Featured Artist at Catskill Arts for Feb. & Mar.

Catskill Arts in Kingston, NY recently let me take over their featured artist window display for the months of February through March. I used this opportunity to collaborate with the INT-O Yellow Happy Spot Project and display the 6 ft. Happy Spot I painted in the window

Taking it a couple steps further the good people at Catskill Arts let me paint the outside of the window. Allowing me to turn the whole window display into a mural installation featuring artwork inside and out

Base layer of latex down now its time to make an abstract mess..

Almost done..

Aaaand we're finished!

This project became much more than a collaboration between Catskill Arts, INT-O Yellow, and I. One of the perks (sometimes a downside) of painting in public is that anyone walking by can strike a conversation with you. Sometimes this leads to an insightful and pleasing encounter, sometimes its an annoyance and the person never leaves spewing verbal diarrhea that's impossible to ignore. But often times people will try to crack the code of what Im painting and give their vision of what they see in my abstract mess. Using their vision I try to incorporate as much of what they see as I can or even put the spray paint can in their hand and let them do some painting. My favorite section of this painting is the lower right, to the left of where it says INTO, that red blob with a little text above it that reads Oliver. Oliver is the name of a very cheery young boy who was accompanied by his mother and took zero convincing when I asked him if he wanted to help me paint.

This style of painting, letting the streets inspire the artwork, brings a closer relation to the viewer of the artwork when they can say they were directly involved in some of the paintings creation. Whether it be the red blob by Oliver, the heart specifically asked for by a young man named Thor, or the quotes the little characters are saying, these are all directly influenced by my surroundings, disrupting the creative process in ways I could never expect, and constantly changing the end result of the painting. This mural installation ended up being a collaborative work by over 20 individuals whether they are aware of it or not.

Some of the quotes I overheard while working on this painting..