Art Gallery: This Smells Like Denny's (2000)

This Smells Like Denny's (2000)
Watercolors and correction fluid on paper, 18" x 24"

This is a very colorful Watercanvas painting. I like how the mass of colors don't quite fit together, and yet still share a boldness and vitality. Multiple layers of watercolor paints add to the variety of textures on the canvas. The correction fluid was used for slight accents. The weird thing is that mass on the top-right that kinda looks like a face. Is it just me, or does that look like Richard Nixon's ghost haunting the painting? I had a lot of those in my paintings during this period, when I was sharing a room in an old house. Was the basement really haunted or was that just my imagination?

Here are my notes from 2003 on this piece, where I raised the same questions, funny enough:


"The title was a great line that Kristen Gilbertson, my girlfrend at the time, penned on a road trip. Now everybody start saying it in daily conversation until it becomes an offical part of American Slang. Or maybe we should let the British have it. You poor kids got stuck with all the lousy slang words. Wanna snog? Ewww! Yuck! Get some tissue paper, already! That's not going to get you on first base in this Hemisphere.

"Should I say something about the painting? The usual "looks great, lot of hard work" routine? If you spent five minutes at this website, you'll know the drill. Instead, how about this: Have you noticed there seem to be a lot of Watercanvas paintings with faces in them? I'm serious.

"Look up; doesn't it look like Nixon's ghost is haunting my painting? Or how about the face in Pigeons and Paperclips that looks like Frank Zappa? Or the ghostly images in Great American or Yoshi Lays an Egg or You're a Nice Girl or Mike Tyson Eats Children or the b-side to Rebecca Smith? You could even go all the way back to Black Light Yellow. I honestly never intended to put any of those there; maybe this is just an instance of seeing shapes in the clouds, but this is just wierd. And I think there are a couple more I forgot to mention...cue The Twilight Zone theme song...

"I'm only half-joking here; I've been convinced that at least a couple houses I've lived in were haunted. Then again, I have a pretty active imagination, as you can see already. Na na na na, na na na na..."