Iris Moonrise

When I was growing up I made thousands of mirror and glass designs most of which I sold. Because of my work in glass I developed a feel for art nouveau line. When you work in carved glass you are dealing with line as opposed to color color or mass. Those years of working in glass and line have stuck with me through the years. I have to restrain myself at times from "throwing" a nouveau inspired border on my work as I etched a thousand mirrors with such designs. This was an old sketchbook page with white iris and a white moon.

12 x 18
watercolor and pencil

ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290141380728&lk=URL

old sketch of a dancer

Here is an older sketch of a dancer with a few wrinkles and some age....


8 x 10


ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290141366664&lk=URL

good morning!

I was going to carve glass today in brooklyn but I have opted to work on this site instead and upload new work! Have some cool drawings I am going to upload today. I cant take those cave man commercials and may have to switch insurance companies but I digress.

alex

coming back to life

Where were you when I was burned and broken
While the days slipped by from my window watching
And where were you when I was hurt and I was helpless
Because the things you say and the things you do surround me
While you were hanging yourself on someone else's words
Dying to believe in what you heard
I was staring straight into the shining sun

Lost in thought and lost in time
While the seeds of life and the seeds of change were planted
Outside the rain fell dark and slow
While I pondered on this dangerous but irresistible pastime

I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past and coming back to life

I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the waiting had begun
And I headed straight..into the shining sun


David Gilmour

oil 8 x 10

blue spirit

I painted this today---Alex does not know why he painted this. I think I have been drawing and painting too many beach scenes and figures and I needed to walk through the other side where the shadows and nightmares grow.


8 x 10

oil on canvas

ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290141063667&lk=URL

Gunther's tap room

one of my favorite old bars is gunther's tap room in Northport. It is a place with a ton of history and walls that hold a lot of stories. To this day the main clients are a mix of blue collar, clammers, baymen and regular everyday northport people. One reason I love the place is that Jack Kerouac spent his final days in orthport and was a regular at gunthers. He used to sneak in flasks of whiskey because he was broke in spite of his fame. It can still be a bit rough in Gunther's at times and once I was grabbed by someone who didnt like me drawing his picture at the bar. It is a very popular place on thanksgiving. I once spent my whole thanksgiving in there drawing pictures of the lost souls chewing on turkey. I made this oil sketch from a drawing I made that thanksgiving. It needs a bit more work and was fun to paint. I need to add the gunther's lettering on the window as well.

8 x 10 canvas

sunset at beach

Here is a sunset study from crab meadow beach...still working on this oil study as it is not where I want it yet...

8 x 10 oil

crab meadow beach---fall

Here is a small oil study I made at crab meadow beach in Northport last fall. It is oil on an 8 x 10. I really consider these oil sketches not paintings. I know there are a lot of artists who paint small finished paintings, for me these are simply personal studies or notations as to what I am seeing front of me.

alex

ebay:http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290140995660&lk=URL

oil paint

I need two tubes of paint one is cerulean blue oil color and the other is titanium white oil color. I try to use old holland colors..If anyone wants to send me those I will trade for a small painting. The art store is far away and I always forget to go when I am in NYC. I will trade an 8 x 10 small canvas as it will save me an hours time..Believe it or not it is hard to find individual oil color tubes on ebay! Thanks for contributing to my laziness. (Mary is not allowed to send me this item.)

alexgardega@gmail.com

wagon trains

I find it interesting that a plane stuck on the tarmac for 4 hours makes it to the national news. It was not that long when americans took wagon trains across america and were lucky to make it across alive at all. Maybe we are not supposed to make it across america in five hours. Millions of flights take off and land every day without problems. Maybe its called being spoiled.

Radiolaria

I have been fascinated by these ever since I discovered them in 1999. You can google them or read a bit on them in in wikipedia. I started using them as inspiration in my work long ago and then I discovered that dali had also used them as in some of his work so I knew I was on the right track.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolaria

my new watch

I bought a new watch on ebay for running ,an iron man watch with lots of buttons and timers for laps. I go to 7-11 this morning to buy my big gulp at 5:30 AM as I usually do. The guy working gives me a strange look when I ask for the NY Post (as I usually do.) He tells me the papers are not delivered yet. When I get home I realize it is 3:44 Am and my watch is wrong. I have no idea how to set it either. I have three clocks in my apt and each one is wrong including my computer clock. At least now I have some free time.

