LCWPB01 Page 2

My lazy ass finally got around to scanning in the second page to my Moleskine project: LCWPB01.
Sorry for lagging. More to come (sooner than later... promise).
Also, please don't judge these paintings to harshly.
Like I mentioned in my initial post, these are really nothing more than "exercises".

SCORE!

Last night, I decided to run out and hit up the area's used bookstore. That's where I found an amazing book on Gothic Alters, a practically new book on Chuck Close, a pretty nice book on Bosch, and then I found THIS!:



WHAT A FIND!
I just about shit myself. Now I wonder what would have been if I had found this a year and a half ago before I had my "Inferno" Show at Gallery 1988...

LCWPB01

A couple weeks ago I found a series little Moleskine notebooks one of which featured watercolor paper (as opposed to normal 70-90 lbs writing paper), meaning this notebook was designed specifically to be painted in. Inspired by the miniature paintings Tim Biskup created for his Jackson 500 series, I thought it would be a good exercise for me to pick up one of these books and try to create a small painting every couple days (or at least once a week). Painting within this little book would give me the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do and possibly try things I wouldn't do in my "normal" paintings.

After christening the book with my personal numbering system (LCWPB01), I've been painting away, and have since finished two pages. I am currently working on a third.
Here are the results.

LCWPB01 - PAGE 1

Acrylic and Ink on Paper
5" x 7"
2010

GOOD DUNNY'S

The folks at KidRobot hired some talent to photograph their Dunny's for some sort of project, and Joel Given, the photographer who handled my "Blood & Fuzz" Dunny graciously shared with me his take on the toy.


The image totally reminds me of "Good Fellas", and all I have to say is kudo's to Joel Given of XYZ Graphics for sharing the image with me. I absolutely love it, and I wonder what KidRobot have planned for the photo.

"THEME" ART

Here's three of my latest paintings, each of which were created for a specific group show.
The first was for "SMALL GIFT - SANRIO'S 50TH ANNIVERSARY".
The show will be opening next Friday (November 12th, 2010) at Barker Hanger.
3021 Airport Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90405
http://sanrio.com/smallgift

MY LIFE, MY MELODY
Acrylic + Ink
11" x 14"
2010

The second painting was created for "SUGIPOP!: THE INFLUENCE OF ANIME AND MANGA ON CONTEMPORARY ART", a group show hosted by the Portsmouth Museum of Art and Lebasse Projects.

STREET FIGHTER II SERIES - FIREBALL
Acrylic + Ink
14" x 11"
2010

Finally, the third painting was created for "THE IDOL HOURS", "A reflective study of great historical master paintings by a new generation of international Contemporary artists." This group show is hosted by London Miles Gallery (London, England).
Here's a little write up I created that explains why I chose to "remix" Andrea Mantegna's "Saint Sebastian" for the "Idol Hours" show.

My reasoning for choosing Andrea Mantegna's "Saint Sebastian" as my subject to remix and reinterpretation is rooted mostly in the raw brutality in the painting itself. Like Goya's "Saturn Devours His Son", the violence and gore of Mantegna's "St. Sebastian" truly caught my eye when I was introduced to it in my art history classes. And it basically then, that I decided if I had the good fortune of becoming an artist, I wanted to create stunningly violent paintings such these. But asides for the violence, the image of Saint Sebastian's arrow riddled body has an incredibly popular image, and is undeniably part of western societies visual lexicon. It has even popped up in music videos (such as R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion"). and has been remixed and reinterpreted through the filter of popular culture. One of the most popular reinterpretation is probably a photograph featuring Muhammad Ali, riddled with arrows, for a cover of Esquire Magazine.

THE MARTYR
Acrylic + Ink
16" x 20"
2010

Back to the Blogesphere

It's been a couple years since I posted anything worthwhile to my first blog "Luke Brow", and now that I'm ready to have at it again, I thought it would be best if I started from scratch. So, allow me to introduce "Igneus Gero", the new Luke Chueh blog.
"Igneus Gero", in case you aren't familiar, are the words featured on the emblem/logo/crest I've been using for the past five years. It means "Burning Bear" in Latin.
With this blog, I'll be doing my best to throw up sketches, previews of paintings, sightings, happenings, events, clever thoughts, and anything I basically find interesting enough to type out. I only hope I can maintain the discipline required to publish a blog worth reading.
Till my next post!