The Ring Master and The House of Joy, Painting Blog #4

Hope you all had a great Christmas/holiday season!  My family in AZ gathered together last week and celebrated Christmas early with a family dinner so I could join in, and then I spent Christmas in Montreal with Michel's family this year.  Always good to spend time with Michel's family.  Both sides, are a pretty interesting group, and quite entertaining.  We were only able to spend time with his dad's side this year, spending Christmas eve and day at Michel's sister's house, her family, his dad and his wife, and then most of the rest of the family gathered together at his grandma's house on the 26th.

Michel (right), his grandma (center), & myself.  October 2013

His grandma is awesome.  She's a celebrity in Quebec and France, an actress of both stage and screen, and well known for doing voice over work in tv and movies.  She's an awesome woman even beyond all that though.  She's a lot like me in that she's always working, because she loves what she does, and she likes to do most everything herself, even the little things, so she knows it gets done "right".  She wont even let other people wash dishes during her dinner parties, and will disappear from time to time to rinse dishes and load the dishwasher.  She and I differ there.  If you're ever at my house during a dinner party and want to help out by doing dishes, by all means, please do so.  I much prefer cooking to cleaning, so I probably wont let you help me with cooking, but doing the dishes, don't even bother asking me, just jump right in.  Everything you need is under the sink.  ;-)

I really have to learn French one of these days, as most of the conversations amongst Michel's family, and our friends here in Montreal, happen in French.  I know I'm missing out of some good stuff by not understanding.  They're all pretty good about keeping me in the conversations by recapping the highlights from time to time of the rapid paced conversations in French, but I can tell that having to translate for me so often gets tiresome for people.  I've tried many times to learn French, from cds and books, but the Quebecois people use a different accent, and different colloquialisms and phrases.  A definite deterrent to sticking with the French cds for lessons, as most of what I learn, is slightly wrong for use in Quebec.  When Michel moves to AZ in the new year, I'm going to have him teach me Quebecois French while we work in the studio together.  Looking forward to chatting in French with his family someday, especially his grandma, and watching her movies without subtitles.

Speaking of words on pictures (subtitles), lets get to this weeks paintings.  Excuse the clumsy segue, but I'm short of time this week, and it'll make sense in the next paragraph.

I've been featuring the weekly paintings based on the order in which they were painted, one each, from two different groups.  With one painting belonging to the paintings from the very beginning, starting in 2007, and the other belonging to the 16 paintings from 2012.  It was a happy coincidence that the two paintings this week were matched up, as I've always felt they were similar in composition, and display well together.  They're also the only two paintings I've done so far that contained worded signs in the background (thus explaining the above clumsy segue of words on pictures/subtitles) :-)

Limited Edition "The House of Joy"

"The House of Joy" was the third, of the original Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) paintings that I created for the art show at my friends restaurant in Jerome, in 2007, written about in the very first blog.  By the time I finished the other two Day of the Dead paintings, the photographs, a couple of smaller, non-day of the dead paintings, building frames, shadow boxes, a display rack for the show, and started this painting, all in that 2 week period before the show, I was running out of time, so I did a bit of what I consider "cheating" with this painting.

If you read the previous blog, you know I painted part of "Las Senoritas" on glass.  I did the same for "The House of Joy", painting the two women on separate pieces of glass, as well as the sidewalk and street on another.  The paint went down smoother, dried faster, and my digital skills were still rather amateurish, so I was able to use the three pieces of glass, much like cells from old school animated films.

The "cheating" part is the background of the painting, which is a photograph I took of the House of Joy building in the town of Jerome, AZ, and then altered with a couple photoshop filters, and printed out.  At the time, I didn't have a scanner, so like the "Las Senoritas" painting, I laid the altered photograph I had printed out, flat on a table, layering and positioning the three painted glass pieces on top of it, and then photographed it all as one piece.  I made sure to have some safety ropes tied to the lamps to keep them from falling and destroying these glass pieces like the previous painting, but was still kind of nervous while photographing it just the same.  The slightly humorous part is the paintings on the glass pieces were still destroyed.  I was rushing to finish everything and left the glass stacked on top of each other after I finished photographing.  After a few days I managed to get back to it, and the weight of the glass on top of each other, caused the acrylic paints to act as a sort of glue and when prying the glass pieces apart, the paintings on them were destroyed, and the top piece of glass on which the lady in red was painted, cracked into several pieces.  I later cleaned the remaining paint off the intact glass and built frames around those glass pieces.  Some of original prints of this mixed media painting were sold in those frames.  This was the second and final time I painted on glass.  It's also the only time I've ever ever used photoshop in this manner.  I often wanted to redo this painting, mostly because of the photoshopped background, and I never quite liked the wings on the woman in red.  It does have a large number of fans though, so I've left it alone, but someday soon I plan to do another painting that features the House of Joy in the background and retire this one.

