-2008

As you can see from the text above, I am in a two person exhibit over at the giant Jonathan Levine Gallery here in NYC with the wonderful Xiaoqing Ding.
Also Mr. Jonathan Weiner will be showing his solo show in the main room so it's really a three person show. I'm in very good company and am a true fan of both of their artwork. Lots of previously unseen eye candy.


Part II
Some discarded mock-ups of my new site had a prairie/Dust Bowl feel to them. To plug some friend's sites, a combination of inspiration led to the piece below. After seeing my site design from early 2007,(sorry I didn't archive it), my friend Tom Prior said I should really look at the movie 'Days in Heaven' by Terrence Malick which has an Andrew Wyeth feel to it. A few months ago cartoonist,Leah Hayes, and musician,Michael leviton, introduced me to Brooklyn singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten her myspace music description says "sad prairie folk music." It was really nice to listen to while working on sketches.

After a bunch of unsatisfactory drawings I ended up drawing it in flash as my current menu since I was stuck on what to do for the new version.
I did this drawing based on my flash menu.(by the way I added a new roll over animation last week on her. Check it out.)

After transferring the drawing onto a piece of birch primed with a wash of brown, I blocked in the background and some of the water texture.

"Thought" 19"x 32" oil on wood.
I ended up leaving the cattails out of the picture cause I thought they might be too distracting and wanted to keep the image a bit more iconic. I'm still debating that since I do like them in the drawing.

-Inspired Procrastination pt.1

I took on a freelance Flash job the past 2 weeks and with my show coming up I didn't get a chance to set up a post for last week. I did find some time to sit down and make this video.

A few months ago I saw this kid playing a version of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and was in awe. I tracked down German based musician, David Qualey who wrote the arrangement and purchased the music from him.

I made the mask a few Halloween's ago, there's a string attached to the ears, then to a nail on the wall, then hooked back over the capo and wrapped around my hand to move the ears as my hand slides up the neck. I don't really play guitar, but after practicing everyday for a month straight its the best that I could do with a mask on.

Ok, back to work.

-Preview of Sorts

There's a show coming up for me at Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC. Here's a piece from the show.

"Separate Lives" 24"32" oil on wood.

I painted this 7 months ago. Its been sitting in my studio collecting dust. After it was finished I took a cellphone picture of it and an acquaintance pointed out that there were two chimney's. He said it was like two people living separate lives in the same house.

Detail, there's a cat in one of the windows.

On Thanksgiving there was a wadded up napkin in my stairwell. I took a photo of it untouched. It was on the sill for ten days so I wonder if the super got spooked by it, because all the other trash had been regularly disposed. Looks to me like a fairy-sized mummy in a fetal position. Note the size from the match stick.

Sleep tight everybody.

-What's in a Name?

As of yesterday, this website can be reached at WWW. ESAO.COM! I've been waiting for 7 years to get that url and now I don't think it was really worth it.
Story at the bottom of this post....


Before "The Last Hour" had a name, the idea started as a doodle of a mother and mummified child portrait.


At the time I had been listening to the audio book of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and my sketch quickly became inspired by the atmosphere I imagined from this chilling father & son drama in the ash of post-apocalypse.

10"x14" pencil on rag paper.

No reference was needed to complete the painting. I like to leave it up to the viewer to interpret what they want from my images, but I guess I'll say for this one I imagined it's a sick girl being gently lead to the unknown(possibly death) in the comforting arms of her giant doll/reaper guardian. I decided to not have it carrying a sickle, but a bindle as if the girl's belongings may be in there for her journey.

"Last Hour" oil on wood 16"x24"


a bit closer.

In 2001 esao.com was taken so I ended up taking ".net" which was great. The Educational Safety Association of Ontario had owned it but never used it. It was April 2007 when they finally set it free, and the day it expired I went to purchase it.

The domain name went straight to an 'expired domain' auction site called Snapnames. I registered and waited for the three day auction to start later that week. No big deal. Minimum bid $60 so I bid $101 to see what would happen. There were dozens of bidders and I thought "Who are all of these people?" so I googled most of the screen names and found them to be domain reseller companies.

This is were legality becomes suspicious. Before the auction was over I started getting e-mails from domain resellers to buy the name from them(if they won it) for $2500. So my conspiracy theory is that Snapnames gives your e-mail to some domain resellers and if there's a particular interest in a domain name, then they can work together to bump up the bidding.

I won the auction with the oddly high amount of $925. Telegraphers from ages past would be rolling in their graves that a person would spend $132.14 per letter. Trying not to feel regretful that I could have bought a wii, or an xbox, or a life, I'd like to thank my new domain extension esao.com for keeping esao.net company.

-Post Number 1

So I decided to redesign my site again with a weekly updated section that will include works in progress, news, upcoming shows, and other associated happenings.

Ok, first things first. I added a few new paintings and more coming shortly. The people at Equal Vision Records are letting me do a print run of these paintings I did for the band Circa Survive a while back. These prints can be purchased in my store section.



This painting has been lying around my house for months and since its going to be in the Aqua Art Fair with Roq la Rue for Art Basel Miami(along with a few other paintings) Dec. 4th, I thought I'd post it up.


Here is a thumbnail and sketch done on typing paper


A tighter drawing scanned into Photoshop with a photo of wood grain and one of a plate, mocked-up with gradients for reference.


Oil on wood 12"x18"


Happy Thanksgiving.