New Paintings- Grid Squares

After finishing the car series in June, I wanted to go back and revisit incomplete work. Most of these were small 8" x 8" squares that I made as part of what was originally intended to be a huge grid of cropped snapshots. I figured that finishing these up for the Hopkins show would be a breeze- I was wrong. Without question, working on old ideas and finishing such small paintings was the most painstaking and frustrating exercise yet. Despite being much smaller, they took far longer to complete. Now that they're done, I feel pretty good about them- and I'm really glad I don't have to work so small again.

The following were intended to be shown as a triptych:

I like this grouping- I like the flow of the shapes and colors and the suggestion of a narrative. There are also areas of space to keep it from being too busy. These next ones were also meant to be a triptych:

These three feel far too detailed to work as a triptych. They're so detailed, that they take away from each other. I'm almost certainly going to break these paintings up and intersperse them with larger paintings. More paintings to be posted soon....

New Paintings- Car Series

In June 2010, I decided to try something different and avoid people all together. This resulted in a series of 8 car paintings originally designed to function in a grouping. In the end, I will probably intersperse these with the family portraits for the narrative element that they bring. I love old cars, and it's amazing how many great pictures of them you find in old photo albums. That's probably because the family car was more than a object back then. These things are beautiful. They just don't make cars like that today.

In painting them I wanted to see if I could incorporate my style into paintings without people, treating reflective chrome and shapes of color in the same way as a figure portrait. These were enormously fun to do- for a month or so. The size varies, from 8" x 8" (the brown/gray 57 Chevy) to 28" x 36" (The Pink Cadillac).

More paintings to be updated in a week or so....

Finally- New Paintings.

Even though it's been 5 months since I last posted anything here, I have been working hard on new work for my first solo show at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The show opens Dec. 9 and runs to Jan. 9. I've been so busy working that I haven't been so good about shooting pictures. I'll try to get them uploaded here and to the online gallery on my website (nathanstromberg.com) as soon as I can. I'm tired, but the last few months have seen the best paintings I've made. I started back in the spring with some larger paintings in order to see how the photo-inspired images function on a larger scale.

"Yard Games" 2010

"Family Baggage" 2010

"The Bachelor Party" 2010

"Sunday School" 2010

"Drive" 2010

You might recognize the last one as I repainted one of my first 50s paintings from 2006 with the updated palette. Working larger was a fun experiment. The larger paintings certainly aren't as intimate as the smaller works, and are not so good at referencing the source photo, but they do allow me to loosen the brush strokes and paint differently, which had been a fun change.

Many more images to come...