The Fine Art Blog of Daz and Holly

Willy Wonka: But Charlie, don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he he always wanted.
Charlie Bucket: What happened?
Willy Wonka: He lived happily ever after.

Sometimes the art just flows. I don’t need to suffer to do great art as the cliche might go.
Most of my art exists in glorious potential, simmering deliciously in my mind. The sketch above is a mural idea, actually the bottom part with the top part having angels bouncing on clouds.
The sketch below is a representation of the ‘attention’ concept that girls work with in their social development, without that concept we would not have dance! I suppose they invented it to keep from being eaten by bears and saber tooth tigers. I’m not really concerned about the science though, I’m just an observer of happiness and creativity.

Below is Dancer with a bouquet of flowers (The Star of the ballet) by the mighty Edgar Degas.
Degas was the original Painter Of Light!! Visit WikiPaintings for lots of good stuff from Degas!

In a lot of ways this painting symbolizes the attention concept for me. She is so happy, she is the center of attention and no bears will be able to eat her as she is loved, and the crowd would rush to save her should a bear, or saber tooth tiger were to rush the stage looking for lunch.
Speaking of saber tooth tigers, come on down to the Speakeasy Art Center this year for the Wine Share concerts in the art gallery! You bring your wine, and common sense, and have a good time!
Flyer by Holly! She can make one for your event too!

And here is a nifty liquified pic I made of a photo taken of holly this unseasonably warm January!

and here is my collage for my Facebook page cover pic!

I have sooo much art and so much abundance! Have a great day everyone!

I’ve been busy working on bringing culture to the midwest and to the world! Eventually I shall bring it to the rest of the universe, but for now what I have been working on lately…
My new web-comic called Lives of the Artists which obviously (to me!) is an homage to the mighty Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574), he, 500 years after his birth, still inspires my creativity with his poetic and often hilariously gushing accounts of the artists of his day (Michaelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo etc) and the ones that opened the door to the Renaissance, many of whom we really only have his accounts to get a idea about the person behind the artwork.
This is hardly on par with the great masters but I love art and use the principles they wrote so passionately about and practiced. I plan to do a regular series of these! Featuring art-girl Holly and art-guy Daz with assorted flying guinea pigs!

The comics will be re-printed for the paper ‘zine, GoBzine, that I like to send out to my friends and random strangers who show a shred of curiosity about my work. The comics will also have lots of my art and tie into the poetry book that real life art girl Holly is working on! Those poetry books will be distributed at the local Peoria area poetry meetings as soon as we get them done! Donations of cash and poetry are welcomed to fuel this project. Just drop me or Holly a message on Facebook or to gobzine@gmail.com (me, Daz) and Holly’s email is writeoneforyou@gmail.com.
Here is a collaboration of my art and a poem by Holly, it is a clerihew poem! (or a variant of one called a Hollihew to be technical!)

Vincent Van Gogh
potato soup swirling
The spoon, a paintbrush twirling.
Soften the gnarly spud
he plucked from ochre mud!

It is a pleasure to know artists like Holly who are dedicated to the arts and the community. Here’s Holly with her side of the Speakeasy Art Center – “Gallery Open” sign we use on the sidewalk to bring the public in! It was her idea to re-paint it for curb appeal. I did the other side.

*<3*

There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” – Vincent Van Gogh

Both Holly and I are graphic designers in addition to being fine art painters and poets.
Holly has been honing her Photoshop skills for photo manipulation and photo restoration work in these fun examples below (that’s our faces over the more famous ones!). You can find her at The Speakeasy Art Center a lot of the time if you have some graphic design and photo work you need done (She is a professional photographer as well as the all the other hats she wears! – Mom, gormet chef, superhero etc.)

Speaking of The Speakeasy Art Center, there was an Art Fiesta on Nov 11 2011 and here is a little spontaneous video of the band Noodles N Chicken that played! Holly put her helper hat on for that event (we support the arts community however we can but don’t have much money so this is what we do).

The next night, Holly’s friend Dana Taylor played at the monthly Wineshare event (check the Speakeasy Facebook page for upcoming events!) and while I didn’t get video of that event, I did record him while Holly and I painted on the “Gallery Open” sign a few days before! First time he played the songs it was flawless, he got a little camera shy when I recorded them though haha!

but wait that’s not all! Here are a couple of Dana Taylor’s awesome songs on MP3 you can download for free, two more originals and his really sweet Fleetwood Mac cover! He will be playing live around the area so support your local musicians by going to the gigs!

