Wednesday, June 3, 2015

"El Gallo" Exhibition in the Making

This Spring I traveled to Tucson, AZ, to do research for an upcoming exhibition that I will have this September at Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta, GA. I lived in Tucson at one point in my life, for two years, and I chose this location to revisit experiences from my past when I was 18 years old. One of the first drawings I have created for this body of work is titled, El Gallo and I think that I will title the exhibition after this piece. El Gallo was my attempt at drawing my personal boogeyman or demon so to speak. He is an aggressive shape shifter and predator. El Gallo's are everywhere maybe you just don't know it. My artistic process involves concepting and thumbnailing, but ultimately I use models and photograph them to work from. This is Michael O'Connell, my model for El Gallo.
After I choose the best photo to work from I have to figure out how to alter the model and what imagery I'm going to morph with the model. I work mostly from photographic references but I do have 9 chickens and quite a collection of natural items and props in the studio.
For this piece I mostly used watercolor and colored pencil.
I used salt in the watercolor to give the cactus-like skin more texture. So here he stands, 22"x30" on 300lb hot pressed watercolor paper. He's a cocky dude, in more ways than one.

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