Its friday!

It is friday! For Alex it is not different than any other day as I always work saturday and sunday. I sometimes take off tuesdays to commune with bacchus or the gods of sangria before I get back to the easel. It looks like I am moving to brooklyn in march. I am paying for a new carpet for my landlord as I unintentionally turned it into a painted carpet. No matter how hard I try I cannot keep from ruining my clothes and furniture etc with paint. I admire artists who are neat and tidy and anal and keep neat little happy workspaces. For me my art comes from chaos I live in a state of perpetual messing up and cleaning up. I am having issues with my scanner so I cannot scan my nyc cover or new drawings until I fix it..I will try to fix the issue this weekend so you are not left in the cold and lonely land of words without images.

The bronx zoo

I mailed my bronx zoo painting to the wrong client. It went south instead of west. (I mailed it to the wrong attorney.) I think that was my second screw up in a year of mailing so I am confident neither will sue me.

nyc cover by gardega

I finished my painting of the statue of liberty and delivered it to publisher today. I will try to upload the image tonight as I had no time to do so earlier...so it goes...

update

I got an email from a nyc gallery today, they want me to come talk to them. That makes me happy because I am not an artist who ever approached a gallery with slides or any of that because I could never put together the whole artist package and bio etc. Some artists live for the networking and openings and such but I am not that person. I usually stumble into galleries by accident or they find me somehow. I dont really even have a body of consistent work, I have made thousands of paintings and drawings and glass carvings but I sell most of it and I am always jumping around from experiment to experiment and throwing away boxes of art when I move etc. I am not proud of being like I am--- I often wish I was the organized guy who mailed out his slides every week and had a data bank etc. anyways...

statue of liberty by gardega

I am very tired tonight but I have to work on a NYC painting of the statue of liberty for the cover of the yellow pages. I have posted a copy here of my first statue of liberty painting for the yellow pages. This was not long after sept. 11th so I tried to give her a defiant (if not angry) look that would still be acceptable for the publisher.

nude

Here is a new drawing I am working on. I am in Brooklyn again today but I will update from "the road." I am getting back to life/ figure drawing as I am rusty as a nail. use it or lose it.

signs of genius

upon returning from brooklyn yesterday I was too lazy and tired to stop to get gas and ran out exactly as I pulled into my parking spot. Last week I ran out as I pulled into a gas station. I am not sure why I always have to push things right up to the edge of the cliff but I suppose I like watching the pebbles fall over. I am also not sure why I decided to illustrate this with my teenage painting of Saddam Hussein--- I made this painting before I knew who he was....premonition?

The eyes are the windows to the soul. I've seen windows covered in the sad rain of winter and Ive seen them bright in the light of a summer's noon. Stained like glass or closed for the nights eternal shade. --ag 2007

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free."

james douglas morrison

renaissance crab

I made this in an experimental time in my art (which is always) all art is experiment, If you are painting the same picture day- in, day- out, you may as well bake bread for a living (at least your bread will taste consistently the same.)

ebay store...

there are two pieces of art for sale in my ebay store.


click below:

ebay

naturalism

Naturalism in art refers to the depiction of realistic objects in a natural setting. The Realism movement of the 19th century advocated naturalism in reaction to the stylized and idealized depictions of subjects in Romanticism, but many painters have adopted a similar approach over the centuries. One example of Naturalism is the artwork of American artist William Bliss Baker, whose landscape paintings are considered some of the best examples of the naturalist movement. An important part of the naturalist movement was its Darwinian perspective of life and its view of the futility of man up against the forces of nature.

Naturalism began in the early Renaissance, and developed itself further throughout the Renaissance, such as with the Florentine School.

Naturalism is a type of art that pays attention to very accurate and precise details, and portrays things as they are.

NOTE FROM ALEX: people often use the word realism in place of naturalism and that is a mistake-- realism does not mean it looks realistic, that is a misnomer. I will explain realism later.

artist of the day--Carravagio.

For those interested in art and by art I mean "real art" you can do worse than to research Caravaggio. I always had an affinity for him as he was very unconventional for his time and very much a rebel against what was going on around him in both his life and his art. Religious art was often stilted and stale and he breathed much life into the genre. He was often criticized for being a naturalist (meaning he painted things realistically and as they really looked.) He was a master of light and chiaroscuro and he rejected the traditional methods of study favored in italy to actually painting live from a model in a very direct fashion without a million prep-studies. He is truly one of the greats and an inspiration to anyone who follows there own path in art.

1572-1610

good morning...

