We did it! The long tunnel of winter has opened into the budding glory of spring. Huzzah! I burnt all my jackets in celebration and will never wear them again... next winter might be a tough one. Damn these rash and impulsive celebrations. Had yet another crazy person yell at me while walking down the street. This guy was yelling, "Don't you look at me! Don't you ever fucking look at me! Ever!" Over and over and over. I wasn't even looking at him at all until he started yelling at me. Not the best way to go unnoticed. He ended up standing in the middle of Morrison street and yelling the same thing at every car that passed by so I didn't take it personally.
Portland is looking extra magnificent these days and it's doing it's best to distract me from work. I've given in to some extra long coffee breaks on the balcony. I have my first showing in Portland next weekend at a place called Grass Hut run by the ever awesome Bwana Spoons. The show is called Balls Out and opens April 2nd. Here's the postcard:

I'm also releasing 2 prints for the season. One of them is a print from one of my pieces at the Jonathan LeVine Anniversary Show called, "A Welcome to Coming Days." The second one is from a recent commission I finished for Dean Kuehnen called, "At Ease Amidst My Fellows." Here's some extra info on the prints. They both have the same specs:
Image size 20" x 13" Total Print Size 22" x 15"
Edition of 30
$70

You can click on my mini Etsy store to the right to explore more.

Tomorrow I head to the airport for the midnight plane to New York. I'm taking Jet Blue so maybe I'll watch some Olympics to pass some time. Or it might be a good time to get some sleep... Hopefully I don't get the night terrors this time. Air travelers are so tense these days and don't take too well to some sleeping, long-haired, half-asian guy thrashing his arms around and screaming bloody murder. Lighten up people. Flying used to be fun.

The reason for my trip to New York is to attend the Jonathan LeVine Gallery 5th Year Anniversary Show. I still have my work here in Portland so it's going to travel with me in a very secure and well-packaged box. I was hoping to get these pieces done earlier so it wouldn't be last minute, but that didn't end up happening. As hard as I may try, it always comes down to the wire even though I've been working on these guys for a while. Sometimes I suspect my own paintings are trying to make me look like a fool... But they always pull through in the end and it's hi-fives all around. I dropped them off to get photographed today so I'll have images to share soon. I'll post them on my Flickr tomorrow.

Here's the card for the show... and the ***closed for installation*** image on their site. Nice.

Check out their site for more info.
http://jonathanlevinegallery.com/

Thanks!

The print I get asked about most is an oldie but goodie called "Finding Hope Here in the Clearing." It's one of my most optimistic pieces and I think we can all use a little slice of that these days. Today was an especially beautiful day in Portland, and I felt pretty good about the world as I drank my coffee in the sunshine. Then I gave an old lady a hi-five and did a whistling somersault across a busy street followed by the jazziest jazz hands ever. From my bio, you may know that I am former master of jazz hands. I haven't used my jazz hands in years... not since that tragic day. I can still hear the screams of children and horses when I close my eyes. But the day called for it and I felt that my moves kept the weather nice. No thanks necessary. I'm just glad no one got hurt.

I know some people missed out on the first run so I'm running a second edition of it, but closer to the original size. I'm keeping it at a very small run of 25 and after that, it's gone forever. Go to my Etsy store for more info:

Thanks!
Keep it jazzy.

First blog entry of the decade. This is monumental. So far this decade has been pretty low key. After the madness of New Years, I've been hiding out from the Portland rain, painting and watching Deadwood for the millionth time... love that show. Year by year I feel less inclined to go out and hang out with other human beings. If this doesn't improve, I'll be chasing people off my land in my long johns. At least I'll finally get to use my rifle.

My show at Thinkspace was a great time. I spent most of the week in LA setting up my installation and playing Mortal Kombat with Michael Hsiung. I created a character on the game named DangerGuy and he brought the pain and vanquished many foes. Michael is also a blogster of Fecal Face so you can see photos of the show here.

or here if you need a separate and special place for a link.
Here - - Fecal Face

Of course it rained the night of the opening and since it only rains 2 times a year in Los Angeles, people tend to stay indoors. It's weird that every time I visit LA it decides to rain. And by weird I mean fucking stupid. But I gotta say that the turn out was still awesome and the opening was a blast!

I'm working on a couple pieces for the Jonathan LeVine 5th year anniversary show that's opening on February 27th. I got some cheap plane tickets and I'll be attending the opening for sure. Can't miss this one! Come out and celebrate if you're in New York and feel like celebrating. Besides that, I got a couple commissions in the works and a new print design for BLDG on the way. Looks like I might have some open time during the middle of the year, so if anyone is looking for a commission, this is primo commissioning time for me.

Since the economy fucking blows, I'm releasing 3 small 8" x 8" prints for $35 in my Etsy store. I'm also cutting down the edition sizes of my prints to 35 to get them up and moving so I can plug new ones in faster and in exciting fashion. Here's 2 of them.

