Blooming Venus Signed

Happy to announce the finished painting, 12th in the Space Series.

Blooming Venus, 2025, oil on linen, 64x48”. Signed lower left.

Signed Blooming Venus today. This was the fastest I have completed a major work, thirteen days. Normally, I am prepared to spend several months to finish a painting of this size. The painting process was inspired, in the last two weeks, I pulled five all-nighters—so strange to suddenly notice morning daylight, when I still thought it was nighttime.

Blooming Venus is the 12th in my Space Series of Gods and Goddesses set against a backdrop of nebulae. I started the project in August of 2022. There are fascinating techno/emotional/philosophic themes that connect each piece:

-An individual or couple is/are at the center of the universe, a canvas is a metaphor for the universe.

-The shadows of the figures are transparent, showing the stuff of the universe within, but it is light which defines them.

-Each painting has a unique color scheme, which is based on my color theory of integrating space, light, atmosphere, and the color of the thing.

-They are all at their physical peak. In a painting, if the body is a metaphor for the human spirit, then age and deformities act as chains holding back the spirit.

-Every painting is 64x48”.

The Space Series so far.

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Sistine Chapel and Commissions, No Thank You!

The Space Series Project is my Sistine Chapel, with a couple of differences from that great work. Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508 and painted it between 1508 and 1512. Obviously he had to have Biblical themes. At that time in the Renaissance, intellectuals and artists were trying to merge Greco-Roman Idealism into a Christian framework. Michelangelo bemoaned that he was not a painter, though he served three Popes “perforce.”

Michelangelo’s Letter To Giovanni Da Pistoia:

I've already grown a goiter from this torture,

hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy

(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).

My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's

pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,

my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,

above me all the time, dribbles paint

so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,

my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,

every gesture I make is blind and aimless.

My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's

all knotted from folding over itself.

I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts

are crazy, perfidious tripe:

anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.

Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.

I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.¹

What Not To Do and Being Free

What I learned from Michelangelo was what not to do. Commissions drive a wedge through an artist’s heart, it simply is not worth it.

My Space Project is self-funded. I am simply following my vision without a care for the oh-so-subtle nudges of commissioners. The freedom is delicious. I can’t worry about selling the project, not practical in a way, but it is an incredible human experience that I would not change for anything or anyone.

1. Copyright Credit: Gail Mazur, "Michaelangelo: To Giovanni Da Pistoia When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel (by Michaelangelo Buonarroti)" from Zeppo's First Wife. Copyright © 2005 by Gail Mazur. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57328/michaelangelo-to-giovanni-da-pistoia-when-the-author-was-painting-the-vault-of-the-sistine-chapel