New York City People & Places / 2010

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On my way...

Seaport, Lower Manhattan

View of my monoprints purchased by my great friend and patron, Colleen, VP at Odyssey House

Union Square...it was a beautiful Saturday!

At artist David Keeton's incredible studio...his art is awesome!

Art Students League of NY / Vytlacil Campus / Sparkill, NY

"The Poet's Daughter" / Bronze / by Leonid Lerman (my first sculpture teacher) @ ASL Vytlacil Campus

Exhibition of work by Howard Gladstone (right) at Vytlacil. Bravo, Howard!!!

Meatpacking District, Friday Night

Marina Abramovic (in red) performing in "The Artist is Present" @ MOMA. Her retrospective on the 6th floor is incredibly impressive.

On the way home..."Aero" source photo #1 (you may see this again)

"Aero" source photo #2

"Aero" source photo #3

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New York City Art Explorations / 2010

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Always looking! In the Greek/Roman marbles at the Metropolitan.

This whole area used to be the cafeteria...now bringing out some impressive sculptures like this one of a youthful Hercules.

I draw this same sculpture every time I visit the Met! I'd like to have one.

Looks like Napoleon shot a cannonball thru this one when he occupied Egypt.

A closeup from a Hockney in the Modern wing of the Met. He grows on me more and more every time I see his work.

A view from a bench in Union Square, and reference for the little abstract sketch below...

"Union Square" / Oil pastel and ink on paper / 4 x 6"

"Danse (I)" / Matisse / Museum of Modern Art

"After Matisse Danse (I)" / Ink and whiteout on paper / 6 x 8". I approached this one by trying to draw the shapes in between the figures and their limbs instead of trying to draw the figures.

Background: Robert Motherwell's "Elegy to the Spanish Republic" at MOMA

Foreground: "After Motherwell's 'Elegy to the Spanish Republic' " / Oil pastel and whiteout on paper.

(The gentleman taking a closer look at the original had been sitting next to me for about 15 minutes as I was tackling this drawing. Not sure why, but love how this photo captures me working, an inspiring painting, and a patron in a great museum at the same time.)

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LOCAL Art Exhibition & Dinner

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Painting Raffle Winner Matt Ramage!

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I hand-delivered my painting "Kanehoe Bay - View with Trees" to the office of Matt Ramage of eMarketed today. Matt was the winner of a raffle held at my most recent open studio show and the prize was this piece painted en plein air on the shores of Oahu in 2005.

Congratulations, Matt! Join me at my next one (later in 2010) and you'll have a chance to win an original Reyes, too!

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LOCAL Meets Local Art

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Select pieces from my Tribe Series and Portraits of Sculpture Series are on display for the month of March at LOCAL in Silverlake (www.silverlakelocal.com). To celebrate, LOCAL Chef/Owner Jason Michaud is hosting an exclusive “Meet the Artist” dinner on Sunday, March 28 at 8:00PM. Michaud will be personally cooking a three course prix fix menu for only $24! Vegetarians welcome and LOCAL is BYOB. HOLD YOUR SPACE now by calling LOCAL at 323.662.4740

About the Tribe Series
These paintings represent my response to the rapid urbanization in my old neighborhood in Jackson Heights, Queens, I was drawn to a particular construction site where, silhouetted against a crystal blue sky, there was a group – a tribe of sorts – of steel girders. While some stood perfectly straight and ready to serve the next phase of construction, others were not yet in their “proper” position and still more were piled randomly.In spite of their precise structural sameness, each girder that day seemed to exude its own unique identity through color and position. Within days of observing this scene, the individualism within this tribe had vanished as the construction moved forward and alignment and uniformity prevailed. The loss, and recapture, of individualism and identity has personal meaning to me. It reflects my artistic youth overpowered by a ten-year corporate existence, and my reawakening to art and a creative life in 2001.

About the Portraits of Sculpture Series
Is a shadow an object? What color is a shadow anyway? These are some of the questions confronted in the Portraits of Sculpture Series. Through my observation of sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brancusi and Julio Gonzalez in museums from New York to Los Angeles, I was fascinated by not only the beauty and power of the forms, but the quality and complexity of the shadows they cast when on display. This led to experiments in my studio of the influence of light on my sculptures. This investigation yielded an array of drawings and paintings that chronicle the symbiotic relationship of three dimensional forms and the shadows they create. By using a monochrome palette during the conversion to two-dimensional artwork, the distinction of what is object and what is shadow becomes ambiguous and lends support to the notion that there is more going on than meets the eye and that our casual, surface observation of things often falls short.

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