The Fine Art Blog of Darren Daz Cox

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Here’s an oil painting that recently got a new layer of gold spray. I had taped off the blue areas.

~Undersea light -oil and spray paint on canvas 16×20 inches by Darren Daz Cox~

What the photograph doesn’t show too well is that the abstract undersea forest oil painting (the blue and white part) is still quite visible under the gold spray painted area, in fact the gold area is like a mist in one kind of light and shiny in another which makes me happy as I love art that changes as the light does.

The fact that the composition isn’t symetrical makes me happy too, the gold area has an exit rather than being confined by a blue frame which would make the optical illlusion effect a little too much i think. The edges of this deep canvas are gold too so it continues the pleasing effect when seen at an angle also.

I’m not sure what happens next with this one, all stages have been random and I trust my subconcious to add the next layer when it’s ready! The spirit of Henri Matise won’t let me down!!!

Here’s what the texture on the canvas is, under the blue and white. I haven’t painted many fertility goddesses or odalesques, I usually paint allegorical figures representing truth and love and hi-falutin’ concepts like that, but I do enjoy the way Henri Matise used the female figure as decoration in his paintings.

Somehow it isn’t sexist when Matise objectifies a woman, even though he is presenting her as simply another luxurious thing to have color wrap around. Sometimes the woman is ‘seen but not heard’.  Look at the lady in Matise’s ‘The Red Room (Harmony In Red)’ she is so plain in her maid uniform compared to the wallpaper and tablecloth!

One of my favorite art books of all time is Matise, Picasso, Miro – As I Knew Them by Rosamond Bernier and she tells art history from her first hand experience and tidbits such as that painting was origionally meant to be ‘harmony in blue-green’ not red! I wonder if there is a dimension where Matise didn’t change his mind on this one and it didn’t become the iconic favorite that it will always remain in this dimension?

One of the reasons why I blog is to show you, like Matise showed Bernier, some of the things that make art so fascinating and who knows what kind of effect Bernier herself had on Matise’s work , feel free to give honest opiions and suggestions on what I post here, i won’t be offended if you don’t like my art!

When you really think about it, 40 years from now, you’ll still be looking at Matise’s paintings, and maybe mine, but the current ‘horrible scary thing’ that the news is making you feel fear about will be long forgotten and probably turn out to be exagerated if not be revealed to be a total lie by tomorrow.

I can’t remember what horrible thing dominated the news in 1992 but I totally remember learning about Henri Matise from my friend Kim Gates aka Revo Gruv. I did my first ever oil paintings in her art studio/apartment and She and I were the Neuveau Fauves in an art show at S.I.U Carbondale haha! Her new blog is here!

I still have this canvas, i took it off the frame but it’s pretty huge like 4ft by 4 ft and heavy, I need to one day rebuild a frame and repair it as it is a pretty painting, my first ever oil painting no less! That’s Revo Gruv reading a Matise book in her living room, we painted, literally painted art on, the purple car you see in the window!

I spent a long time on that painting because I was so happy and inspired and stretched the moment out !  Kim didn’t mind being my ‘odalesque’!

I haven’t painted many genre scenes but another of my first oil paintings shows Revo Gruv, her neighbor (in pink) and a couple of puppies in that same apartment. I tried to simplify my style but it is a little weak and sketchy for my taste.

~*Still Life with fast food and puppies -oil on canvas 16×24 by Darren Daz Cox*~

The title is a total homage to Paul Gauguin! I think about Gauguin and Matise often, they make color more exciting for me.

~*Goldfish bowl with a lizard climbing up – sketch by Darren Daz Cox*~

 I bought some little mirrors at the art store today and I think I’ll set one in the eye of a dragonfly I’m working on for Mrs. Chili. I still can’t post on her blog or Erin’s by the look of it, anyone else having any glitches commenting on wordpress blogs? I have this wp blog on my rented GoDaddy server and another free wp blog hosted by WP, ever since I activated the WP one my comments have been crazy, hmm, I also changed the name I post under to Darren Daz Cox instead of just Daz Cox maybe that is screwing things up, i also activated my gravitars maybe it’s that, I’ve logged out and in and everything I can think of oh well…

I’m going to work on my art zine now!

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Originally posted 2008-04-14 19:08:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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