Keep On Trucking: Irrigation the Lewis Acrylics way.

Welcome to all of you new folks that are following the blog! It's great to see that more folks are checking it out. As any of you who have been reading the blog know, I've been accepted to graduate school, and with my acceptance I have made a bit of a shift in the work that I have been creating. I have been trying to think about projects in a larger scope as opposed to a purely illustrative manner.

One matter that I have been pursuing is irrigation and trees. In 2006, I was putting together several pieces with tree roots subbed out for by pipes. I am completely obsessed with pipes and I really don't know why that is, but I find the designs and abstract images that are created by plumbing and heating to be amazing. Weird sure, but it does keep me amused if I go any place with exposed piping.

I have five panels that I am going to link together in my newest piece. I plan on connecting the piece with pipes between the panels. I have several sketches as to how to arrange this but haven't quite narrowed it down yet. I will keep you posted on the composition of that piece as I am more certain of it. For now I have three of the panels in my "forest" started.

As you can see this one is very basic. I am toying with taking the whole thing back to that blue color and just drawing in the tree without rendering in paint. The second and third are a bit more developed:

I am very into the yellow creating negative space that almost looks like foliage in the tree. I feel that this "sparseness" really starts to get at the point that the whole piece is supposed to be going for. What do you think? Too blunt, too cryptic?

This one is starting to come together a bit. Though as I look at all of these pieces together I realize that I could probably do a whole lot more with the pipes to mimic the branches in the trees. More to come folks, more to come.

On another note, I have been working on some urban scenes. One is for a friend, who has been claiming that he is going to buy the piece ever since he saw the sketch. I hope he likes the painting as well as the sketch. I always feel as if there is a lot of pressure on me when someone is interested in something from the get go.

I am really into this old man. I am also very into the mock storefronts from my childhood. In case you don't know, I grew up in Croghan, NY. The meat market was one of the only places that folks in the rest of the state knew about. So there you go. Oh and by the way, I used a lot of creative license here, Ralph's is nowhere near the Meat Market, it is two towns away and there is also not nearly that many buildings or people in Croghan, but it's nice to think about those places anyway.

The last piece is just a quick one. I was thinking about my friend Katie who I met in Minneapolis last summer. She's from Pittsburgh, which if you hang out with her you will find out very quickly. She's quite proud of the fact. Anyway, I was thinking about the mid eighties graffito pieces of New York City and decided that Pittsburgh needs one too.