"Are You An Angel? (An Encounter With Non-Locality)" a Winner!

Hey guys, I'm very pleased to announce that my acrylic painting Are You An Angel? (An Encounter With Non-Locality) was Second-Place Winner in the two-dimensional art category of the Walter Lee Avery Gallery 2021 Fall Adult Competition.

I received the award from the Mayor of the City of Seaside, Ian Oglesby, and Seaside Art Commissioner, Sandra Gray, in Seaside City Hall's Council Chambers this past Friday, October 8th at well-attended reception.

I'm grateful to the Seaside Art Commission, Francoise Avery, Sandra Gray and her crew for their outstanding curating of the exhibit and organizing the reception.

Eleventh Author Portrait: Gabriel Garcia Márquez

5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
watercolor painting

This is from the series of author portraits painted in 2020.

In celebration of the re-opening of the Pacific Grove Library, Renewal a juried exhibition is on display at the library’s Steve and Nancy Hauk Gallery from October 8, 2021 through January 7, 2022.

The library is located at 550 Central Avenue, Pacific Grove, California 93950.

Artwork is available for viewing and sales.

Mental Health Awareness Month 2021

Suicide Watch
5 x 5 in pen-and-ink drawing with digital coloration

May is National Mental Health Awareness month.

Back in 2017 I posted this on social media for Inktober as a proof-of-concept illustration for a possible future graphic novel Extreme Dreams. However, it's actually based on my own life.

In 1972 and the final three months of high school, unbeknownst to my classmates my "home" after school was the Montefiore Medical Center psychiatric ward in New York City. When the staff eventually deemed that I was less likely to overdose or slit my wrists I was allowed to go to school by day so I could finally graduate.

Here is my Extreme Dreams original character Johnnie Riggs spending his first night on suicide watch. Please be aware that for too many teens this is as real today as it was forty-nine years ago. If you or anyone you know have thoughts of self-harm, please call 1-800-273-8255. Speak with someone. You are not alone.

Tenth Author Portrait: Maya Angelou (circa 1973)

5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
watercolor painting

January is Black History Month. 

This is from the series of author portraits painted in 2020.

My First Composition of 2021

This week I completed painting The Tower, which you can view here.

It's my first composition of 2021. At four feet in height (30 x 48 inches) it's also my largest painting to date.

Anyone out there familiar with the Tarot? In the description I include an excerpt from Pamela Aiken's Tarot of the Spirit.

The XVI Key -- the Tower -- first presents as an ominous card, a "hard" card to take on first glance, since it warns of an ascendance to knowledge occurring through the destruction of old, outdated and outgrown structures. Emphasis on "destruction" meaning that insights are gained in the midst of drastic conditions and disruption of the status quo.

As I note, it kind of summarizes my 2020; and the changes are still in progress.

Let me know what you think.

New Studio Space

Here's a quote from another of my favorite authors, this time the science fiction writer, Frank Herbert. “Adapt or die” is the motto of the Fremen, the nomadic tribes of the desert planet Arrakis, or Dune.

Okay, on to the “Adapt or die” changes now in progress:

When I sold my home -- and home studio -- to get married and move in with Karen, I went from a 1,600-square-foot house occupied by only me and my dog to an 800-square-foot house. Our little home is in fact much too little to contain both our creative workshops and still be home to now two artists, three dogs and a rabbit.

Beginning this December just past I began renting a studio that can allow me to create the larger art pieces I have in mind. Soon you’ll be able with art curators and collectors to take virtual tours – and hopefully in person soon afterwards, once we get Covid-19 behind us. I'll be posting photos soon on my "About the Artist" page.

Ninth Author Portrait: Ernest Hemingway

Young Ernest Hemingway In Italy
5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
watercolor painting

UPDATE: On display and for purchase at the You Can't Quarantine Creativity exhibit, Marjorie Evans Gallery at Sunset Cultural Center, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California October 5 - December 1, 2020.

