I'm pleased to announce that my painting Tea Time will be part of the 2025 Greater Bay Area Open up in New Museum Los Gatos. It’s a great space and there are some great artists participating in the exhibition. The reception is this Thursday from 6-8 pm. If you have a hankering for art, cheap wine, and conversation, stop by.
"Holiday Snap" at SHOH Gallery's "What Beauty is For..." Exhibit
I'm pleased to announce that my painting "Holiday Snap" will be part of the "What Beauty is for..." exhibit at the Shoh Gallery in Berkeley, CA. The show runs from 6/26 to 7/13, and the reception will be on 6/28 from 5 to 8 p.m. I hope to see you there!
Portuguese Sketchbook
I just got back from a trip to Portugal – specifically Lisbon and Porto. It was nice to get out of the toxic chaos in the US and sit around, eat good food and drink a lot of wine. As is my habit, I carried around a sketchbook and drew a lot during my travels. Below are a few of those sketches…
Two Paintings at the upcoming 'Delicious' show at Studio Gallery SF
Last month, I revealed that three of my paintings would be a part of the San Francisco Noir show at Studio Gallery in San Francisco. This month, I’d like to announce that two more of my paintings will be a part of the Delicious show, also at Studio Gallery.
As I’m sure you can surmise, the show, which Studio Gallery hosts annually, is about artworks related to food. This year, I painted a picture of a can of sardines, which I creatively titled Sardines!. I’ve always liked canned fish. And they say, paint what you love. I made this painting using only four pigments – red, yellow ochre, black, and white — the Zorn palette.
Also in the show is a work I did last year, but finished too late for the 2024 Delicious Show, called Two Bobas.
The show runs from June 12 to July 7, 2025
Three Paintings at the San Francisco Noir Show at Studio Gallery!
I’ve been a bit quiet lately. I have some big news coming up that I’m not quite ready to announce. But let’s just say that something exciting is coming down the pike, and I am spending as much time as I can furiously working in the studio.
In the meantime, I wanted to announce that three of my paintings — Mike’s Car Wash, Loreen Drinks, and Rita with a Gun – will be a part of the San Francisco Noir show at Studio Gallery. The paintings are a part of a series of small, portrait-driven works based on vintage photographs from the 1960s and 70s. While a lot of my larger works are inspired by my trips to my grandparents’ house in California as a kid, these paintings feel more inspired by my upbringing in rural Ohio.
The show runs from May 15th to June 2nd. The opening reception (which I’m planning on attending) will be this Sunday, May 18th, from 3 to 5 pm. Hope to see you there!
Morocco Sketchbook
I recently went to Morocco, which was truly a mind-blowing trip. From the narrow maze of Fes to the vast vistas of the Sahara, I saw sights and sounds that I never experienced before. Also I got some very nice rugs. As is my MO, I kept a sketchbook of my travels. Here are a few pictures…
Showing "Backyard in Yellow" at the Arc Gallery in San Francisco
‘Tis the season for end-of-year shows. So alongside the Tiny show at Studio Gallery, I’m also very excited to announce that my 2024 painting Backyard in Yellow is a part of the “Joy” exhibition at the Arc Gallery in San Francisco.
This painting shows a middle-aged woman catching a private moment of joy in her backyard, bare feet on dead grass. I did this partially to see how far I could go with painting using just shades of yellow. I cheated a bit with the flesh tones.
The show runs from November 16, 2024 to January 11, 2025. And the opening reception is November 16, 7-9 PM. Hope to see you there.
Three Tiny Paintings for the Tiny Show in Studio Gallery
I’m pleased to announce that I have three tiny paintings (6x6”) showing at the Tiny exhibit at Studio Gallery in San Francisco. They have been doing this every holiday season for 20 years, and this is my third year showing with them. Last year, I painted pink donuts and all of them sold. This year, I went for coffee and cigarettes. The show runs from November 8 to December 24.
If you’re interested but not in the Bay Area, you can buy works from their website!
Two Small Paintings
Here’s two small paintings I recently did. They are called, imaginatively, Coffee and Cigarettes No. 1 and Coffee and Cigarettes No. 2 (both 6x6” Oil on panel)
Mask at 2358 MKRT Gallery
I hope everyone has had a groovy summer.
I just wanted to announce that my 2023 painting Mask, will be a part of the Showstoppers exhibit at the San Francisco gallery 2358 MRKT.
I'm really excited to show this work, one of my faves from last year, alongside some other amazing Bay Area artists. The reception for the show is Friday, August 30th from 6-9 pm. So if you're in the San Francisco area this weekend, please stop by. I'd love to see you.
Cheers
Jonathan
Italian Sketchbook
Earlier this month, my wife, son and I ventured to Italy – Venice, Florence and Milan specifically. It was a fantastic trip and, frankly, I didn’t want to come home. As I usually do, I drew constantly. And Italy, with its picturesque cities, interesting-looking people and numerous cafes, especially lends itself to drawing. Here are some of my travel sketches.
See My Painting At the 2024 Salon at the Triton
I'm really pleased to announce that my painting Penny has been selected for this year's Salon at the Triton Museum. I'm really excited to show this work, one of my faves from last year, alongside some other amazing Bay Area artists. The reception for the show is Saturday, May 25 from 2-4 pm. So if you're in the San Jose/Santa Clara area this weekend, please stop by. I'd love to see you.
Two Paintings at the Interior Exhibit at Studio Gallery SF
Two of my paintings – Pacific St. and Hallway – are a part of this month's "Interiors" exhibit over at Studio Gallery in San Francisco. The show runs until April 22. If you're in the area and need a fresh fix of some good art, you should check out this show.