Holly, like the cool kids do, loves guinea pigs (of course) and here’s some liquify filter guinea pig art I made recently! There is a bigger (printable) version on my Flickr account!

Geez, still not done with this blog post, I really should have kept up with all this, and will *shakes fist in determination*
Below is the complete MP3 recording of the October 26 2011 Poetry night at ART SHOW on Jefferson in Peoria Illinois.
It was a weird night! NOTE: The next Peoria poetry show is Thursday Nov 17 2011 at CHAMPS WEST 515 N Western Ave Peoria Illinois. Here’s the FB event page! CHAMPS WEST REVIVAL holistic hootenanny Gala of Poetic glory
David Von Behren will be the host and will also be featured prominently in the forthcoming poetry ‘zine as edited by Holly and illustrated by Me!

I think that’s all for this blog post but lots of other cool art projects are poised to happen and are already underway! I know, I have some video art projects long overdue to post but they aren’t quite done yet!

I added a 20 ft tall girl on this 10ft high mural so the rodent of unusual size will have its own human! You can see this mural on the 3rd floor of the Speakeasy Art Center in Pekin Illinois!

I am going to publish these blog posts from my I-phone so this one is kind of a test!

This pic below shows a life sized spontanious painting I did sunday night, January 30th 2011, on the walls leading up to the third floor at The Speakeasy Art Center 353 Court Street where I have the coolest art studio in Pekin Illinois I mean The World.
It took me about 2 hours and way too many listens to the same James Brown funk mp3 that is now burned in my brain.
An angel leads the viewer up the stairs, her pet bat sits on her back it’s wings gently wave.
I’ve been working on a huge 8ft by eight foot canvas oil painting it currently looks like this! That’s a giant guinea pig, the largest ever painted on canvas in the history of art history!

I drew a whole bunch of guinea pigs recently in preparation for the big painting and the big painting is preparation for the next 20 feet of my psychedelic wall mural. And that’s to proove to myself that I could painting something monumentally huge. I always liked guinea pigs and flying guinea pigs rule! So I painted on my living room wall as practice for the big 8ft x 8ft canvas.above is on the canvas, below on the living room wall! It started in black and white then I painted color over it.Below is the bottom figure on the canvas.and more from the wall at home. and one more thing, the Bored Angel sketch that will now be on the big canvas!…update tuesday morning before the killer death storm blizzard from hell that will indubidedly destroy civilization as we know it, I decided, or rather I got a very strong idea for my next 20ft long mural scene, angels with an army of unicorns vs. faeries with their army of guinea pigs, featuring a scene from back in the golden days when they were battling for the supremacy of rulers of Earth!

I am going to allow everyone to download and print out, if they choose to, as much of my art up to this point as I can share.
Here is the first one, I call it “Treasure Box” and you can download it from this link http://99daz.com/art/jpg/treasurebox.jpg
I love the idea of opening a box (or a book) and finding treasure. Here I went with a silver and emerald theme! The liquify filter in Photoshop allows some very nice and shiny effects!
So download from the link above if you want and I will be adding as many as I possibly can!
Here is some technical info to show you how big the download file will be. I’m not getting all uptight about copyrights and all that but if you want to use bits and pieces of my art in your own work, go for it, just let me see what you have done! I love the idea of inspiring creativity!

In other news, I have built and primed my new 8 foot by 8 foot canvas and will be painting on it soon! I have many of the motifs planned out from the central figure of a girl washing a unicorn to the guinea pigs frolicking! Here is a pic of the virgin canvas laying on the floor of my studio in the Speakeasy Art Center located at 353 Court St. In Pekin Illinois, cultural hub of the midwest!

I am also working on a follow up story to my Love and Robots short story that at least one person a year loves! So maybe you will be the one this year that reads it haha, it’s really short sci-fi and I’m a bloody genius so do yourself a favor and read it! More on this later as it progresses!

Back to the big printable jpg thing, I will create a page and have them all on one page for download soon. Oh I forgot, i have a cool holiday dragon pic to upload next!

Here is the latest stage of my huge oil painting across from the art studios of Alec DeJesus, Doug Halstead and Doug Goessman.
Tree of life – oil on canvas 30 feet by 10 feet – by Darren Daz Cox 3rd floor art studio Speakeasy Art Center in Pekin Illinois 353 Court St.