I composed this by mashing up two public domain photos for reference, portraying him as the 18-year-old American Red Cross ambulance driver he was in Italy during WW1 shortly before being severely wounded in an Austrian mortar attack. I just read a fascinating and insightful 2018 essay by Mikaella Clements in Literary Hub, excerpts below from The Queerness of Ernest Hemingway:

"...dubbed the ultimate masculine writer...But Hemingway's writing itself does not fit any straightforwardly heterosexual, masculine mold...at once kinder and more lost than we give him credit...has an excellent sense of humor...is often very emotional. His portrayal of women is certainly misogynistic, but...complicated, mixed with longing and terror; very often, his women are the most nuanced characters on the page...most tellingly, Hemingway's writing is distinctly queer..."

Personally, in re-reading Hemingway's semi-autobiographical novel "Farewell To Arms" I see his dilemma as similar to that faced by every man raised in patriarchal culture, the difficulty if not inability to truly love woman or man, since self-hate is hard-wired in the culture.

Eighth Author Portrait: Carlos Bulosan

Portrait of Carlos Bulosan
5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
watercolor pencil from reference

UPDATE: On display and for purchase at the You Can't Quarantine Creativity exhibit, Marjorie Evans Gallery at Sunset Cultural Center, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California October 5 - December 1, 2020.

Author of memoir America Is In The Heart, essayist, poet, labor organizer. After years of experiencing racial discrimination, violence and blacklisting, he died in obscurity from the effects of alcohol, violence and tuberculosis at the age of forty-six. His voluminous literary output has thankfully been rediscovered. His story is in many ways similar to my father's, who immigrated to the U.S. in the same wave in the 1920s from the Philippines.

KCBX-FM Art Beat 8/1/2020 on artists’ lost income and connection due to Covid-19

on local artists responding to the challenges of lost income and public connection due to Covid-19. Local artists including Edward M. Corpus were interviewed by James Reddick.

Seventh Author Portrait: Jeannette Walls

M

Portrait of Jeannette Walls
5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
watercolor painting

I'm unable to leave a review of Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle on Amazon. I would have given this book three stars out of five, and perhaps that's too many.

To her credit Walls writes well enough and gives good characterizations of her dysfunctional family. Structurally, she writes a competent memoir. My credit to her ends there, though I'm willing to discuss other opinions and am open to the possibility that I'm missing something here.

Her breezy style, maintained from beginning to end, bothered me from the beginning. She describes a father and mother who, to put it as bluntly and truthfully as necessary, are abusive, neglectful and socially irresponsible.

Perhaps her "through line" or message is the resilience of family, of herself and her siblings. Perhaps they, or at least she, was able to come through without permanent physical or emotional scars.

But what of those children who don't, who don't grow up to writers, journalists and gossip columnists for MSNBC, but instead wind up in prisons or institutions or die in the gutter from their responses to unresolved traumas of childhood?

By not holding her parents to account -- I'm going beyond blame here, it's not what I'm calling for, but accountability -- she implicitly condones abuse. I've heard too often from damaged individuals "When I was a kid my daddy totally whipped my ass, but I turned out fine" and thus condone passing abuse forward. It seems to me Walls does the same thing.

Sixth Author Portrait: Steve Hauk

Portrait of Steve Hauk
5x7 (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm) sepia conte crayon.

Steve is author, playwright, film documentarian and owner of the Hauk Fine Arts gallery in Pacific Grove, California. I recently read his Steinbeck: the Untold Stories. This is a collection of well-written, imaginings based on the lives of John Steinbeck and the people who knew him. The book is illustrated with paintings by Monterey Peninsula artist C. Kline.

Fifth Author Portrait: Sally Mann

Portrait of Sally Mann
7x5 charcoal on paper

This is my imagined scene of the photographer and writer in studio with her 8x10 view camera behind her.

