Artist Redux

@paraboloid.bsky.social

146 Followers 255 Following

Retired (escaped) from graphic design; once studied printmaking; now draws & paints. Vermonter, terrified. © notice in alt text of images. ALWAYS READ MY ALT TEXT • I BLOCK ANYTHING “AI” RELATED other account: proportionwheel.bsky.social

an untitled gestural “overall” abstraction in blues, greeens, yellows, oranges and reds, acrylic on paper, shown slightly cropped from 22×30 size. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
sunlight filtered through overhead vegetation, making patterned shadows on the gravel road surface.
a scattering of mostly-green apples fallen from a roadside tree, illuminated by the slanting late afternoon sun
solitary red clover plant bravely blooming in the fall by the side of a dirt road
Beaver Pond, sans beavers. There is a huge beaver-built dam, but the landowner has breached it so the pond is never as full as it used to be. Also, a power line runs across the upper part of the image, I wish it wasn’t there.
Detail of an elaborate Mansard roof somewhere in lower Manhattan
The Flatiron Building
decorative grillwork on old Manhattan building. Sorry, I don’t remember which, and am too lazy to look it up.
cigar store “indians,” pedestrian reflected in window they’re behind
old skyscraper seen at an angle through tree limbs
an old skyscraper in NYC
a street scene in lower Manhattan in the early 1990s. Delivery trucks, cars, a few people, 10-or-so story buildings in the west 20s.
A very ripe, very juicy heirloom tomato, sliced on a cutting board
“Twist Box I” — an abstraction in rough geometric shapes filled with painterly textures, in many colors. It almost holds together. 22×30 acrylics on paper. ©Michael B Patterson, 2025
a very ripe, very juicy peach, cut in half, with a bite out of one of the halves, on a small white saucer against a near-black background
gestural abstraction in reds, yellows, blues, and greens, with organic shapes. ©Michael B Patterson, 2025
In the distance, The Camel’s Hump faintly visible yesterday through smoke haze. Trees and brush frame it in the foreground/
Abstract painting in transparent glazes of acrylic paint. Vaguely organic shapes are pulled from the scribbling-drawing underneath and filled with varying values, hues, and textures. The work is not finished. photo and state of artwork ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
An abstract painting with a lot of bright colors showing through scrapes in overlying black and white paint, the whole in the shape of a rough vertical black shape with white flanks. 22" × 30" acrylic on paper, ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
A gestural abstraction with several broad strokes of black paint mingled with red, Splashy yellow areas, and some green bits here and there. 22"× 30" acrylic on paper, ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
a gestural abstraction, in acrylics on paper, 22"×30". Forms built from an underlying pencil drawing, with selected areas roughly filled with transparent glazes. Reds, greens, yellows, and some blueish grey. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
“The Tree of the Poisonous Fruit” — abstract painting in acrylics on paper, 22×30, shown slightly cropped. The photo is not of great quality because I didn’t have even light. The top half is a jumble of reds, yellows, and browns, with an overlay of black marks that form a sort of network. Below, there’s a vertical area of yellows, mostly, with an area on each side of it in greens, all done with glaze consistency acrylics applied with palette knives. It can be seen as an abstracted tree shape. ©2025, Michael B. Patterson
a sketch of a muffin, in it’s little pleated wrapper but not bulgy on top, with a pencil stuck into the top of it at an angle
another bearded dude, mostly frontal, looking down and to his left (our right)
Guy with a front-combed haircut and glasses and a mild smile and a short beard looks down and to his left (our right).
another fast and rough sketch of a man’s head, his gaze appears cast down toward the table presumably before him, and he has my bad rendering of a sort of sardonic smile, a bald pate, and a beard..
very rough fast sketch of a man. He’s looking to our left from the right side of the page, wearing classes, has a prominent chin and eyebrows, apparently
ballpoint sketch, very quick, of a man in profile, with his hand positioned over his mouth. He has a beard, and glasses.
Very quick sketches, made with a Japanese brush-pen, in a 5×8" spiral-bound sketchbook: a dude with a cigar on the left, and on the right a woman seated on a bench, looking toward me over her left shoulder. I would go out onto Church Street and sketch people surreptitiously. These drawings probably took about 30 seconds each to make. And eh, they’re not great, but posting is mandatory, isn’t it? nevertheless, ©2025 Michael B. Patterson.
“The Mad Monk,” a stone lithograph, made when I was a student in 1968. I could not afford paper to make more than the 5 in the edition. (6 quarter-sheets of Rives, one AP and edition of 5). Holding those delicate grays was a serious challenge but they stayed consistent through the 6 prints I pulled; I think I could have made a long edition of this one if I’d been able to buy more paper. © 2025, because this is the first publication of an image of the print.
details from four separate works in progress, gestural abstraction
Deck chairs on deck, distorted mirror image of chairs and railing below on the wet surface of the deck. Green lawn in the background, with some trees hinted at in the distance.
