Skip links

Noah's Work-a-Day Page

Main navigation

Pluto

by

9″ x 12″
pluto_small
I found this drawing in a sketchbook from years ago and on the facing page, this excerpt from Christian Peet’s book Pluto:

I take comfort in knowing that when the stars have all burned out, and their protons and neutrons have decayed into mere light particles and radiation, the universe will be in a state of almost complete disorder. And none of it will be my fault.

Related Images:

Go Down, Izzup

by

12″ x 16″

go_down_izzup_small

(aka: “Six-Fingered Goose Plucker”, aka: “The Pecos Butcher”)

Voice of the painter provides an oblique angle, not authority – spurious and unhelpful as any other, perhaps more so, when it comes to enjoying an image.

Maybe like voice of a cook, might make you more attuned to the tastes in the soup. But doesn’t make the soup taste any better to hear how it was cooked. Or what the turnips represent. Or how the soup relates to current discourses on soup.

Barnett Newman said something like “Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds.” But the desire to create a diptych experience – drawings in the margins of notes, or notes in the margins of drawings – I can see the point in that.

Related Images:

Robins

by

6″ x 8″

robins_small

Robins have been gathering in our yard, dozens at a time, freaked by the ice, picking around frantic for food (not unlike everybody emptying the shelves at Kroger). At the top and side of this painting, I was going for the in-between light that works so well in the snow; the twilight that presses lavender in for shadows.

The idiomatic French phrase “entre chien et loup” captures it – when the light is such that you can’t tell a dog from a wolf – when the senses flicker and fail and things get unsettling.

Related Images:

Ice Zebra

by

11″ x 14″

ice_zebra_small
Our yard zebra in ice, after sitting in hot gravel for years. My father is allergic to horses and, by extension, zebras. We decided next time someone asks him if he has any allergies, he’s just going to say: Zebras.

Related Images:

President’s Day

by

9″ x 12″

presidentsday_small
It’s President’s Day, so I made a little drawing of the Constitutional Convention. That was a long time ago, so I did everyone as ghosts, which they all surely are.

Related Images:

Cutter

by

11″ x 14″
cutter_small
A guy with an axe, and a floating one of those head cones they use on dogs.

Related Images:

Taconic

by

11″ x 14″
taconic_02.15.15_small
From a ride up the Taconic Parkway, New York City to the Hudson area to see our friends Deb and Karl, and also Elwood, if that’s his real name.

Related Images:

Tugboat

by

11″ x 14″

tugboat_02.10.2015_small

At first I saw this painting as a picture of a sinking tugboat in an oval frame hanging on a wall. But then started to wonder if I’m not looking through a porthole at the doomed vessel. I hope whatever sunk that boat doesn’t sink the boat I’m in. Or maybe my boat is a gunboat that sank that boat.

Related Images:

Tiger

by

11″ x 14″
tiger_02.10.2015_small

I just opened my paints and things in my new studio and decided to do some paintings of some of the objects, like this little plastic tiger, I can’t seem to throw out, no matter how many yard sales I have. Boxes of this kind of thing. Maybe I’ll paint them, then immediately give them away.

Related Images:

Caveman Times

by

18″ x 24″
cavemantimes_small
The prehistoric themes continue and have gotten more abstract.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Vivian, age 1

by

11″ x 14″

vivian_in_plaid_small

This has the feel of “the cowboy” from one of those How to Draw People books.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

The Poet’s Novel

by

Poet Laynie Browne just gave a talk at the Poet’s House in NYC on the subject of “The Poet’s Novel” and asked me to make some images to illustrate her lecture. This is a excerpts of the twenty-something images I made for it. A little unhinged perhaps, but one can dream. Must, rather, dream. I’m sure it made for a curious Powerpoint presentation.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

CDV_11.18.14_02

by

7″ x 10″

cdv_11.18.14_02_small

This one has several cartes de visites painted on top of one another. The props and backgrounds from different photographs mingling. Not that it matters, because at the end it’s still just a painting.

Related Images:

Carte de Visite #5 (Horned Owl)

by

30″ x 40″
cartedevisite_05_small
I’m delighted that the New York Public Library put up a post on their Tumblr about my “Carte de Visite” paintings. Here is THE LINK a few thoughts about the ongoing series. Did you know Daguerre also invented the diorama? News to me. There’s a guy to have lunch with when the time machine comes together.

The uniformity of the carte de visite photos is intriguing to me. Often one figure is surrounded by studio props – rocks, birds hanging from the ceiling – in front of a painted backdrop of a landscape. It can actually be hard to tell where the room ends, and what is real, like one of those great dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. Dioramas were also invented by Daguerre, so there’s that connection to photography as well. There is the sense that the subject is enclosed in a glass case. It has been fabulous to have access to the NYPL archive, to study images in detail, including the marginalia, and occasional edits by the photographer. As a painter, I find those fugitive marks captivating.

