This is the piece I sent to Corey Helford Gallery for their annual Art Collector Starter Kit show in Los Angeles, CA Nov. 14, 2020. (see events)

Pretty amazed that I will be showing with some of the top artists in the world of new contemporary surrealism painting. I feel really grateful for this!

This has been one of the most challenging pieces I’ve ever created because it really is the culmination of everything I’ve done as an artist to this point and I’ve been met with every possible delay in getting this artwork finished and to the gallery.

As of now, I’m still waiting for UPS’s 3rd attempt to deliver the package to the gallery. I paid $50 extra for it to arrive last Friday when it first arrived 45 mins before the gallery opened. Then I called as soon as their hours opened and told them not to send it out today cause the gallery is closed, yet they did anyway. I’m doing everything I can. I just have to keep trying my best and accept what life throws at me with several meditative deep breaths (*breathes deep as re-reading cause it really is the only thing helping*) to disconnect from the situation. Its all a learning process I suppose. I can’t wait till I have a flow built with this gallery and/or others and I’m constantly sending paintings to them, selling for increasing prices, and they arrive without extra fees, on time, and no shenanigans or stress. God please give me the strength to get there soon!

I just want to know that my piece is in the gallery, unscathed, and ready to sell and then of course it needs to sell to incentivize myself and the gallery to work together and for me to pursue this as my new mega-series:

Last year I finished my 9 year long Atlas Metamorphosis series of drawings inspired by a lucid dream as well as reached my goal of 100 Iterations; Sacred Geometry surrealism paintings. In my efforts earlier this year to get into more galleries I took up a consultation with Dorothy Circus Gallery and their owner gave me the idea to combine these two by using the architecture of Atlas in the backgrounds of my Archetype-style animal/geo paintings. So far, I think this piece is one of my best, and shows a lot of promise for future works. It was extremely hard for me to come up with a masterpiece restricted to a 12×12 inch square which was the requirements of this curated show but I did my best to pack a manifesto’s worth of detail into a tiny space. It definitely would be fun to paint more at this scale but even better for larger works like the 2ft x 3ft works most Archetype paintings have been.

And that’s not all…

As if the busy life of taking on commission deadlines, dealing with customer’s idiosyncrasies, and thin layers of oil paints not drying after a month wasn’t getting in the way enough… I thought it was finally dried after changing from Windsor & Newton black to Gamblin brand. I tried to do some masking like I’ve done many times with acrylics and I saw no indication that it wouldn’t work on oils… well I learned the hard way, so in case you were wondering…

DO NOT USE LIQUID MASKING FLUID ON OILS

As I was gently wiping the fluid onto the panel, it literally took my moose’s fur off and left bare (bone) panel underneath! I had already gone through so much perfectionism trying to make his fur look good… but the only good thing about having to paint something twice is you know exactly what you just did so you can move quicker. I wanted to cry though. All I could do was laugh hysterically.

This setback made my piece barely have enough time to be varnished. I even had to go with a re-touch varnish spray first, just because I’d had so much problems getting the paint to stay on the panel. It was the only way I could guarantee that it would set in place and not get smeared by brush on varnish. Once that dried, I was able to do a brush coat of Gamvar, which is the only oil varnish I know of that allows the oils to continue to cure while still being protected.

After applying some heat from my t-shirt dryer to speed the oil curing process, I then packed up the piece using my double-boxing method I learned from Xanadu Gallery. Now that it’s been bouncing back and forth in the mail, I’m happy I took such extreme precautions. I think it will be fine. It has to be. I’ve done all I can do at this point. I wasted money with UPS because of the delays and now they won’t work with me on drop off time. So yeah. Life. Hopefully my next post will be more fun and less stressed but I needed to let you all know how tough my journey has been lately. Also figured some of this info can help others avoid the same mistakes.