Molly, my GF, had a great 2015 and topped it off with a successful book launch and tour of her book "Drawing Blood" from Harper Collins... no relation. In her mind she thought she was very difficult to live with this last year as she wrote her book and planned all the details around it to be a success. Truth, she wasn't any harder to live with than any other time! Well I wasn't going to argue as she wanted to treat me to a three day get-away to New Orleans... Come to think of it I guess she was a bitch!... and you made a mess in the studio! Is that worth at least a trip to Pittsburgh? HA!
We spent all three days going from food, to coffee shop, to more food, to a hookah lounge, to roaming all over the Bywater, French Quarter, and the Garden District. This was one of the doodles in my sketchpad at a coffee shop. We had the best time and I would even go so far as saying it was perfect. I love that girl! I played around with it in Photo Shop a bit. I think it'll make a nice painting eventually.
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I went to Brooklyn in the neighborhood Williamsburg to draw Colleen. I've worked with her a few times and is fun to draw. She has a site to announce where and when she's posing around the city and is trying to create a hub for the artists that she has worked with. The drawing session was held at Muchmores, a coffeehouse, with a small performance space, tables, couches and a stage. It had some murals on most of the walls. Outside the Giglio Feast was getting ready to go. Lots of really tasty looking street festival food that I almost never eat. It smelled great on the walk back to the subway. I like looking at all the festival rides and booths in the day time. They are like these weird sculptures. In the daytime before everything is open and running, they look abandoned and there should be some creepy psychotic clown waiting to jump out at you and squirt you with his trick flower lapel! The apocalypse of clown!
Doing some drawing in a bar with some scotch. A young lady coming back to surprise her boyfriend found him making out with her bast friend at the bar. And I thought the fourth of July fireworks were over. I didn't quite hear all the words but I got the gist plus the body language was obvious. Earlier I had looked up for the score of the Yankee game on the TV and noticed he had been making out with the lady who was now in scorched earth mode. But I also saw him getting pretty close to the other girl when she was there so I just thought they were all on the same page. The girls were both attractive and I was mentally giving him the "high five" and also "it's your headache dude" at the same time. It had zero influence on whet I was drawing, but it was an amusing sideshow to my thoughts. I didn't see any physical violence, so at least everyone was an adult about it. Pencil and ink on paper. This is the first idea with this pose. The back ground was inspired by a photo I took of a metal panel in the subway. White tiles, metal panel imbedded in the tile and some black ooze that was probably once hot liquid black stuff that was now cooled after leaking out of the bottom of the panel over the tile and pooled on the cement floor in front. Imagining if this was in a nice suburban mall it would have been scrubbed clean after whatever was inside got fixed. Not in the New York City subway! Fix the wires and ignore the residue, maybe it'll evaporate? Whatever the reason for not cleaning it up I like that it is there. It ads texture to the background of everyday life. It's unique and it wasn't smelly, just another layer of background. I guess nothing is wrong since the lights still work and the trains still stop.
Lamborghini and Ford GT 40. Hanging with friends at Manhattan Classic Car club drinking Laphroaig. I think that's how you spell it. Scotch! We were drinking scotch! The inspirational spark for future paintings! I met up with Abena at the car club. She modeled for me about 12 years ago. I hadn't seen her since. Out of the ether she said hello on Linkd In and we were drinking scotch and catching up a few days later. She was in sales at New York Press and had modeled for fun. She's still in sales and still really cool!
Here are a few pictures of me picking up a painting. Once a lifetime ago, I was married and lived in DUMBO, Brooklyn. My ex had found a bunch of my art that she didn't want and got in touch with me to pick them up or they were getting dumped. A few of them I still liked and hadn't realized she still had them.
I stopped in and picked them up. We talked a bit and then I was off. I had a bag full of small paintings and this one pretty sizable one! It was a warm spring day so I went the long way to see how my old neighborhood had changed. Originally I moved in there in '95 so I had witnessed quite a change (For the worst in my opinion) over the eleven or so years I lived there. Gentrification can be a bitch! I always hated that I was always a gentrifier. It was a pretty desolate uninviting area when I moved in. Most of the buildings were empty except a few that had a bunch of painters and sculptors practically camping in them. Everyone had makeshift shower systems and heat. Probably 90% of the spaces (maybe more) were illegal occupancy so the typical camouflage was to make your space look like a wood shop in case a building inspector managed to get in the building. But the spaces were big and cheap. There were no stores except a small deli the size of a mini van that primarily sold cigarettes that was open for a few hours in the afternoon. It might have been open in the morning but I never woke up before noon and I didn't smoke cigarettes. I walked to the river front and snapped a few pictures of my painting and then considered walking it across the Brooklyn Bridge into my current neighborhood by Wall Street. But then I thought the subway would be easier. I need to re-learn how to write. I'm not a reporter but I feel as if what I put down in words and pictures here lean toward a statement of the facts. In my head I sound like Patton Oswalt with all the different voices and expressive language but when I read the words I've written they sound like Sargent Joe Friday from Dragnet. Look that one up. Classic deadpan almost expressionless delivery. That's how I sound to myself. I think it's just laziness on my part. I'll type things in on my phone even as I can feel it exchanging the information I put in for arthritis being put out into my cramping fingers. So I keep things short. I hear the new I-phone is larger, no problem here! I'll just buy my pants according to how big the pockets are. What? these floods I'm wearing? Yeah they look funny but they have great pockets! You never hear that as a selling point do you? So many possibilities, maybe get pants that have portals for more pockets or pocket extensions so I can stuff an extra pare of shoes in them! Or insulated pockets with a crisper to keep my veggies fresh? Of course there needs to be at least one USB port... And now we see how my paintings begin. That's my idea now, no one else do refrigerated pockets! Sitting in a coffee shop doodling out an idea. I want to explore this pose with some different compositions. Roggie modeled for this one. As I drew while drinking drinking a mocha latte some tourists looked over my shoulder. Next thing I knew I had a whole family looking at my sketchpad. I had been on a coffee run in the West 4th St area on MacDougal St. Of all the places I draw in this is the area that it's more likely people will approach me about what I'm drawing. Last week I played golf with friends. A wonderful time! Mainly because this is how we score golf, no matter what par is we put down "check" we played that hole. We are sharks on the links I tell ya! Melonie, Serene, and I had a blast. Scotch, cigars, and Gershwin, followed the the next day by hangover, golf and a little less scotch. Serene played some of the classical pieces she knew on the piano in the bar the first night we arrived. I'd highly recommend Shawnee on the Delaware resort. The hotel was was built in 1911, beautifully kept and you could feel the history. Plus they bang you over the head with all the celebrities from it's heyday in the 30's and 40's. I think fall began in the area somewhere between the 7th and the 14th holes. I noticed the leaves on the trees in the beginning stages of turning yellow and orange. We even saw a wooly bear caterpillar on the back nine just before teeing off. I wish I had seen a few more pars, well, just one would have been great!
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CalendarJUNE
Opening at MF Gallery 213 Bond St. Brooklyn, NY JUNE 15, 6-10pm Please look over the Prints page and get them all. Have a good Easter/Passover or month. Now is a good time to commission a portrait or purchase some physical art for the winter! If you'd like to commission me for a painting... Portraits with my surreal aesthetic only. The face you have and my paint brushes! Estimated turnaround 3 months. Shorter will cost more. Contact me now. Last Rites Gallery 325 W. 38th Street, between 8th & 9th Ave, NYC: (212) 529.0666 FHarper.comWelcome to the Fred Harper Fine Art News Section Categories
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