Still life with apple

This was painted many years ago. It was influenced by the spanish masters. In the lower right is a cicada, my favorite insect.

it is for sale for $300.00

The word “artist” is an over-used, abused and misappropriated term. So many are called it – but few truly deserve it. You, sir, deserve it.

I could not resist posting such a nice compliment, words like this help you through the down times in art. ----my hat no longer fits on my swelling head.

(thanks peter)

Back to Work!

Staten Island Cover was approved yesterday so I can get back to the reality of uploading art today. If anyone is waiting on work it will go out today! (I got held up by cover commission.) I hope staten island prints well and people who live there feel I did it justice---It was hard finding the right Iconic image that says staten island, it seems (to me) the ferry is visually one of the things the brain most associates with staten island. I promise I will upload new work today...

7/09/07

I am going into NYC to deliver my staten Island book cover today. I am looking forward getting back to uploading work again....I may be going on a short vacation from the 11 to the 15th but I will be sure to find a kinkos and upload my watercolors everyday. I will have new stuff for sale soon, when I have a commission I usually have to focus most of my energy on that project. Happy Birthday, bro.

alex

Finito

I have just finished Staten Island cover...too tired to photograph the finished product. I have two new drawings to do for citizens against government waste now, they are usually easy and fun (as do them for free) (I like the cause...) I will upload the staten island final when it prints.

seagull (detail staten island)

Da Vinci did some amazing studies of birds in flight and I am sure he had no camera...I stole my birds from northport beach and maybe even a little help from N.C. Wyeth.

Staten Island

Here is the book cover I am painting of staten island. (I am nearing completion. )It is often a case of finding something to be excited about in a painting so you can stay interested in what you are working on. If you just go through the motions the piece will not have any life and if you do a lifeless photo-realistic rendering it will be even worse. I like to get involved in the piece, I can never sketch out a whole thing ahead of time like I am in some science lab. Painting is a living organism and must be coaxed along as such. If I was a computer artist I would save a million headaches for myself and then again I would be just another pixel puller without a an actual hard copy or finished piece or canvas . I am still working on the "boardwalkers..."

sorry for the dark photo.

Vanity Framed

I really like when clients send me photos of framed pieces.

thanks,
clay

Pink Dolphin

Someone photographed the first pink dolphin. This is not a trick , it is a real pink dolphin.


Life is not stranger than you think it is stranger than you can think--deepak chopra

Note on Schnabel Piece

Someone inquired about this piece and asked me if the frame was plastic. It is a hard wood carved frame about 4 inches thick (and wide as well.) It is a wonderful framing job by a great framer. I have a lot of inquiries and will not sell this piece for any less than 1,000. If anyone wants it I will give you an original copy of the NY post page six page that mentions it. I truthfully do not want to part with it but I would for the above mentioned price.

PC

I was thinking about something this morning---I have decided the one great threat to art and artists is not climate change but rather political correctness. In my opinion it is simply the embryonic form of thought control. I never understood artists who were politically correct or willing to self-neuter themselves to make sure not to offend anyone. I look at my bookshelves and I wonder which novels would never see the light today thanks to the PC police. My favorite Novel, Huck Finn, would be the first to go in the trash heap if reviewed for publication today, then say goodbye to joseph conrad, hemingway and so on down the shelf. Artists push boundaries and attempting to bend over backward not to offend anyone turns one homogenized milk. I believe that Orwellian group- think is the real cloud on our horizion as we row towards the future. I just re-read 1984 and Brave New world and I would recommend both as a good beach read for anyone who cares--- Now back to our regular programming.

Sunday

Today I will finish Staten Island and another illustration for citizens against government waste. When you work for yourself weekends are never really yours.