Night Crossing.

The old railroad tracks in Monrovia. Oil 16x20. About a block from the Monrovia Morning panting in my November archives. The crossing isn't active, but so will be reinstated as part of our new Metro. I took a trespassing night stroll taking photos that will be part of a series of Nocturnes I'm doing of the area about to be cleaned up. Took a big umbrella so when It rained I didn't mind. I'm a fan of Frank Tenny Johnson's Nocturnes. He is the best western artist if you ask me.

Rosemead Blvd.

Here a bigger on Oil on Canvas 18x24 this is a main street (Rosemead Blvd. right where Arcadia/ Pasadena/ Sierra Madre meet. This one has the most normal commercial brochure looks to it of any painting I've done, maybe an unconscious effort to interest corporate America or curry favor with Ken Auster?



Saw a great show today of Raimonds Staprans at the Pasadena Museum of California art. This guy is so modern in a good way he kills me.

Still Death

My girlfriend found a dieing bird in our front yard a few weeks ago. When I got to it, it was gone by seconds still warm and limp, probably hit a window to hard. However it didn't get warmer to my touch, It was cooling so i knew it was dead, not stunned. Sharon asked me to bury it, but I took it upstairs and examined it. I don't think I ever noticed how subtle the beauty beautiful the color was on a sparrow before. I considered pinning it up to paint it's wing span , but somehow that didn't feel right, so I dropped it in a jar. I decide to paint it and spend three hours intensely working on it. Not a 100% sure why I don't really like the result.
More interesting was the extremely vivid dream I had that night. I was rolling down a white highway to infinity with a black void on either side of the road. When I say rolling, I mean on roller-skates, but I felt more akin to flying. Suddenly rolling right next to me was a little girl about 4 years old with a awkward sort of prettiness and warm brown hair. She smiled and we rolled along silently for awhile, then the road narrowed and before I could react she was forced off the road into the void. She didn't scream or anything, but somehow inside I knew she was done for. Coming down to her hundreds of feet down from the road. I found her broken, but still alive. She asked me to help her. When I put my hand under her head I felt the blood and broken skull. She asked me," Am I dieing?" I calmly told her yes she was. She asked," am I beautiful?" I sad yes. Then she smiled and died. I woke with a great since of peace tinged with sadness. When I relate the story to Sharon I get very emotional.



What's interesting is when I held the dead bird and painted it I never felt any sadness or creepiness. I just marveled at it's beauty. However, I can't relate the story without feeling sadness. At first glance the dream is a metaphor for the birds sprit going to heaven. I'm not religious or much a a crier so I'm puzzled.

Show and Tell.

Here is a small about 6x 8.5 oil painting by Bato Dugarjapov who is one of my favorite contempoary Russian Painters. I bought this painting recently and still marvel at it everyday. I love how he took a ordinary view of a backyard of just a car, boat and trees with a abstract house behind them and made it into an extraordinary picture. A backyard magical wonderland without it being to sweet and sentimental. Finding the beauty in the ordinary is what I'm striving for in my own work.
cut and paste into your browser:

http://www.artrussia.ru/artists/artist_s.php?id=440&foa=f

News about me: I have a interview:

http://www.art-interview.com/Issue_004/interview_Wray_William.html

With Art Interview online magazine I hope you can afford to read it.

LA Wash

La River in Burbank, morning. I don't think this one totally comes together, but The foreground water is what I wanted. 6x8 oil. Modeled it to much overall. Jennifer McChristian did a better one working just behind me. Slightly differing view choice.

Monrovia Train

A this one isn't particularly incredible painting oil 6x8, but some other bigger paintings are still drying or need fixing. This is an old train that been parked at the end of one of the train lines in Monrovia. It will soon be moved and the spot be turned into a Metro stop. I didn't notice it for the last ten years until recently when I started exploring every square inch of the local area. I don't know how I missed it, it can be seen from a main street if you looking at the exact the right angle, but since I was never looking for it it missed it all there years.

Nightgames 2+1

Here is a variation on one of the baseball fields I've painted before just a few hundred yards from my house. Sierra Madre Baseball nocturnes seems to be a new specialty of mine. The small one 8x10 begat the larger one 16x20 when a collector came over at my studio saw the small and wanted a larger version, something I was happy to do. I this is the "girls field" (there are two of them) as I've only notice girls playing there.
All the years I've lived here, I've only gone over to the field to complain once about the nose of the PA. It was when they let little girls call a game because it was so darn cute. You haven't lived to you hear excited screaming 10 years olds broadcast loud enough so you can here them in Pasadena. I guess I'm an old grouch. I've put up with the boys field umpire who like to call strikes like he's calling a soccer goal, so maybe the painting subjects are a small payback.

Night Pond

A nocturne of the settling ponds next to my house in Sierra Madre. It a series of artificial ponds used to refill the city's water supply. It's a sometimes pretty area when they aren't dumping garbage, organizing construction convoys of trucks and cutting all the vegetation into dirt. It's a no trespassing zone, but I vault the fence all the time. It's my belief that no area should be off limits to the artist.;-)

Coming Rain

Just before our last rain we went to the dam/ recreational area off the 605 at the 210 to capture the dry riverbed before the winter rains filled it up. One is on a bluff just over the riverbed and another is in the bed itself facing the opposite direction. The first early in the mooring the second in the afternoon. Despite the grey day, a little light peaked out at the end. Interesting contrast in paintings as the morning shot is a little tighter and traditional 6x8 oil, the afternoon is loser 8x10 oil, almost abstract.