My 500th entry

I feel my 500 th entry is a milestone and requires me to thank some people. If I leave you out it is because I am sick today and not thinking well.

thanks to:

Matt T.
Mary (the greatest DJ in NY)
Barry from hoboken- nice man
Clay--- my nobu connection and great guy.
Bevy from Nike (thanks for the gift!)
Barbara from miami
Melanie from new zealand
Rita
Nick from LA
linda C.
Kim D.
Bruce from LA
grant v
Andrea for the lunches
Jim A for the music
john n. for the cape cod house
jeff G.
and to everyone else I forgot ..thank you!

New Website!

My new website will be up in less than a week. It is a very unique layout (based on the sacred horseshoe crab.) I will still have a blog going as part of the site for ongoing daily updates.

Good Morning

serious thunder this morning, sounded like there was a bowling alley upstairs.

after mucha study---winter woman

I guess I should make it clear that almost all my copies of my heroes are from my teenage years and do not represent my skills at present. maybe I got worse (who knows) I was a mucha freak in college and everyone laughed him off until he became the "go to guy" for the same people who laughed him off. I always pushed the decorative arts and artists when others faces were buried in the smelly socks of sargent.

strange world---solitude

I never understood the point in rendering a painting to death. Is that so strangers can stand around and point out that you rendered every hair in detail? The japanese were the great art masters. Hokusai etc..they give you the impression of the wave not the photo of the wave. Dali's genius lies in that his hyper detailed painting were simply "comments" on the idea of photographic images as opposed to being photographs themselves. While the abstract expressionists were slashing away like house painters on a wall, Dali was rebelling with hyper realism but hyper realism wrapped up in a surrealist skin so it still worked. Gardega is not Dali so he paints like gardega.

King of Kitsch

This is a glass portrait I made of odd nerdrum. (My favorite living artist.) He calls himself a kitsch artist (although that is merely tongue and cheek poking fun at the artworld because he is looked down on by the elites because he is a classicist and a genius) I work a lot in glass which can also be described as kitsch (depending how it is handled) I thought it a perfect thing to make a glass portrait of the "king of kitsch."

Before and after--shower door.

I made this for a client about 8 years ago....Terrible photo of finished and etched mermaid. This was one of two mermaids I made for a client. I still have the original drawing somewhere.

alex

Shower Door design

this is now on ebay....I have described it on ebay and further back in my blog.

ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290140337582&lk=URL

Bloody Red Sun

I painted this when I was listening to this song....l think these words are as good as anything ever written by Rimbaud. Rimbaud was a genius poet who died young and was an influence on Morrison as well.

There's blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles
She came
Blood in the streets, it's up to my knee
She came
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
She came
Blood on the rise, it's following me
Think about the break of day

She came and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair

She came
Blood in the streets runs a river of sadness
She came
Blood in the streets it's up to my thigh
She came
Yeah the river runs red down the legs of a city
She came
The women are crying red rivers of weepin'

She came into town and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind

Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.

Blood screams her brain as they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born in the birth of a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union

There's blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles
Blood in the streets, it's up to my knee
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
Blood on the rise, it's following me

Red Halo

I am not sure why I started painting halo clouds..I am not even sure if they are religous, alchemical or otherwise symbolic. They keep coming out of my hand so I dont ask why.

July 17, 2007

Good morning. I have a bunch of new work on ebay and will have even more today...I should have about 20 pieces up by days end. (There are about ten now.) Another sunny day in the northeast. I have a collector visiting today, always a lot of work getting set up for that. If anyone is still waiting for work the final shipping date of all back log will be tomorrow when my assistant is back from vacation.


aside from that Mrs. Lincoln how was the show?


alex

artist of the day! --- Redon

Redon also describes his work as ambiguous and undefinable:

"My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."^[3]

Redon's work represent an exploration of his internal feelings and psyche. He himself wanted to "place the visible at the service of the invisible"; thus, although his work seems filled with strange being and grotesque dichotomies, his aim was to represent pictorially the ghosts of his own mind. The most telling source of Redon's inspiration and the forces behind his works can be found in his journal A Soi-même (To Myself). His process was explained best by himself when he said:

"I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased."

Strange world-----dead before he lived

this is a small painting I painted and I am not sure why.


ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290140198349&lk=URL

here is another abstract doodle from a sketchbook.....read below for description.

abstraction

Sometimes I do abstract drawings/ paintings to warm up my hand before I make a real painting. I never showed these to other humans as they are basically the same as an accountant doodling in the margins of a balance sheet.

ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290140369157&lk=URL

interior landscape

I came home from dinner tonight and just picked up my brush and made this landscape without thinking about it....I was just messing around but it seems to have worked. I sometimes try to imagine/ paint what Atlantis looked like.

ebay:
http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290140304081&lk=URL

Beach Study

I made this on a beach northport. These are oil studies done on small 8 x 10 canvases. i call them my petite bijou's...Little gems which was the name they called toulouse lautrec.

on ebay today...

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290140302525&lk=URL

ebay store

there is new work up on ebay. click below.



http://stores.ebay.com/ten-dollar-art

degas copy

I found this in my cabinets with a bunch of paintings. I had hundreds of degas studies from when I was a kid---I have no idea where they all went but it is nice to find them now and again.

ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290139984271&lk=URL

Earthquake

My friend chris called me yesterday (He goes to japan once a year for vacation.) I told him that I had an earthquake premonition and there was going to be a major quake. ( I get them sometimes and I am usually right). He laughed at me and told me that I should go read tarot cards and that I was a fool. I felt no need to reply. I woke up today and read this. This is the fourth time I told someone there was going to be a major earthquake and it hit within one day.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289383,00.html

eyesight

Theres a lady who walks her dog in her portion of the backyard. I was wondering why she never waved back to to me---It turns out she is blind and the dog is her guide dog.

We take sight for granted.


good morning

yin yang

here is a nice link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

Mural study part 2

Here is part two of the mural study I uploaded earlier..scroll down a few to read about it....

Shower door design original drawing....

I found this original today. I cleaned out a cabinet today and found some new stuff. This is the original watercolor and pencil for a glass piece I made in the 90's. I sold the original piece in a soho gallery. The day after I made it. I remember spending my last 80 dollars on the model and was lucky enough to sell the glass piece so quickly. For many reasons various projects never come into being or fizzle out. An artist must have thick skin to deal with such things, I like to get a 50% deposit to help ease such pain.

alex

sunday cleaning

For some reason I put the butter in the silverware draw today when I was cleaning. My elevator doesn't always go all the way to the top sometimes but at least I have good art hanging in it.

Mural Study---pt 1

I was commisioned by an architect in NYC (1997) to paint a mural for a private residence. This was one of two watercolor paintings I made as a proposal. The project never came to fruition but I was paid for my time. The two murals were meant to face each other on opposite walls. I was really hoping to get the commission because I liked the concept and I needed the money--- So much has happened since 1997. I am selling both of the studies. I will put on ebay today unless someone wants them and emails me first.



ebay:


http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290139985429&lk=URL

Jamaica

I was always very partial to this painting because it is a very "happy" piece with high key colors--- most of my art tends to be a bit darker. I painted this after visiting Negril, Jamaica in High school. I was 17 when I painted this. I remember watching these guys building this structure with limited tools and supplies. I think the guys orange shirt against the blue sky is the whole reason I decided to paint this one. The guy in the middle is handing up nails to the guy on top. Even if I try to paint something normal there always come out a surreal element to the piece.

16 x 20 oil on canvas glued to masonite.


ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290139772795&lk=URL

notes for readers.

I have been a bit lax lately in getting up work on blog etc. (I got a little burnt out from working long days and nights in the beginning months.) I have recharged a bit and will start selling again and loading work on ebay. I also have a new website coming this month which is really cool looking and will still have the blog format included as well. I am not good at pacing myself and tend to go to extremes which is not the way to run a marathon.

From first to last
The peak is never passed
Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes
One moment's high, and glory rolls on by
Like a streak of lightning
That flashes and fades in the summer sky

N. peart

the last sunrise

It is a strange thought to think that one day the earth we will have a final sunrise. The planet was here long before us and will continue long after we are gone. I guess I am speaking more about the last sunrise in relation to humans being on the earth. I never really thought about the fact that there was actually a first sunrise for humans. Who was the first human to look out of his cave and see the sun break over the horizon? Who will be the last to watch it set? We spin in our orbits so fast these days there is not much time to think about "esoteric" subjects. I kind of feel If you lose the mystery of life you have lost the game of life.


on ebay:

http://cm.ebay.com/cm/ck/1065-29296-2357-0?uid=87404769&site=0&ver=LCA080805&item=290139599847&lk=URL

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