Skateboarder

Skateboarder

Oil on birch panel, 2010, 5"x 7"x 4"

sold

Todays painting is another 3-D construction, this is the kind of thing I do most of the time I suppose. I try to pull elements of a picture out and animate them then reincorporate them back into the painting. So this guy is forever animated in the air, extending what for me would be a thrill, I guess half a thrill really, part of it is landing safely so you can do it again. With him pulled out of the picture, I think its easier to imagine the guy landing and then rolling out of the picture to get a burger somewhere with his buddies. Why its important to imagine him eating a burger, I don't know.

The skateboarding craze really took off in southern California in the mid seventies when there was a long drought and people had to leave their pools empty to conserve water. This is taken from a photo of Lance Mountain.

#26

Tony Alva

Tony Alva

Oil on Chinese food take out container, 2010, 8"x 9.5"x 4.5"

sold

Todays painting is another that I've done on Chinese food take out containers, I started doing them a few years ago, after laboring in my studio on a cardboard dodecahedron, I came inside for lunch and finished off some leftovers. When I started unfolding the container to recycle it, I realized it was almost a readymade version of what I just spent a couple hours trying to fold together. The image is of skateboard pioneer Tony Alva, one of my heroes from childhood. A friend had a subscription to Skateboarder magazine (which later became Thrasher) and we would stare and dream of the cool stuff for sale and the incredible pictures by photographer Glen E. Friedman (who not only was there, at the start of the skateboarding craze of the mid-seventies but also at the beginings of the Los Angeles hardcore punk scene). I, of course became a skate punk, as soon as I understood what that was, but could never quite get the actual skateboarding part of it.

The skater is cut out from the bottom closing flap of the container, it is just folded up and stapled. The hanger is the metal handle from the container.

#25