Here are all the paintings I've done in 2024
Recently, I’ve been knocking out a string of small oil paintings on gesso board. They’re all based on vintage snapshots. Singularly, each picture looks at the secret, libidinal lives of its subjects. But I think like a filmmaker. The combination and juxtaposition of these paintings together feel like pieces of a larger dialogue about the act of looking and being looked at. The voyeur and the uncomfortable object of desire.
Sketchbook from my 2023/2024 Trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand
I just got back from a mind-blowing trip to South East Asia. If you want to hear all the details, buy me a beer and I’ll probably talk more about it than you’d care to hear. Highlights: Vietnamese food, Angkor Wat and Ha Long Bay.
When I travel, I like to keep a sketchbook on me. I’ll pull it out anytime I can and just start trying to capture the world around me. Below are a few of my drawings from that trip:
Reading By The Pool
Reading By the Pool is an incredibly sensuous painting. It is of a woman in a bikini sunning herself while reading a paperback. You can almost feel the heat and smell the cocoa butter in this picture.
For a lot of reasons, this work was a real pain in the neck. The angle of her jaw, the bend of her hand, and the oiliness of the skin all drove me crazy at some point or other but I’m pleased with the results. But what drove me most nuts, and the thing I'm happiest about, with this painting is its colors.
My process is wildly inefficient. After getting the underpainting sorted, I will play around with colors until something in the picture just start to gel. That might take 15 minutes or it might take weeks. I don’t understand it.
The blue of the bikini and the shadows came first. Then the green of the mat. Then finally, at the very end, greyish pink of the background.
I sold this painting earlier this year but prints of this work are available. A giant print of this painting would look amazing in your beach house in Key West or Kaui.
Check this work and a bunch of others over at the store.
Cheers
Jonathan
This Painting Gave Me Fits...
Here’s another favorite painting I did last year – Garden Wall. A woman in a translucent gown stands next to a backyard wall illuminated by some strong out-of-frame light.
For a lot of reasons, this painting drove me crazy. The lighting is unusual so it was tricky to get right. The color and the brick pattern on the wall absolutely gave me fits. Usually, a painting will take somewhere between one to three weeks to finish. This one took months. I set it aside for a spell and then returned to it later, which is something I rarely do. Every year, it seems, I have one painting that causes me grief. Garden Wall was that one for 2022 and I’m currently struggling to finish my 2023 pain-in-ass painting.
Ultimately, I feel Garden Wall’s long, painful gestation was worth it. Perhaps the feeling of anxiousness and longing for the painting benefitted from the months that I spent cursing at the canvas. Every time I look at this work, my eyes gravitate to the light hitting that gown (also a nightmare to paint). Something about it lends the painting an air of vulnerability.
Garden Wall is available over at my online store.
Extreme Colors on a Sunday Afternoon
This week, I’m focusing on one of my favorite paintings from 2021 – Sunday Afternoon.
If last week’s painting – Dennis – recalls an Edward Hopper painting, this one looks a bit like a still from a Hitchcock movie imagined by David Hockney.
A woman in a blue bikini reclines on a chaise lounge while a large ominous shadow looms against the backyard wall. The sliding patio door behind her remains tantalizingly ajar. I'm not really sure what is going on here – I’ll let you imagine that – but Sunday Afternoon feels suggestive of a story.
What I really like about the work is my experimentation with color. Every painting I do ends up being a dialogue between two or three different colors. I try to predict what colors those colors will be when I start but more often than not, the painting has different ideas. A lot of my process is simply playing around with different shades of color until something magically gels. With this work, the painting apparently wanted to go with more extreme colors than usual. As soon as I used that peach-orange for the towels, the painting just started to work.
Anyway, Sunday Afternoon is in my online store here.
And, for the next two weeks, prints of the work will also be available here. Check it out.
Where Did My Pants Go?
This week’s painting is Dennis, which I completed earlier this year and which hung for much of the summer at Shoh Gallery in Berkeley. This is one of my favorite recent works. It has a vague feeling of loneliness to it that reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting.
As with a lot of my paintings, I found my inspiration for Dennis from a vintage photo. I bought the snapshot off of eBay. I liked its composition. When I received the picture, it came with a second snapshot that was clearly from the same photo session. That picture was much less evocative and much more direct – a full-frontal shot with a come-hither expression. I’m guessing that the pictures were part of a pre-Grindr hook-up ad printed in the back of some less-than-reputable periodical.
As a challenge, I decided to use the Zorn palette for this work, named after Swedish painter and William Taft portraitist Anders Zorn. The Zorn palette features only four pigments – ivory black, titanium white, cadmium red, and yellow ochre. Believe it or not, those are the only colors in painting. I learned a lot about mixing paints from making this.
This is one of my creepier paintings...
Hope everyone had a groovy Labor Day weekend. This week I want to focus on my 2023 painting Mask, which spent much of the summer hanging in the Triton Museum as a part of the Salon at Triton show.
Many of my paintings have a narrative quality to them. I have two degrees in film and when I’m not painting, I teach classes on cinema history. I suppose it’s not surprising then that my work can look like movie stills. Mask seems especially suggestive of an implied story.
A young woman in a crop top holds a mask to her face that looks a bit like a cow’s skull. Yet instead of the expected pair of round eyeholes, there is a triangle smack in the middle of the mask. She stands on a walking path in a sort of picturesque town that dot the California coast.
What is going on here? Is she a part of a cult? Is this a hallucination? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Mask is now available at my online store, both the original and prints.