Wait 'til your BG gets home!

Johnny Winter draft 2
Originally uploaded by Elvira Black.

Shhhhh....here's BG's second "draft" of Johnny Winter. I put it up now because he's gone to do some errands in the "city" (where I should have been today, helping my ex-b/f pack so we can SELL this coop already.) But I've been having some horrible dreams about moving out of Manhattan. No need to interpret them...they speak for themselves.

Anyway, the other night I kind of caught BG at a weak moment...with a little help from your comments. He'd had a "few," which usually results in a little attitude adjustment, and I got him off guard. I tried for the thousandth time to convince him that it would be fascinating to show the various stages of his "creation," but he is very resistant to this idea. I guess he thinks his earlier stages are not show-worthy, but I have to say that I think this "unfinished" work has received more positive comments than any other BG work that I've put up here. In a way, I suspect the rougher stuff has more of an impact, and I've always told him he could stop at any point in his creations and it would still look like a viable finished work.

So at one point he kind of mumbled "Do what you want,"...though he changes his mind on this frequently. I don't show him much on this blog anyway. When I do read him some entries, he usually likes them, but at other times paranoia sets in and he says "Don't put anything about me on your blog!"

BG is highly ambivalent about recognition. I started sending out slides of his stuff years ago, and as a result he was in three shows, plus he won nationwide in a VA art competition, and had one of his works published in a book .He hated all the openings--the last fiasco is detailed in Alternative Gallery Hell. If I had been consistent and pushed harder, it is likely he could have shown more. But I've come to realize that BG has a point when he says he's not ready to show yet--for one thing he's still discovering what he can do, though he's been doing artworks on and off all his life. As BG sees it, in a way, these are just studies.

Lately, esp. now that BG uses oils as well as acrylic, his work tends to be more "finished" and perhaps even "academic" in style than heretofore. Since he is totally self-taught, I think he feels insecure about the fact that he never learned the classical techniques, so his latest works are often more traditionally representational. But judging from the response here to the first draft of Johnny, maybe some of the rougher renditions have more impact.

In answer to Timothy's question: BG used to work solely in acrylic, but now he starts with acrylic and then switches to water-soluble oil. He paints on canvas or canvas panels, depending on the size. His idol is Francis Bacon (the artist, not the other guy), and though he feels Bacon has had a big influence on his work, there is really no direct similarity between the two--other than perhaps BG's penchant for bold, dramatic effect. Francis Bacon, an Irish/British artist, broke new ground esp in the '50s at a time when the art world was pretty much co-opted by the abstract expressionists.

In addition to his paintings--a fraction of which appear on this blog--BG will occasionally (albeit reluctantly) do a quick illustration to go with some of my humor stories. He did my Elvira Black"logo" as well. These he can do with his eyes closed and his frontal lobes tied behind his back, but he really doesn't like to do them.

Anyway, on my woefully out of date site map (another source of blogger's remorse) is a section called "BG's art," which has links to the earlier BG stuff I've posted on my blog.

Thanks again, everyone, for all the kind comments on BG's art.