I will upload new work today as I promised. Here is a glass carving I call "swamp angel" I will be at my art table and computer all day until around 4--- so check back for updates.

mission statement--- or not

I don't have a mission statement and I don't read self-help books or listen to motivational tapes. My only commitment is to keep drawing and painting and raising awareness and doing my damn best to help change the art world from the neomodern-con game it has become--- when people are being sold the dream that a shark in formaldehyde is worth more than a Raphael drawing then something is indeed "rotten in Denmark ." As the art world loses its collective soul to greed and market forces we all lose out in the bargain. I am not saying I am the right guy to bail the boat but I am saying it's sinking...

quote of the day...

"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer."


— hunter s thompson "Extreme Behavior in Aspen," February 3, 2003

the emperor never had any clothes!

Dear Mr. Gardega,

For the past twenty years or so, I've been saying that
modern art is shit. I majored in art history at Chapel
Hill in the 1980s, and was always locking horns with
some of my professors.

I was always the one who would ask "what, exactly, is
it?" The teachers didn't like such questions.

So, reading your quote in Page Six made me laugh.

GOOD LUCK AND BEST WISHES TO YOU!

Sincerely,
R. B.

my studio

this is my art table in my studio.
I bought the cow skull off ebay and use his horn for my lamp because I am too lazy solve my ever- existing lighting issues. I use my easel less and less but I am not sure why as it looks much cooler to paint at an easel than at a desk.

high school drawing

I received an email today from a girl from my high school (many horseshoe crab moons ago) and by chance today I found a drawing I made for the high school literary magazine. Someone bought this in may so I only have the scan...Alice in wonderland was (and is) a work of inspiration for me.

“Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose”

comments etc

feel free to leave comments by clicking on comments under pics and you can use the chat feature to the right as well. Dont be afraid.

Salvation--- final drawing by Gardega

Here is a final sketch for my "Salvation" piece. I believe that human salvation (at least our medicinal salvation) is to be found in the blood of the horseshoe crab and in its DNA and I also believe that it is indeed a sacred animal or "power animal" as the American Indians used to call animals that held magic properties. I intend to make a glass carving of this piece and also a painting as well. This is the second and final drawing/ study that helped me understand what I am dealing with visually. It will be a very difficult glass carving but I will cross that bridge later. Somebody mentioned that this resembled female anatomy but that is not conscious on my part. It is pieced together from scans as the piece was too big to scan in one pass. that will account for lines that do not meet in the photo but does not occur in original piece.


to buy: click here

alex is back home

I have just returned from my Brooklyn studio and look forward to loading up some work tonight...For my regular readers, there may seem a bit of repetition as I want to show some chosen works to my new viewers.

You can do a lot in a lifetime
If you don't burn out too fast
You can make the most of the distance
First you need endurance
First you've got to last----N.Peart

ceiling painting

http://www.nigrophoto.com/rooneyarchitecture/


for my new viewers here is a mural I recently completed . It is in progress in these photos and I will update soon...

ophelia carving

For new viewers I have uploaded a picture of my carved glass "Ophelia." I will put prints of this on ebay this evening...

how to buy a gardega

If anyone is interested in purchasing an original gardega you can contact me via email at top of page and I will help you on your path towards artistic salvation. I will also load work into my ebay store tonight and tomorrow for sale.

archives

The nature of a blog is a linear one and the nature of alex is decidely non-linear and spiral like. If you wish you can look through my archives below right or scroll down continuously and view that way. I hope you enjoy my gnomic meanderings and continue to read my daily postings of art and wisdom.

new drawings up tonight

Alex is busy making glass art in Brooklyn (again) I will load up some new art for sale tonight! (About 8 or so) and will be drawing all day tomorrow as well. I will try to get a few pencil lines in my sketchpad over lunch today as well. There is a nice article in the post today about the first man to photograph a snowflake. His name was wilson bentley (for the record.) please note my www.gardega.com has a lot of old art that is going to be torn down and replaced soon....

gardega quoted in page six

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01142008/gossip/pagesix/endquote_634815.htm

quote of the day

"modern art is like a Hollywood whore on her last legs no one loves anymore. She needs a savior to drive drive a stake through the foul heart of modernism to bring painting back to lofty planes of the Renaissance"

gardega--page six january 14, 2008

mark twain quote

Hunger is the handmaid of genius.
- Following the Equator

new idea by gardega

I have decided I need some uniformity to my "blog" (I hate that word---it sounds cheap.) I have committed myself to one drawing a day no matter what! If I am working on a twelve hour deadline I will still upload one picture a day for sale or at least posting. I think if people take the time to log in they deserve to have interesting work to look at. I will start tonight with a drawing. If I make a painting, so be it but there will be a new piece every day even if I have to draw on a napkin. If you like a piece you can email me or bid on ebay. If I miss a day or two I will load the drawings/ art from the missed days so there will be 365 drawings a year plus my ramblings of genius and other nefarious posts...