Earlier this year I read her memoir with photographs Hold Still.

She has a very lyrical style of writing with an erudite vocabulary. At a certain point I just abandoned the dictionary and went with the flow of her prose, getting the meaning in context. She juxtaposes the rapturous beauty of the deep South where she grew up with confronting the disturbing legacy of African American slavery that continues to haunt the present lives there.

Personally, I'm not terribly keen on her obsession with death, a theme that runs through this writing. 

Fourth Author Portrait: Cormac McCarthy

Portrait of Cormac McCarthy
7x5 watercolor, watercolor pencil

Cormac McCarthy is the author of The Road, a dystopian novel of a father and young son attempting to survive a grueling trek through America after a global environmental disaster has reduced many humans to the basest and brutal hulks of their former selves.

Like the best of science or speculative fiction, its future dystopian landscape is a reflection of conditions that in some ways are already here.

Black Lives Matter: Justice for George Floyd

This is a 5x7 portrait in watercolor of a human being. His name is George Floyd.

Since I was fifteen (now sixty-six years older) I've dedicated my entire creative life towards social justice. I haven't always succeeded. Every portrait I've ever painted has in some way big or small touched on social justice.

As I've stated in earlier posts, I'm in the process of painting portraits of authors I'm reading as I write my own memoir. But those can wait.

Showing that I recognize that a beautiful life had his breath extinguished, and that injustice has stood for too long -- that can't wait. Black lives matter, and I stand in solidarity.

I'm waiving my copyright on this image so that anyone who would like to have it on posters, flyers and literature to use in activities of social justice may do so. I only ask that when possible to credit this artist. Thank you.

#georgefloyd #blacklivesmatter #blm

3rd Author Portrait: Margaret Atwood

5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
watercolor painting over graphite drawing
I referenced Alasdair McLellan's portrait photo and painted behind Atwood's image a handmaid similar to those in the Hulu series.

As I'm writing my memoir, I'm also reading voraciously.

In a 2003 The Guardian interview Margaret Atwood stated that her novel Oryx and Crake was speculative fiction, not science fiction -- a distinction she also made of her earlier 1985 book The Handmaid's Tale. "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen." A 2018 interview in the same publication stated "The central theme in Atwood's fiction is power, inequality or abuse of power, against women or anyone else." " 'A lot of these things don't come out of a wish for power, they come out of fear. Not to be that one.'"

Personally, since 2016 I've watched the U.S. in a frightening and steady march toward fascism, which hopefully we'll begin to reverse come the November 2020 elections. There's a lot of work to be done, as obvious to me the Trump and his ilk are only symptomatic of a larger, longstanding and systemic social sickness. That said, I decided to revisit Atwood's Handmaid's Tale as my third book to read of 2020, and painting Margaret Atwood's corresponding portrait.

2nd Author Portrait: Virginia Woolf

5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
continuous line drawing in graphite pencil on paper

The second book I read this year was Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. It’s about a day in the life of several characters in post-World War I England, revolving around one woman’s preparations for an evening dinner party for high-society. As such, it’s a critique of the meaningless lives of English upper class society in that period. The most sympathetic character to me is a WWI veteran suffering from PTSD, what was called “shell shock” back then.

Woolf’s use of a stream-of-consciousness writing style to express the thoughts and obsessions of the characters is much more accessible to me than say, James Joyce. (I’m eventually going to give Joyce another chance, though.)

 I did this portrait in graphite pencil, using a continuous line style of drawing.

First Author Portrait: Neil Gaiman

5 x 7 inches (12.7 cm x 17.78 cm)
graphite and ink wash drawing

My wife and fellow artist Karen Warwick got me Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book for Christmas -- AND the graphic novel adaptations by various superb artists about the child who grows into young adulthood in a graveyard.

These are my first reads of the thirteen read so far in 2020. As I write my memoir, I'm also reading different works in the memoir genre. Along with reading books that contribute to my collateral research, I strive to constantly improve my art and writing technique.

