Open Studios - Friday Night Nov 16th

It's that time again for another Friday Night Open Studios at the Cornelia Arts Building! 

Kevin Swallow, Studio #201, Cornelia Arts Building

Friday, November 16, 2012 6pm - 10pm   Cornelia Arts Building - where art works 1800 W. Cornelia Chicago, IL 60657 SHOW PREVIEW   Click here for more detailed info about the open studios event.

exploring - random city images

I've been making it a point to go to different neighborhoods every week to walk around and take photos. Recently I've gravitated toward West Town, East Village, and Wicker Park. Before that it was Fulton Market/West Loop that inspired my new city abstracts series.

This neighborhood exploring has inspired some new abstracts and mixed media pieces and all around experimentation for my art. I fought the changes in my art a little but have decided to let these experiments just take me for a ride. I even signed up for an experimental drawing class to continue developing new ideas.

Anyway, here are some of the photos from my jaunts around town...

Invasion of the water tanks

In addition to the recent static abstracts, I'm working out some new ideas about rooftop water tanks and cities' relation to water. Below a very rough start to a mixed media painting that I started this afternoon.

Invasion of the water tanks, acrylic and screen print on canvas, work in progress

Studio Featured on A View from the Easel

My studio was featured on Hyperallergic's A view from the Easel blog this week. Read the post here.

Static Abstractions - works in progress

This has been a month of abstract experiments and trying out new ideas for paintings. For the last few weeks I've been working and re-working the below paintings. I've been using different techniques such as masking, screen printing, drawing with paint markers and conte crayons to build up the many layers.

You can see through to previous layers much like what you might see on an old building with peeling paint and old signage or paste-ups. Still more to go on all of these (or maybe they'll morph into something else). There's a lot going on in these (and on my mind lately) so I'm calling them Static Abstractions.