Monday, December 26, 2016

King of the Prairie

This idea has been rolling around in my head for a while.  Out here in Oklahoma we live with both of the "creatures" in this painting.  It is a perfect example of the push and pull that human beings have struggled with for centuries.... nature VS human comforts....some who take too much, and those who pay for it....those who learn from the past, and those who repeat it.... sustainability VS depleting our gifts..... honoring our gifts and using them wisely, or not.... I could go on but ultimately it will be you, the viewer who gets to interpret the story.  Notice too that there is a storm brewing in the back ground.

Below are the beginnings and nearing completion of the painting.  I need to sit with it for a week or so and then will finish it.

a week later.... It is finished and sent to the new art gallery in town, The Artery.








Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Sugar Plums Dance .... Tulsa Ballet

In order for Sugar Plums to dance in their heads, you first need to learn how to dance.  This painting was done after a visit to the rehearsals for the Tulsa Ballet's opening season.  To bid on this or visit my ebay gallery, Click Here

Horton Records in Tulsa w my son, Jesse Aycock, Jacob Tovar, Wink Burcham, Lauren Barth, Paul Benjaman and more

Friday, November 11, 2016

Persimmons

It's that time again.... Time to take a walk in the woods without having to worry about getting chiggers or ticks and look for something sweet.  They are as much fun to paint as they are to eat.  If they are squishy and ugly, those are the ones you want to eat.  A lot of times you will find them on the ground when they reach that point.    You have to be quick though because the deer love them as much as you do.  ;-)

These are on auction in my ebay gallery today.  Click here to visit my Gallery

Tuesday, November 08, 2016

Foraging in Oklahoma

This time last year Scott and I were in a workshop over in Coyle, OK where we were learning about all the different kinds of wild foods that were available to us in our state.  I brought my camera along so I wouldn't forget how to recognize different plants.  While there I snapped a pic or two of other participants.  This is a painting done from one of those photos.  Just a side note, our facilitator was Jackie Dill, a Native American woman who shared with us her favorite gathering places and taught us how to identify and cook foraged food.  At this writing her stone home is nearly destroyed by recent waste water injection caused earthquakes that have rattled my own home which is a 2 1/2 hour drive from the epicenter.

To visit this piece in my Ebay Auction, Click Here


Monday, November 07, 2016

SOLD! Cecil plays the Piano Oil

I did this painting, which is kind of a departure for me, for a show that Scott and I did last year at right about this time.  The show was a back and forth between painting and poems.

Here's the painting that is on auction this week on my ebay gallery site, Click here to visit.


Here is the corresponding poem written by Scott Aycock

CECIL


Cecil keeps our yard trim as a sailor’s beard-
not a blade of grass out of place.
With a surveyor’s eye he places poles along
the hedge row,
making Grandma’s English Boxwoods
level as poured cement,
stretching the length of the drive.

He starts early and works through, into the
heat of the day.
I am just a boy.
Cecil comes to back door, hat in hand, like a child asking a favor of a man.
“Mr. Jo Eddie’s grandson, you ‘spose I could have me some ‘freshment?”
I go under sink where grandma keeps the
drink, pour comfort from a bottle.
I place a capful in a glass, fill the rest with water.
It turns the color of rosin.

That’ll do, Mr. Jo Eddie’s grandson, don’t need no ice.
He tips his head, tosses the drink, and wipes
his mouth.
It is a litany of motion.

Five drinks into the day, his tools put away,
Cecil comes to the door-  a final drink to stay
the blues away.

I being home alone,
Cecil points with fingered bone
towards ivories lined up in a row.
“Mr. Jo Eddie’s grandson, I can make that
coffin sing.
Some folks they scared a dyin’, but they ain’t got that rhythm thang.”

Cecil straddles piano bench, with one leg north, the other east,
to work the pedals, to keep the beat.
With both hands poised on whitened keys,
his long black fingers fill spaces,
make dark holes in the music,
as he begins a slow growl, a low moan.
“How…how…how…uh…uh…unh.
Gonna’ chase those blues.
How…how…how…uh…uh…unh.
Gonna’ chase those blues.”

Bowed over the keys, eyes closed,
Cecil is there in some sepia-toned place. 

It seems with every note, with every chord,
Cecil spills more of himself between the keys,
as though the music is drinking him one note
at a time.

With an ear bent to the ivories, listening for the sound of suffering as it leaves his fingertips;
Cecil’s hand begins to jitter, and juke, and then to jive,
into some boogie-woogie slide.

 His huge black hands, like crows,
flap the width of the piano,
as  Cecil tosses back his head, enraptured.


I am just a boy held in time. 
Watching.

As Cecil’s shoulders sway in time to the beat,
mouth open, he eats.

Drinking notes, swallowing chords,
half-digested they come spilling forth,
crude and primitive.

A truer sound.