This first portrait is more of a caricature, as I did it freehand. As I'll be illustrating my memoir, I'll experiment along the way in using graphic comic styles as well as more traditional media.

Writing and Illustrating My Memoir in 2020

Greetings everyone, and I hope you're all weathering COVID-19 well, all things considered.

It's been close to three months since I last posted here, but it hasn't been for lack of productivity. Here's a rundown of what I've been up to, and the shape of things to come.

As you may know, at the end of 2018 I retired from my day job (and hopefully forever from day jobs). The projects I had planned to launch immediately were full time artwork, writing and the active promotion of my work. But, as John Lennon said eloquently, "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans," namely: moving in with my fiancée Karen Warwick, selling my old home, a months-long artistic collaboration on the KRONOS project, preparing for our respective 2019 solo art exhibits. We also got added another dog to our family, and fostered her six pups -- six, count 'em -- for four months. Seven dogs and doglets for four months. Oh, yes. In the middle of all that, Karen and I got married. Yeah, a small detail.

January 2020 rolled in, and I finally knuckled down to my years-long dream of writing my illustrated memoir. I've been at the first draft for four months now. (Sheltering in actually helps in this.) This is my story, from immigrant toddler to cultural subversive artist as an Asian-America Baby Boomer. I explore how the legacy of abuse and the patriarchy evolved my views of race, identity, sexuality, cults and metaphysics; and finally, how throughout my life I've found solace and spiritual transcendence in the love of art and the art of love.

The author Stephen King states in his memoir/manual On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, to be a writer one needs to write and read. Coextensive with my writing, I'm voraciously reading, concentrating on four areas: a samplings of contemporary writing in the memoir genre that compete with the memoir I'm writing; references and research materials; most recent writings in the memoir or essay genres; and finally a return to the classics that I may not have touched since high school.

I'm not taking a break from visual art by any means. I still have ideas for major works-in-progress, and I've knuckled down to rigorous practice in those areas in which I need to improve, especially figurative work and color. Currently, I'm practicing both traditional techniques using media with which I'm familiar and feel comfortable -- and new techniques and media with which I feel intimidated and uncomfortable. I've been at this for four months, and as of now I've already read or am in the process of reading twelve books, and close to completing as many small portraits. Stay tuned to this channel, as I'll starting showing these to you in the next posts.

Belle Foundation Grant

With gratitude I'm extremely pleased to announce that I'm the recipient of a 2019 Individual Grant from the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development.

"You have been chosen for this award as an artist who is genuinely committed to his work, and as someone who demonstrates significant potential for continued growth and accomplishment.

"The Individual Grants Program of the Belle Foundation was designed to recognize people like you, who exhibit exceptional talent and potential for achievement in the arts and humanities."

Again, my appreciation to Allysa Byrkit and the Board of Directors of the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development.

KRONOS is home

After five-and-a-half months at The Dalí Expo (now History & Art Museum: Salvador Dalí), this past Monday, Karen and I brought KRONOS back home.

KRONOS was the interactive art installation envisioned by my wife and creative partner, Karen Warwick (warwickartandbooks.com), which we had constructed jointly over several months for her month-long solo exhibition at The Dalí Expo during August 2019.

Visitors from around the world posted many positive comments regarding the KRONOS exhibit. We’re grateful to the management of The Dalí Expo, who liked it well enough to make the decision to relocate it to in their lobby bookstore and keep it on display and freely open to the public another four months past the closing of Karen’s solo.

Public interactive participation garnered uniformly positive responses. Often visitors stood in line with their kids waiting to give it a spin.

We did not originally envision during our construction of KRONOS that it would be on daily display for so long, subject to interaction by the public. However, it stood up to the daily pounding to our delight and surprise.

We are now seeking grants to upgrade the KRONOS installation or rebirth it in more robust forms in other art venues.