Related Images:

CDV 11.14.14_02

by

11″ x 14″

cdv_11.14.14_02_small
The blobby dinosaurs wading in the bog on the left side are from a bit of a wall painting above a door at the Museum of Natural History. They show up again in a large oil.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Carte de Visite #4

by

30″ x 40″

cartedevisite_04_small
A continuation of a loosey goosey study of cartes de visite at the New York Public Library and the history of first communion photographs. In this one, the sitter (or stander) is visited by lavender orbs and a playful flower arrangement. Tucked in the lower right a very tenuous canvas of this painting, a print of which was a fixture in my grandparents’ dining room.

Related Images:

Hutch

by

11″ x 14″
hutch_small
Going south from Rye to NYC.

Related Images:

Apple Cart

by

11″ x 14″

applecart_small

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Philip Guston:

“I’m not so involved with what the other guy does. You’ve got to upset your own applecart.”

Related Images:

Carte de Visite #3

by

24″ x 30″

cartedevisite_03_small

From an ongoing series of oils based on a tentative study of ‘carte de visite’ photographs at the NYPL photo archive – the single figures, simple props and painted backdrops. The first communions portraits are a peculiar sub-genre, complete with fountaining head wear.

Related Images:

Two Man Saw #2

by

14″ x 22″

twomansaw_02_small

If you like, listen to this Sacred Harp song “The Last Words of Copernicus” (recorded by Alan Lomax in Fyffe, Alabama, 1959). If I did a hundred paintings of this image and had them hanging all around with this song playing, that would be good.

 

Ye golden lamps of heaven farewell with all your feeble light
Farewell thou ever changing moon pale empress of the night
And thou refulgent orb of day in brighter flames array’d
And thou refulgent orb of day in brighter flames array’d
My soul which springs beyond thy sphere no more demands thy aid
And thou refulgent orb of day in brighter flames array’d
And thou refulgent orb of day in brighter flames array’d
My soul which springs beyond thy sphere no more demands thy aid

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Kids in Summer

by

30″ x 40″

kidsinsummer_oil_small
A large oil version of the kids in summer. A little undercooked for an oil, but might work for this image. Or I might go back into it a little. Or maybe not. Or maybe just to thicken, like a soup. No maybe leave it. The kids are enjoying the end of summer. The lozenge-shaped thing and the floating object.

Related Images:

Two Man Saw

by

14″ x 22″

twomansaw_small

This is from the New York Public Library’s photograph archive. I recently got an informal tour of the incredible archive by my good old friend David who has pretty much single-handedly brought order to approximately 600,00 photographs. When he asked what I wanted to look at, I had no idea where to start, so ended up rifling through boxes of ‘orphan’ photographs – no record of their provenance, photographer, location, date. I can’t remember if this is one of those photographs or not. I would make a horrendous archivist (and if I ever apply for a job as an archivist, please remind me to take this post down). David’s knowledge of the photographs is astounding; the mass of imagery is totally overwhelming.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

The Lion Who Ate Up Dixie

by

11″ x 14″

lionwhoateupdixie_small

I’m doing a large oil version of this destroyer. I recently discovered that I use the word “et” instead of eaten as the past participle of “to eat” – as in: those bagels will get et – which is what I said recently and the person I was talking to said Oh, how old-fashioned. I’m not sure how that crept into my vocabulary. Presumably through my Grandfather’s country side, though I don’t remember him ever saying it. At any rate, this is the lion who ate up Dixie. It was there, and then it got et.

Related Images:

Ethel

by

11″ x 14″

ethel_small

My grandmother and her mother in 1917. I guess it’s possible Vivian will have a grandchild who, a hundred years from now, will paint a picture of me holding her when she was a baby. Assuming people are still painting then. I mean, surely. They’ll need paintings for their floating houses.

Related Images:

Alphabet

by


alphabet_small
Dorothy is an institution of progressive politics in Brooklyn and she has a lovely Greek Revival brownstone. This is painted from a figurative clock on the mantle in her front parlor. I wanted to do the rest of the clock, but I ran out of space. I guess I could add a piece of paper to the left and continue the image. Maybe I’ll do that.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Theatre

by

7″ x 10″

theatre_small

A theatre of recollection maybe, or a screening room for a projection of memories. Words throw images against the wall of the mind, or whatever is the right way to say it; Ezra Pound said it better.

 

Related Images:

A Few Days

by

7″ x 7″

plage_small

This one owes something to Fairfield Porter, so here are a few lines by James Schuyler, with whom he lived for twelve years. These snapshot paintings have enough agita and melancholia without such lines, but there it is.

A few days
are all we have. So count them as they pass. They pass
too quickly
out of breath: don’t dwell on the grave, which yawns for
one and all.
Will you be buried in the yard? Sorry, it’s against
the law. You can only
lie in an authorized plot but you won’t be there to
know it so why worry
about it?

