Acrylics and Sharpie on canvas

After taking nearly ten years off from painting in general (working in graphic design and audio recording), I again started painting up on a whim to make some xmas presents in 2004 which created a new tangent into fine art (and hopefully a grad degree and really, just more art in general whatever the medium). I have done 3 series over the last few years which have inspired a new style that involves spreading acrylics across multiple canvases while listening to contemporary (and classic!) jazz, heavy metal, punk/indie and experimental electronic music. I find this approach is affected as much by a very diverse range of music as by the subconscious becoming conscious. In this process, the next step I take is separating the series of canvases and working on them in waves individually which lets the work take off on a more specified composition. This limits the color pallette to what I am working on and insures that the pieces will be thematic in both a color sense and temporal while letting them breathe creatively. I have had a few small gallery shows where I have received very positive and enlightening comments from both artists and art afficionados/buyers; such as comparisons to everything from Japanese Zen brush painting to colorful Costa Rican oil painting or even sci-fi landscaping. Also, people usually find a definite graphic design influence due to schooling in visual communications and professional experience in the field. This is most evident in the finishing touches: a permanent marker (and sometimes felt tip pen) used to shade and contour, giving them a striking graphic quality that brings to mind topographical maps and swirling, dreamlike landscapes. I think that they express a unique point of view from a visionary artist out of a multi-disciplinary art curriculum (graduate 1999, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago) but with an almost outside artist or primitive take on technique; or just call it experimental art such as the abstract expressionists and surrealists, or even graffiti artists and you get the picture. Check it out...