The original title of this painting was "House of Joy Hos" because during the heights of Jerome's mining town boom, the House of Joy (in the background) was one of the most famous Bordellos/Brothels in Jerome,  and I purposely painted the ladies to look like old time prostitutes.  I ended up changing the name to "The House of Joy" a few years later, after getting a couple of notes from people claiming to have been offended by the title.  I was rather surprised by each note honestly.  I wasn't a known artist, I only had these for sale in a couple of places, didn't have them posted anywhere on the internet, and the title was only visible on the backs of the prints which were framed and hanging on walls.  The people who sent the complaint notes, would have had to have taken

the prints off the wall, in order to have seen the title that offended them, and then make note of my email address which was on the back of the prints as well.  I was never sure whether I should be a little honored that two people went to that much effort, or be a little sad that they didn't have anything better to do.

The House of Joy is no longer a brothel.  When the mines started closing and the town decreased from a population of 15,000 people to less than 80, it went out of business.  Later it was reopened as one of the most famous restaurants in the United States, voted in the top 100 by Conde Nast Traveler, under the same name.  When the owner/chef was in a bicycle accident and injured too badly to keep cooking, it was transformed into a "Brothel Boutique", and is a definite must visit if you find yourself in Jerome, full of all sorts of fun stuff for sale.

The second painting this week, is the 4th of 16 paintings painted in 2012:  “The Ring Master”.  Originally, this was going to be entirely different.  There were dancing horses, elephants walking on their hind legs, lions, tigers, clowns, acrobats, and the Ring Master was a man.  I studied my sketches for days, trying to figure out why I didn’t like it.  Then one day as I was walking around Montreal, I saw a costume on a mannequin displayed in the window of a costume store: It was a lady Ring Master.  I went back to the apartment and sketched out a new version, that I liked much better.  With this painting, it was the first time I had ever painted animals.  They’re fun to paint.  Expect to see several more paintings featuring animals in the upcoming Dia de los Muertos series that I'll start releasing in March of 2015.

I've been working pretty hard at becoming a better painter, and the animals in the upcoming Day of the Dead paintings are turning out much more lifelike.  I've spent immense amounts of time working on new techniques for painting fur, feathers, shells...  animals in general.  I really cant wait to start releasing the new series, as I'm pretty proud of how they're turning out.  While working on these blogs, it's been fun to look back on the older paintings and see the progressive improvement.  In looking back at the older paintings, I immediately see the things I would change if I were to repaint them.  I'm going to resist the temptation though to repaint the old pieces, keep painting new pieces, and hopefully keep improving.  As I get a larger collection together, I may stop printing some of the older pieces though.

11 x 14 "The Ring Master"

I mentioned in a previous blog that I let Michel look at my paintings just before I start the finishing touches, where he then mercilessly tears them apart, telling me everything he doesn't like, or things he feels I've done completely wrong.  It really does make for a much better painting, as he'll see things I didn't.  There’s something in this painting that just drives him insane:  the perspective of the individual circus sign letters are completely wrong.  I don't even know how I managed to mess up something that basic, and started to go back and fix it when he pointed it out, but the mistake itself made me laugh so much that I kept it.

Prints of all the paintings shown here in this blog are available at the webstore. 
"The House of Joy" is available as a series of specially reprinted, limited edition, hand signed and numbered prints. Limited to a series of only 10. 
 

8 x 10 "The Ring Master"

You can see the other limited edition prints by clicking here or visiting http://dizzybearcreations.storenvy.com and clicking on the "Special Edition Prints" link on the left hand side.

"The Ring Master" is available in 3 different sizes at the Dizzybear Creations webstore.

Two more paintings next week! Thank you again for sharing my artwork/posts with friends that you think would like my artwork, on your social media accounts:  Facebook, twitter, blogger, pinterest, tumblr, ello.... 

5 x 7 "The Ring Master"

 It is INCREDIBLY helpful in getting my artwork out in the world, and is greatly appreciated.


Thanks for reading!  If you have any questions you'd like to ask that I can answer in a future blog, you can either post them in the comment section below, or send them to my email  dizzybear73@gmail.com  

Happy New Year!!!!

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