Deep Ellum Open Studios, 2020

This year, I'm participating in Deep Ellum Open Studios by offering canvas prints of some of my recent digital paintings. They are priced at $50 to $75 for curbside pickup by appointment outside my studio at 3800 Commerce Street. Available at Strauss paintings - Canvas Prints

Emporio Armani

 

Due to Covid-19, since March I've mostly been painting digitally at home. After about 35 digital paintings (please see my instagram), I feel as though I'm starting to get a grip on the medium. In some ways it's easier and some ways more awkward than oil painting. Digital painting has led me to work in layers and most recently to wanting to work with layered imagery. As an outcome of my media-addled mind, I'm happy to let content collide and leave meaning in suspension. 

The background of this painting is based on a famous Gregory Crewdson photo of Pittsfield, Mass. and the foreground is based on a photo of survivors of the Beirut dock explosion in August.  The title of this one comes from the tee shirt.

flea market at the Double Wide

Painted from a photo I took at a flea market a couple of blocks from my studio. I knew the image was not making an easy composition. I did my best using color and lighting to unify it. I was also interested in switching to total abstraction for some pictorial elements. Used magenta and cyan to expand the colorspace. Oil on panel 30 x 24"

shed, Fabrication St., Trinity Groves

Painted from a mid-summer snapshot of a tumble-down storage shed wrapped in vines. 24" x 27"

Northwest Highway, Dallas

Looking above and beyond..
22" x 27.5"

sunflowers, Bishop Arts

Sunflowers wilting in mid-summer heat.

dumpster, Trinity Groves

This was a brilliantly illuminated dumpster in a field behind Fabrication Street. An altar of worship now hauled off and gone.