“Serbia is the new Paris.”
“Every city wants to be, claims to be the new Paris.”
“It is very true of here.”
“Dance with me, it is one of things Serbian girls are best at.”
“Maybe we will have a drink later.”
The pen felt cool then hot as it rested in my breast pocket.
W.Wolfson’19
Rache 7×10 Watercolor & Cotton Paper
I always have a pocket pad on me, more often than not it is my Midori w/ customized paper. I compulsively try different brands and set ups/ style.
I do in general prefer the refillable ones. There is something about having same pad accompany me all over the world and grow increasingly familiar in touch and sight for me.
There are some great non refillable pads out there too. Within my diverse collection of pocket pads they all fall within the 3×5 size range.
One thing I like about mixing thing up pad wise is that although they all are the same size each company’s paper has different properties. My voice remains present but each type of paper adding something of its own property’s to the mix.
It is akin to a musician using different instruments for different types of songs (think for example, Miles Davis or Jimmy Page)
Here are some quick sketches done on pocket pad of company I just discovered.
Emotion is a truth which is always beautiful.
Collecting art has become rarefied. Where as formerly passion and an eye (personal sense of aesthetics) were the main & most important prerequisites, they have been supplanted by space and money.
The size of my works is intentional. I have in mind new collectors for whom space is at a premium. Apartment dwellers should not feel it an impossibility to start a collection.
I also have in mind burgeoning collectors who are just starting to delve into the myriad genres of art out there. A large piece starts to dictate what directions a collection will go in for people living in normal sized spaces. Smaller works do not create a visual limitation.
I want the collector to live with my works and not (feel as if) under them which may occur in apartments.
Always is the striving for emotion to come across in my work(s) and this size bolsters it by almost creating a senses that one is witnessing a scene, the viewer as a voyeur.
” ‘Nita” 9×12 Watercolor & Cotton Paper (1st painting of ’19)
Lopsided grin not visible but the splashing of the water did not drown out the song that she sang to herself. The traffic, one driver in anger or celebration leans on his horn and through the closed door could almost be Fats Navarro taking a chorus. W.Wolfson
Last Painting of ’18 9×12 Watercolor & Multi Media Paper
Hustle & bustle of commissions plus holiday social commitments. In lieu of proper blog post here are some recent quick guerilla sketch things from my ever present pocket pad.
3×5
Please my friend, Nothing happens here ’till after10.We will meet at the Metropole and I will make you a party the proper way.
All my muscles twitched in anticipation but also preemptively in sympathy to how I would feel tomorrow.
They call it the sprawl. People seeking their fortune, power over others, their past, themselves or simply distraction come here.
Often it doesn’t work out. Either to settle debt or naively thinking they will work way up to better money and position people become window shadows, living come hither ads.
One grows used to seeing the writing silhouettes but always upon first entering the sprawl and encountering them one looks up, not necessarily a good idea here.
The higher up window shadows had to go further than mere writing & dancing to get attention. In compensation for attitude, entire acts could be witnessed occurring perhaps a floor or two before the rooftops.
Both my cheeks were kissed in the proper way as is only right. He clapped his hands together. Everyone nodded to themselves sensing the expansiveness of the boss’s joy to once again see me and hear me talk.
(Notes & images from the sprawl December 2018 W.Wolfson)
Song Three: Louise:
Did art w/yarn & string while also serving as a sort of girl friday to a historical site/mini museum.
Wore her every emotion on her chest & felt everything w/a great intensity often tinged w/eroticism
While ramped up emotions can have their appeal, non stop becomes exhausting.
All her string art, the colored threads of yarn, I imagine her communing w/the fates. Or perhaps all those strings merely serve to hold her in place.
“Calamari, some campari & soda. We will eat while listening to the surf smash against the rocks.”
She hoped the fishmonger still had some available as after a night of us all mixing drinks while throwing our arms around one another in song & passion she was getting a rather late start.
She would have asked me if I wanted to come with but there were things needing her attention as to mull over their true meaning. The added benefit was that she looked the better person for allowing me to work for several hours uninterrupted in my makeshift studio.
I noticed she put on the earrings she had been wearing last night, normally not worn except for on special occasions.
They were thick circles of shining gold that tightly hugged the bottom of her lobes the aesthetic for some reason making me think of long gone Romans.
It was a way to get an extra dig in to Gina who had not been invited last night and who had for years been refused the lone of the earrings regardless of the occasion.
There was every chance to believe that she would still be at the market, purposely waiting to run into her as to wrangle an invitation to whatever we had planned next.
Later we take a walk as she did not like the thought of me hunched over my drawing board all day.
“What do you call that flower, the pretty one with all the prickers on it?”
I tried to pronounce it several times, my tongue not complying with the dialect.
She laughed kissing my cheek.
The word was said again three times in quick succession.
“Ah, “friendship”.”
W.Wolfson’18
“Not Capri” 5×8 Watercolor & Paper
This is from a new series. I wanted to create a lyrical, delicate work. There will be five pieces in the series which will form a sort of loose knit narrative, with the paintings having the ability to be arranged/viewed in any order. The order dictating the narrative.
Black Lingerie 2 9×12 watercolor& multi media paper 98LB & face deatil
<metallic sound of film spool plinging as projector starts its lopsided spinning>
The screen is taken up by circle in which focus shapes in gray and numbers counting down from ten as clock like hands spin all accompanied by a beeping.
Slurred orchestra of Nino Rota is heard as an office comes into view.There are gilded edged books in green and red leather under glass barrister bookcase glass, a hat rack on which a trilby hangs at a steep angle as to indicate that its positioning an intentional joke. The camera Panning right, a large mahogany desk whose surface in only broken up by a green blotter and big mouthed ashtray in which two dead snake looking matches lay.
Viewed from profile as he looks out the window, a man awkwardly sits on the corner of his desk , one leg extended, foot on the floor while the ankle of other foot digs into its knee.
He turns towards the camera, taking his pipe out of his mouth, putting it in the ashtray:
“Oh hello, i didn’t see you there.”
The rumples in his cardigan are smoothed out. The music turns playful with the flute taking the lead. An image of rabbits or some other smallish animals rolling around in a tangled mass among the grass is conjured.
“Well…”
The music turns ominous but the reel has too much slack and so slurs which only adds to an abstracted danger.
“Notice the nostrils flare and quiver in anticipation of <inaudible>. Indubitably, the female of the species is the more deadly than that of the male. Even more so for the unwary for whom pleasure has become more than merely a matter of biology. Notice how the lips part just slightly as if to wordlessly say…”
A white hole appears at center of film getting larger and larger, the edges of frozen image becoming a mountainous relief map of burnt celluloid before retreating further back to allow more whiteness to appear. The unpleasant smell of something man made burning.
W.Wolfson’18
“Rachel” Watercolor & Cotton Paper 7×10
Paper Life Painting 