Scholar, Prophet, Bum

30" x 38", ink & acrylic on acrylic paper  (c) 2011 by Howard Salmon

The latest in my "masks" series: The Sage. Or is it?  The image of a bald guy with a beard: is he a sage? Is he a scholar? Is he Socrates? Is he a bum? The image of a bald guy with a beard could be any of these...so I mushed triads of these identical looking characters together, as if they were a goofy-looking Venn diagram, or perhaps it's Manny, Moe, and Jack n old age...who knows? Symbols of knowledge and divine inspiration are strewn throughout the landscape here, with a few computer trash icons sprinkled about just to keep things tidy.  This piece also doubles as a Ouija board (just kidding)

Study Group (cultural masks)

"Study Group" 30" x 49", ink & graphite on acrylic sheet

Another in my series of cultural masks: cartoony "types" repeated over and over again, as a tradition. This one is about a cluster of different types of learners. A group of cartoony students, huddled together as a cluster, and repeated over and over again. Imagery in the backgroud has a structured look: everything's chopped into units and modules, timed, measured, and served up, like a bunch of nuggets.  Still working with the idea of creating a few simple pictures on the fly, and repeating them over and over again...

Traditional Masks

"Traditional Mask" (acrylic & ink on acrylic sheet) 36" x 48 (c) 2011 by Howard Salmon

I'm shifting direction. I've become interested in masks, but more specifically, in the concept of anonymous artists creating timeless forms and images within a tradition.

After watching a video on African masks, and looking though various books on art, I can see that  most of the great art work around the world, the stuff your see in art and art history books, has been done by ANONYMOUS artists working within a tradition of passing on art and images to society and to successive generations. The tradition is to make exact copies of cultural images and icons; the individual subordinates his own ego and identity to the group or the tribe. Each artist distinguishes himself with the skill that he brings to the project. This is what I've done here: I created an image, and repeated it over and over again, redrawing it in the exact same way. The repetition is what creates the tradition.

Of course, you can see that there is a lot of variation within these "masks": that's where stylistic evolution happens. The top center was the first "mask" I'd created; the bottom right image is the last one I created in this painting.  As you can see, there's a lot of morphing and change that happens even when working within the strictures of a predefined precise image.

Unfortunately, I can't be a purist here, because I can't resist the urge to sign my work! But I'll be working with this "mask" idea for a while...

Thugs on the Bus

"Thugs on the Bus", gold acrylic on raw unstretched canvas, 36" x 46"

Here's my morning painting, about a slice of life in Tucson, AZ, riding the bus. Remember those SunTran commercials where people would get on the bus, meet the love of their life, and exit together, holding hands and laughing? Yeah, right! My scruffy little rag of a painting reminds me of Daumier's 1862  painting, "Third Class Carriage"

Rock N Roll!

"Rock N Roll"  (c) 2011 by Howard Salmon

I felt like drawing something inspired by music...so I made this piece about rock n' roll! (size: 30" x 48")

Oldschool Androgynous Punk

Felt like drawing some random character...ended up with a picture of someone who looked like an old androgynous punk. The rumpled stained paper helps with the effect. Reminds of some of the characters who used to frequent Tumbleweeds (in Tucson), back in the day (in 1980).

Woman with Part on Side

"Woman with part on side" (Acrylic on canvas, May, 2011)

This is a painting I made of a student in a class I teach on Basic Design. Several people in the class wanted to learn how to paint a portrait, so I had them paint portraits of each other. This painting was my step-by-step demonstration.