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TATTOO DETOUR: 12
HONOLULU DRAWINGS 2018

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The twelfth year in the TATTOO DETOUR series, the drawings this year measure 11" x 14".

Normally when traveling I've been content to walk around, explore and take photos while visiting art museums and galleries -- a method that works fine in New York or Paris when you're there for a week or so. But finding myself in Honolulu for an extended stay in 2007, I realized that Waikiki is a different animal altogether, relentless as it is with the shirtless men who are my muse, not only on the beach but in the restaurants, grocery stores, hotel lobbies, even on the bus. So I was tempted to go further than my normal mode and try to have a studio at the same time, namely a sketchpad and a handful of pens I was carrying around, creating a body of work out of a suitcase while living in a hotel room.

Drawing on the aforementioned beaches, and in the same restaurants and hotel lobbies, I was able to enjoy a completely different rythmn of work than I've ever known at home, at the same time surrounded by people who occasionally wandered over to look at what I was up to so long at my favorite Starbuck's table or on some bench in Kapiolani Park, or under a palm tree. And the setting of an extreme tourist spot such as Waikiki posed the enjoyable task of trying to reach beyond the predictable cliches of surfers, babes and palms. The resulting drawings are conflations of those very surfers, palms, tattoos, military guys, pigeons, lobby furniture, waves and restaurant tables, offering intersections between the surf of Hockney, Picabia, Pettibon, Guston and Westermann, fact and fiction.

As I did in 2015 when I took comic character Dennis the Menace to Honolulu to help out with the drawings, in 2017 I've brought along American painter Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) to inform the body of work, inspired by my research of Hartley's own work in preparation for my solo painting show at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor. Some drawings capture Hartley's image from historic photographs, while others quote figures from some of his paintings, while still others use his landscape images as settings for a select cadre of Waikiki surfers. Enjoy!

rom Honolulu
2019
POSTING IN PROGRESS--Please Check Back

 

 

 

 


 See all of the
TATTOO DETOUR series
       
               
xx

TATTOO DETOUR 16
Drawings from Honolulu
2023

TATTOO DETOUR 15
Drawings from Honolulu
2022

TATTOO DETOUR 14
Drawings from Honolulu
2021



TATTOO DETOUR 13
Drawings from Honolulu
2019


TATTOO DETOUR 12
Drawings from Honolulu
2018


TATTOO DETOUR 11
Drawings from Honolulu
2017
 
               
               
 

TATTOO DETOUR 10
Drawings from Honolulu
2016


TATTOO DETOUR 9
Drawings from Honolulu
2015


TATTOO DETOUR 8
Drawings from Honolulu
2014


TATTOO DETOUR 7
Drawings from Honolulu
2013


TATTOO DETOUR 6
Drawings from Honolulu
2012


TATTOO DETOUR 5
Drawings from Honolulu
2011
 
               
               
 

TATTOO DETOUR 4
Drawings from Honolulu
2010


TATTOO DETOUR 3
Drawings from Honolulu
2009


TATTOO DETOUR 2
Drawings from Honolulu
2008
  
  

TATTOO DETOUR 1
Drawings from Honolulu
2007