 

Related Images:

End of Summer, Adirondacks (And the Days are Not Full Enough)

by

8″ x 8″

endofsummer_adirondack_small

Another painting for the end of summer, along with a few uplifting lines by Ezra Pound. As I type, my daughter is playing in an inflatable crab-shaped pool in the yard. These summers go by one after another, it is as if life is already in an old photo album.

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
          Not shaking the grass

 

Related Images:

Concrete Fawn

by

7 1/2″ x 10″

concrete_fawn_small
In Mt. Vernon, a peg-leg fawn made of concrete. There are two, both in a poetic state of decline.

Related Images:

End of Summer

by

7 1/2″ x 11″

summerend_small
This is an end of Summer painting. Different from a Fall painting, or a Spring painting, or a Winter painting, or even an early Summer painting.

Related Images:

Shore

by

10″ x 10″
shore01_small
Along with an excerpt from Louise Glück’s “Summer Garden” (here in full):

Several weeks ago I discovered a photograph of my mother
sitting in the sun, her face flushed as with achievement or triumph.
The sun was shining. The dogs
were sleeping at her feet where time was also sleeping,
calm and unmoving as in all photographs.

 

Related Images:

Kitchen (or How to be Perfect)

by

10″ x 14″

kitchen_small
Here, this is an excerpt from Ron Padgett’s “How to be Perfect” and I’m putting it next to this painting.

Get some sleep.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room
before you save the world. Then save the world.
Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don’t stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don’t
forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm’s length
and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass
ball collection.

Wear comfortable shoes.

Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.

Plan your day so you never have to rush.

Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if
you have paid them, even if they do favors you don’t want.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Hartley Park, Mt. Vernon NY, 1920

by

11″ x 15″
hartleypark_mtvernon_1920_small
This is painted from a photo I took with my phone of a small xerox of a magazine print that hangs, at a slight angle, in the entry of our building along with grainy pictures of notable Mt. Vernonites, like Art Carney and Denzel Washington.

Related Images:

Deer in the Snow

by

11″ x 15″

deerinsnow_small
Flipping through an old sketchbook, I saw a quick drawing of a wastrel and its image seemed to be cast onto a wall, like a projection, but a drawing of a projection, or a drawing of a wall drawing. Here’s one that’s of a deer in such a scenario.

Related Images:

Two Girls in Veils

by

11″ x 15″

twogirlsinveils_small
Finally got a good set of gouache paints. It is a volatile medium, each layer reconstitutes the one beneath. Like oil paint, gouache doesn’t stay put, tends toward chaos. I guess my resistance to planning things out is well-suited to uncooperative materials. Two girls, both in veils.

Related Images:

Tardigrades

by

tardigrade_13_small tardigrade_12_small tardigrade_11_small tardigrade_10_small tardigrade_09_small tardigrade_08_small tardigrade_07_small tardigrade_06_small tardigrade_05_small tardigrade_04_small tardigrade_03_small tardigrade_02_small tardigrade_01_small

These are images that I made for projection in Laynie Browne’s play about the immutable invertebrates called tardigrades, or water bears. They can live in outrageously inhospitable environments. They can live through being boiled, dessicated, frozen.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Ortega’s Auto Shop, Santa Rosa, NM

by

4″ x 6″
image
Moving across the country this week, car broke down in northeast New Mexico. Spent the day at the Ortega family’s auto shop where Vivian got celery from the nice women and played with Biscuit the tiny dog. They fixed the car enough to drive another day across the plains under vast skies and vapor trails. Now broken down in Ft. Smith, Arkansas where I didn’t buy a radiator from some sketchy truckers in a parking lot and now have time to post a drawing to the Workaday. Better than watching the crud they have on the tv here at the car shop.

Kind of enjoying the delays, good to slow down and appreciate our country and all its many simultaneous realities.

Related Images:

Garden

by

12″ x 12″
garden_small

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Waltzing Matilda

by

8″ x 10″
waltzingmatilda_small
For some reason, we learned the Australian folk song “Waltzing Matilda” in third grade music class.

Wikipedia has a great synopsis: “The song narrates the story of an itinerant worker, or ‘swagman’, making a drink of tea at a bush camp and capturing a sheep to eat. When the sheep’s owner arrives with three police officers to arrest the worker for the theft, the worker commits suicide by drowning himself in the nearby watering hole, after which his ghost haunts the site.”

I’m not sure how this made it into the Southfield Elementary curriculum. Or, for that matter, why I remember it.

Related Images:

Rabbit & Cart

by

5″ x 7″
bunny_and_wagon_small
I feel like if I could read the text I’d be able to get a grip on what’s happening here. It’s like the dream I had where I was trying to read text on a piece of paper but the words were upside-down, so I turned the paper around and they were still upside down.

Related Images:

Follow
Get every new post delivered to your inbox

Join other followers

Powered By WPFruits.com