I think I've just connected my blog, via RSS Reed, to my Twitter account so my updates on here will show up there and I can bother even more people in an even easier manner than ever before. I almost understand what an RSS feed is, but I think I figured out enough to use it. If this doesn't work, I'll hate RSS feeds forever for making a fool out of me. I wonder if I'm getting closer to the age where new technology seems too confusing and stupid to bother with.
I'll be in LA next week. Holy shit what happened to November? Tomorrow comes the day of dread for me when it comes to shows. The packing and shipping of new paintings. The process itself is a pain with all the bubble wrap and the cutting of two boxes to make into one big box to fit all the paintings, etc. But the stress of having five months of work flying across the country and zooming down highways is not a fun time. I usually kill a goat or two to appease the shipping gods.

update: I have also put Twitter updates on the side of my blog. Insanity. So when I update on the blog, it updates Twitter and shoots back over to the blog and updates that I have just updated. This loop might just break the internet.

December is almost here... where did the time go? Oh yeah, I've been in the studio drinking coffee, painting and listening to Harry Potter audio books all day. Not a bad way to spend the day. Throw in some hot chocolate and a space heater and we are in business.

Portland has been absolutely beautiful the last week or so. But the Portland rain has moved in with a fury and it looks to be a soggy week ahead. All the more reason to stay in and get some paintings done!

Print news. The print I was working on with BLVD fell through and we decided to go a new direction with it which is really exciting. I'm going to get them over an original design instead of rehashing an existing painting. Should be fun! In light of the new direction, this frees up "The Wandering of the Wicked" piece so I am releasing it myself as a print. It'll be another larger 22" x 22" print. Check out the shop for more info>>>
This will be the last print I release for a couple months.

Fall is here and Fall is wonderful. I took the picture above at Multnomah Falls in Oregon. It's only 20 minutes outside of Portand and I'm sure many Portlandians have visited. It was my first time there and I'm glad I waited for Fall to kick in.

I'm in the last month or so of my upcoming solo show at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles... going crazy right now! But very, very excited for this show. The show is called "The World Unseen and Those In Between." I've been delving into the spirit world in some of my recent paintings and this show will be all about ghosts and demons and... acorns. I'll be posting a couple preview images on my Flickr site soon. Keep posted.

On the print front, I decided to release the "March of the Exiled" print as a second edition. I wanted to make a larger version of it and it looks too amazing not to go ahead with it. It's a smaller edition of 30 and is going for $125.

Thanks!

My favorite season is in the air. I can see it. I can smell it. I can feel it... Or maybe that's just gas. It's sad to say goodbye to summer, but Fall is officially the shit and I'm standing by it.
I am finally releasing 2 bigger prints of two of my favorite pieces in my Etsy store... word. They are 20" x 20" with a 1" white border, so that's some 22" x 22" print goodness if my math doesn't fail me. That's special and they are going for $135. The prints won't be ready to ship until the end of next week, but I decided to put them in the store a little early. Get these babies ready to go!
So please check out my Etsy store if you're interested.

It's been a busy couple weeks. Some of it fun busy... and some not so fun.

I got to go down to LA for the Blab! show which was amazing. I got to hang out with the ever awesome Michael Hsiung. He even let me sleep on his couch and made me eggs in the morning. What a guy. Finally got to meet Monte Beauchamp as well. He's the brains behind Blab! and been meaning to meet him for a while. The shitty part of the trip was me oversleeping my 6:00 am flight to LA... maybe whiskey drinking wasn't the best idea the night before but what the hell? I had my piece for the Blab! show with me so I HAD to make it to LA by that afternoon. Fuck. The airline tried to put me on standby but I needed a concrete plan of action so I bought another flight with a different airline. Fucking hell. Then on the way back to Portland, I go to get my boarding pass and they tell me that because I missed my flight to LA, they canceled my return flight to Portland. Major FUCKERY! After another $150 to book a new flight, I was on my way home... That extra hour of sleep ended up costing me as much as a new Playstation 3 with a couple sweet games. Instead I got a poorly printed boarding pass and more bottled up rage. Flying used to be fun right?
I also drove up to Seattle last weekend for the Travis Louie opening at Roq La Rue. I've been wanting to see his work in person for some time and I was not disappointed. How he gets that delicate of line work is beyond me. I've met Travis on the Internets before but never in person. Meeting him in person was a delight and he signed a new book of his for me called Curiosities... my god does he have some good penmanship!

I'm in the process of finding a new place to live in Portland, so I've been obsessively refreshing Craigslist apartment listings all day for the last month. Also checking out a bunch of apartments here and there has been pretty interesting. There always seemed to be one glaring factor that ruined the place. Whether it's the overbearing landlady that made us take off our shoes before entering the apartment, the extra small house that looked bigger on the posting with a creepy dog man living in the basement, the dirty litterbox smelling carpet, bedrooms to small, living room too small, and on and on. Still kind of fun though in a strange way.

In light of new move and all the costs associated with it, I'm posting a sale in my Etsy store. I'm having a buy 2 for $100 sale which will save you a handy $30. Go ahead and buy yourself something nice. And I'm also having a Buy 2 Large Prints, Get a Small Print Free sale... if you're the type that wants more bang for your buck.
You can click on my mini-Etsy store to the right to visit. Or Here.

Thanks!

I have a piece going to the Blab! Show at Copro Nason Gallery this weekend. It's an Apocalypse themed show so it should be some dark and beautiful good times. I'm actually flying down for the opening so I hope to see you there! I'm renting a car for the weekend so please don't run me off the road. I'll be the guy driving slowly looking at the GPS and cursing.

More info at:

www.blabshow.com
Copro Nason