gallery

Below are paintings from 2006 - 2007. All works are acrylic on board. I have nine new works, that were completed during 2008 to present, that will be posted once they have been photographed and cataloged.

If you are interested in commissioning a portrait, please email me at: dp@davependleton.com.     I would love to talk with you and answer any questions you have.

Thanks! Have a great day,

Dave Pendleton

Watching $2000 acrylic 48" x 32"

   Fro $1500       acrylic 48" x 32"

Martin & Zanna $2000 acrylic 48" x 32"

Rick $1000     acrylic 48" x 32"

Moe $500 acrylic 48" x 32"

Jackson & Sophie   sold $1300   48" x 32"

Taylor   sold $800   acrylic    20" x 20"

Rick Sherif $1000 acrylic 48" x 32"

keep your head about you

I'm going to use this blog as an extension of my website. My website is a free site that my web host provides as part of my service. In it's free version, it has limited capacity, which is why I only have three paintings available to view. For a few dollars more, I'll be able to increase the number of pages on the site as well as have photo gallery options. At this point I'll be able to post the rest of my work. I hope to have the rest of my work available to view here by next week.

Regarding the Juarez kids, I'm going to encourage them to paint their portraits in black and white. I'm not going to encourage any particular style of painting. I'm a realist painter but I don't intend to push that style. I think I'll show them examples of portraits by different painters from different disciplines: abstract, impressionistic, cubist, maybe stipple. I'm thinking black mediums on different colored backgrounds.

I haven't settled on exactly how I'm gonna' have the kids view themselves while they paint their own faces. Mirrors are an option. I could have them paint from a picture of themselves. That would entail shooting their portraits as soon as I got there and having a printer ready to print the photographs. I'm not sure what the orphanage has in the way of equipment. I might need to invest in a portable printer. I like this idea, the pictures could possibly make for good portraits of my own to paint once I'm back home.


Our brother Matt, has recommended a new band to add to our summer soundtrack, Fleet Foxes. They're a bit Beach Boys, a bit My Morning Jacket, and a touch of 60's Celtic-folk rock. The music is strange and beautiful. The band hales from Seattle, and their first album is great listening on summer evenings when you crave tight harmonies to go with your Beaujolais and Comte.


I'm voting for Obama. I'll speak more about why he's my guy down the road. I bring this up, because I received an email from a friend the other day. The email contained a short video from the website, The Urban Grind: Current events, politics and life in general from the perspective of a conservative woman in Manhattan. Bland title, if not overly specific.

It was decidedly anti-Obama in it's message. After I watched all 13 minutes of it, I just laughed. The video was the sort of media that's all over the web, and was made to scare people that are easily scared. It contained pictures of angry black people, Reverend Wright, as one example, screaming about the evil white conspiracy. It showed video of Obama not placing his hand over his heart during a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and not wearing American flag pins, juxtaposed with grainy pictures of decapitated heads and militant jihad warriors.The narrator insinuates the possibility that Mr. Obama is a proponent of radical Muslim doctrine because part of his name sounds Muslim, a theory that sounds very similar to the much ignored theory that Colonel Sanders was a vicious military leader intent on decimating the healthy blood pressure levels of every man, women and child with vast armies of over-salted chickens. Baloney. It's the type of video that captures attention by stirring the fear pot.

Friends and family: Don't place your trust in unnamed, anonymous stories from paranoid conspiracy theory websites, either liberal or conservative. Please get your news from reputable news sources that take credit for the information they put forward. And don't just follow one news source, watch the news and read the paper, compare and contrast. The truth is out there, but I assure you, it ain't found in obscure rants on the web.

Let's all agree to seek the truth, and leave fear on the side. Although, this show of integrity and common sense might be construed as witch craft which might lead to us being burned in the public square.

" We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time."

Jack Kerouac


This weekend I'll be thinking of my Dad. He is a good man and I love him. My dad's a funny guy, too. Here's something to make him laugh. Happy Father's day, Dad.


Have a good weekend, and Godspeed, John Glenn

Dave

new project

I had a meeting Sunday evening with a group of people, who are traveling to Juarez, Mexico, to teach art to children living in a local orphanage. The orphanage, Arbol de Vida (Tree of Life), is home to around 100 children, ages roughly 5 to 18. I've been invited to go with this group and spend two days working with these kids to create artwork that we will bring back to the States to be sold at an art auction with the proceeds going back to help the orphanage. It's a fantastic idea and I'm excited to be a part of it. There will be four other artists besides myself.

Each of us will be responsible for creating a different art project and for instructing the children through our respective projects. Since my specialty is painting faces, I've decided that self portraits will be my project. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. The trip will take place October 9th -12th. We'll be driving from Denver the morning of the 9th, arriving at Juarez that afternoon. There will be eight of us traveling together in a 15 passenger van with the trip taking about twelve hours, door-to-door . We'll spend two days working with the kids and then return home with the children's artwork on Sunday the 12th. The art auction will be sometime in mid-November.

There's a lot of history being made this year. Some of it will happen here in Denver this summer with the Democratic National Convention ascending to the Mile High Metropolis. As of late, your choices are now more specific, Obama vs McCaine. Although Ron Paul for the Libertarians may still be holding pot-lucks, and of course perennial Ralph Nader is with us, slingshot in hand.

I love presidential elections, it's the best feature of our government. It's sort of like a shaking of the national etch-e-sketch. Don't like the picture? Shake it up! Let someone else turn the knobs for a while and see what happens. We live in a great ongoing experiment that demands our participation. Of course we can't all devote huge chunks of our time and money to shaping the political landscape, but we can inform ourselves, we can talk about important issues with our families, through letters and emails, we can advise and encourage our representatives and congress people, we can volunteer a little of our time and money to supporting and encouraging good people to govern our country, we can vote. Opting out and displaying boredom and apathy signal lazy and self centered thinking. Don't let apathy be your legacy. We need to be thinking beyond our own lifetimes. How should our country conduct itself today, so that 100 years from now, people can ponder the same question. If you love your kids, educate yourself and vote.

Have a good weekend, and Godspeed, John Glen

Dave

a little background

So, the title, aesthetics of the sacred and cool, came from a design project I worked on in college fifteen years ago. The assignment was to design a catalog layout for an African art exhibit: Aesthetics of the Sacred and Cool. I like the way it sounds and it's a phrase that has been moving around in my head for the last decade and a half.

Aesthetics: it's an educated person's word. I feel smart when I say it.

Sacred: images of holy grails and well worn index cards with hand written recipes for Grandma's sweet rolls.

Cool: Miles Davis, The Seven Samurai, independent record stores; ultimately, unpredictable and elusive.

I am an artist, and this blog is a verbal sketch book intended to help me understand and organize the persistent march of ideas that come to me as I work through creative problems. This is also a journal to record my experiences, prayers, and opinions for what they're worth.


Have a good weekend, and Godspeed, John Glenn

Dave

the beginning

Ok, day one. aesthetics of the sacred and cool.

aes·thet·ic [es-thet-ik] –noun Wikipedia

1. commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature." Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with the philosophy of art. Aesthetics studies new ways of seeing and of perceiving the world.

sa·cred [sey-krid] –adjective Dictionary.com

2. devoted to dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.

3. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.

4. pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane): sacred music; sacred books.

5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero.

6. secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right: sacred oaths; sacred rights.

7. properly immune from violence, interference, etc., as a person or office.

cool [kool] –noun -adjective Wikipedia

1. an aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance, style and Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of composure and self-control and often is used as an expression of admiration or approval.