screen shot of my account header showing 99 followers
images of a gestural drawing/painting that I posted earlier, with (right) the piece as it exists now after some more work. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
a gestural abstraction built on a fat-pencil drawing in black and red, with some of its implied shapes roughly filled with mottled glaze coatings of burnt orange, ochres, and blue acrylics. White paint partially covers underlying drawing in some areas. Lots of texture. 22- by 30-inch paper, ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
Abstract expressionist painting [or drawing, if you prefer] in acrylics on 22×30 paper. Some of the paint (the ochre) was very old and partially coagulated, so there’s a scumbly texture I like in some areas. It’s built on a black linear drawing, with some of the shapes it defines filled in with yellows, ochre, or greens.
photo of brightly lit carrots and carrot slices on a wooden cutting board
A view of The Camel’s Hump with a lot of newly green trees in the foreground and a partly cloudy sky overhead.
A very serious-looking seated man and woman, and small boy standing in front of them, the man’s arm embracing the child. Bits of farm imagery surrouond them, some corn stalks growing from rows that seem also to be the planks of a floor beneath their feet, a crude silo behind them and a fragment of a house, a fragment of a barn wall with a window that something like grain or sawdust is pouring out of into a pile, and maple trees with sap buckets in the background
a late Colburn painting in a sort of cubist-influenced space, of trees abstracted to groups of loosely geometrical depicted solids. This image was pulled from a dealer’s website; the asking price is $4800.
similar to previous two images
detail from the previous image
a spare, minimalist drawing from the 1970s, with embossed grooves in the paper and pencil, acrylic (black) and white house paint in simple, intersecting strokes.
Spare abstract figures, one above the other, consisting of different media applied in strokes of different angles. Some texture and a groove are embossed into the paper with an etching press, and they affect the materials above—like the nearly horizontal white line at the bottom of the lower figure, which is paint that flowed into a groove. Oil-based house paint, acrylic paint, pencil, and conte crayon, 22"×30" on heavy rag paper, no watermark visible. Some damage from poor storage: broken paper bottom left, discolored on top edge and in a stripe just below the upper figure. ©Michael B. Patterson, 1973
Abstraction built on a gesturally spontaneous line drawing in black acrylic, with the shapes it defines or implies filled in with a layered glaze of yellow/gold colors and others in blue and yellow. More short strokes in blue and scribbly drawing in white, partially obscured by other colors. ©2025 Michael B. Patterson
a multi-colored abstract expressionist painting I’m sorry I’m having trouble coming up with a meaningful description. 32×40 paper, kind of fragile stuff, note tear at top left. I made several paintings on this stuff, and they will need to be mounted on a sturdy substrate to survive long. Another future project that’s easy to put off. first publication: ©2025, Michael B. Patterson
An spare abstract impressionist drawing, with black linear strokes made with a squeeze bottle, and buff and green strokes made with acrylic paint applied with a putty knife. And one tiny collaged red spot. first publication: ©Michael B. Patterson
a loose abstract gestural drawing-in-paint, about 1994, 22" by 30" on rag paper, with yellow-gold, green, red, and magenta paint strokes made with a putty knife and some dripped and splattered ink. ©2025 (first publication) Michael B. Patterson
sunlight filtering through leaves overhead, blowing in the wind so that the light flutters. seeds on sidewalk, illuminated by this shifting light.
View of The Camel’s Hump with trees, lawn, and deck railing in foreground. The mountain and sky look almost rendered in pastels.
a detail from a gestural painting, with broad palette knife markes in transparent acrylic paints, mostly yellows an blues.
small detail of a gestural abstraction in acrylics and ink
the same painting described in the earlier post, with minor completions. ©Michael B Patterson, 2025
An gestural abstraction in acrylics: yellows and three different out-of-the-tube blues (phthalo blue green shade, cobalt blue, primary cyan). 22x30. ©Michael B. Patterson, 2025
Robert Motherwell, from the “open” series. The image consists of a yellow/gold painted background with subtle but visible brush marks and variations, and a linear figure placed off center to the right and above the center, a black horizontal line with two vertical lines rising from its ends. The vertical lines are of unequal height, and they are just slightly off a true vertical. It is complexly beautiful in its paradoxical simplicity.
The words “TRUMP DID THIS.” stacked vertically, set to the same width, with “DIID” in red and the rest black, in futura extra bold condensed and bold condensed.
An abstract expressionist painting on paper, 22 by 30.” Lots of cadmium yellow and red, with some greens and big black strokes. Really, the more I look at it, the more tempted I am to work on it some more, but my downfall is always overworking things, so maybe not. ©2025, Michael B. Patterson
a cropped image of just the face of the cat in the OP