Above, detail of the center ‘tree’ motif. True ‘more is more’ art!
Below is a mermaid I painted on the wall on friday night to help people wind their way through the labyrinth of rooms on the 3rd floor of the art studios!

Right now the Speakeasy Art Center is showing (some of) the work of Eric Cooney and Gene Mialkowski!

Nov 2010 Speakeasy Art Center Gallery show

 I’m referring to a metaphysical concept of big rather than about scale of artwork but I am striving to make paintings as big as I possibly can to really maximize the effect of the grandeur of art (and as they did in the Renaissance, the grandeur of mankind imbued by the gift of creativity from God).

Look at what happened when the Medici decided to take their personal love of creativity and invest heavily in it – The Renaissance, resulting in  art that has dominated the art world for five centuries due to the saturation of mega-talent given a chance to flourish.  For those of us living in the Peoria and Pekin Illinois area in the 21st century we have people like Todd Thompson to thank for a re-birth of culture in Pekin Illinois.

Todd and Steve Foster took a chance and invested in the building at 353 Court Street and with the help of Pekin Main Street Director Leigh Ann Matthews and the legendary artist and teacher Doug Goessman that investment is paying off in ways far beyond mere money.

Last night was the opening of the show for the artist’s that have a studio within the Speakeasy Art Center and the show will be up until Aug 28 2010 when another great group of artworks will be exhibited. See the flyer at the end of this post that I took from the Speakeasy Art Center Facebook page (please friend them!). I also borrowed this picture that they posted of the show to show how well they lighted my huge painting, which really made me happy! Thanks Doug! (he also made the Warhol-esque silkscreen on canvas painting next to mine in this pic)

Speakeasy Art Center Pekin Illinois 353 Court St. Resident Artist Show August 2010

Check out Ed Emmons’s blog http://www.ourtimesinpekin.com/ for some great photos of the show and just about every Pekin Illinois cultural event of the summer so far! Awesome artist’s like Alec DeJesus, Trinidy Patterson and Nikole and Eric Cooney (all of which have art at the show!) have really been putting in the time and effort to make this excellent for all of us and it’s a wonderful thing.

Below is a painting I have at the show that I will send to my friend Jane who was literally there when I decided to become an ‘great artist’, not to just do art for fun like I did but to make art my life and I have stuck with it ever since. Jane has become pretty famous under her alter-ego of Wynx Whiplash and is still the same sweet goth chick I knew back then. In fact, pretty much all the artist’s I knew from that time period have stuck with art and have really excelled. I will honor you all in a future blog post!

Goth Girl oil painting by Darren Daz Cox

I wanted to put the painting below in the show but the frame I had broke and it really needs to have a gold frame to make the blue really blue!

Time Traveling Dolphin oil painting by Darren Daz Cox

and here is the flyer (I didn’t make this so all rights reserved by whomever did) for the resident Artist’s show going on until August 28 2010 at 353 Court St. Pekin Illinois (across from the court house!).

Residential Artists show until Aug 28 2010 at The Speakeasy Art Center 353 Court St. Pekin Illinois

 Art for me is sort of like working out, you have to rest in between the work in order to get stronger.  I do not force my art and have pretty much thrown out any plans or goals when it comes to my art as they just create tension.  I started the painting below some months ago and it’s just been sitting until I suddenly attacked it and now it is getting done! What a great feeling!

oil paintings by Darren Daz Cox Speakeasy Art Center Pekin Illinois

This one is a random ‘portal’ oil painting. It is evolving nicely…

Below are some pics of graphiti at the Speakeasy Art Center! I am guilty of them!!

Graphiti at the Speakeasy Art Center Pekin Illinois!

I have been filling my head with great stuff, music like Biff Brown and Dave Omega Moses, podcasts such as Diet Soap, Red Ice Creations and Mysterious Universe.  Binaural beats and meditation are also filling my head! Been watching lots of Netflix to fill up my time (suggestions welcome) and this one below really inspired me, I love Gustave Courbet!

 You really do create your own reality, I set out to be a ‘great artist’  a long time ago and I am one. I want you to inspire me by being what you want to be and doing that well! 

"Become The Creator by creating!" – David Wilcock  (check out his website for cool inspiring things!)