Home..... Studio.....Paintings.....Watercolors.....Sculpture

Prints.....Animations.....Videos.....Drawings.....Exhibitions & awards

Collections.....Essays.....Reviews....M2 Gallery

Criswell on Facebook..........Search...........Contact



sculpture  WORKS IN PROGRESS videos
     

 7/13/2021 OK, I'm working on my second new painting since my stroke 3 years ago. In this case, Janet, in addition to being my wife, primary health care worker, chef and life-saver, also became my muse and model. I don't know if I'll ever finish this. Poraiture is not what my right hand should be attempting, but here it is so far.


My Hot Wife, 7/13/21, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches

OK, it may not be finished, but this is as close as I can get.

My Hot Wife 7/31/21, oil on anvas, 16 x 12 inches

And here is my third right-handed attempt at a new painting since my stroke:


skyscape Early April 2022 oil on canvas 16 x 12 inches

3/19/2021 Almost a year ago I wrote this:
Okay, so I have nothing in progress at present. Since finishing the painting below, Epilogue, a year after my stroke, I have continued trying to get my left hand working again and trying to learn to draw and paint wih my right hand, but with maddeningly little progress. And the muse has apparently dumped me. Bitch. What comes after an epilogue? But if and when I start something new it will appear here. 6/17/2020
And now, finally, I am attempting a new painting, "Waiting" Been working on this little thing for weeks of right-handed fumbling, not sure I'll ever finish it to my satisfaction. But I promised I would put any new attempt here, so here it is so far. 3/19/2021



Waiting 3/18/21, oil on canvas, 10 x 16 inches, in progress?

 The old dude on his cane is me, waiting for the sunset, for my left hand to work again, and for my muse to get her ass back here where she belongs. The crow, as usual, is waiting for me to die.

OK, this may be it:


Waiting, 4/5/2021, oil on canvas, 10 x 16 inches

ALSO CHECK ME OUT ON SAATCHI ART.

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

 


8/6/19


8/9/19


9/16/19



11/19/19

 
11/21/19

 
11/22/19

 
11/25/19

 
12/5/19

 
12/14/19

Epilogue (the Red Giant), oil on canvas 24 x 30 inches, in progress
In a few billion years, long after we humans have wiped ourselves out or left the planet, the sun will begin its last gasp, burning its helium and expanding into a red giant, swallowing Mercury, Venus and Earth. In my version a cockroach has survived to watch it happen.

12/14/19

OK. I actually finished it.

 


7/30/18 (charcoal & pastel)


8/1/18 (acrylic grisaille underpainting)

8/2/18 (oil) 



8/11/18

8/4/18
Devices, oil on canvas, 24 x 48 inches, in progress 

 
I didn't know this when I started this painting, but it turns out that that's a Himalayan Salt Lamp over our bed. Himalayan salt is used to make sole (pronounced solay), which is water that has been fully saturated with a natural salt. But here's the kicker: the name comes from the Latin "Sol," the sun....

Then on researching Himalayan salt, I find out it comes from End-Permian salt beds which formed at the bottom of the primal Tethys Sea, dried up some 250 million years ago by a scorching Sol, and then over the next few hundred million years was shoved up into the Himalayas as India crashed into Asia. The End-Permian apocalypse was caused mostly by CO2 released by enormous eruptions of basalt by volcanoes in Russia, creating a poisonous hothouse that acidified the oceans and killed almost all life on Earth, just as humans are now doing by burning fossils - actually releasing CO2 at a faster rate than those Pangean volcanoes did. And the high water temperatures in the Permian ocean (higher than 100 degrees F.) would have generated hypercanes, "continent-sized hurricanes-from-hell, with 500-mile-per-hour winds ...,"* one of which had already turned up on the dark side of the burning and flooded Anthropocene Earth which had strangely materialized in my painting.... Go figure.

*That quote is from the book the old dude in the painting is reading, The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen.

 


7/21/18

7/24/18a. Had to paste another sheet on
the left side. Widescreen! 11 x 21 inches

 

 


7/24/18b

 


7/25/18. And another on the right side. A 180 degree view now! 11 x 22 inches.


Moving Earth & Moon.
(In this video I totally screw up the bookshelf behind the Earth,
but I fixed it later.)

 

Devices, 2018, pencil & white charcoal on butcher paper, 11 x 22 inches 

 


Bug on the Floor, first sketch, 7/14/18, graphite, ballpoint & white charcoal,
6½ x 5¼ inches

7/15/18
 To paint the boards on this laminate (fake hardwood) flooring in the dining room I needed a physical vanishing point to fasten a string to. But it turned out to be so high that I had to construct the apparatus shown here. The vanishing point is way up at the very top of that attached board.  

7/17/18

7/17/18

7/23/18
 
7/19/18
Bug on the Floor, watercolor, 30 x 23 inches

 


7/3/18
7/3/18
7/14/18

 I had wanted to paint this on a larger canvas, but all I had at the time was an 18 x 24 (see below) and I was afraid if I waited I would lose it, and besides, I had no idea how to paint those water drops, so #1438 was sort of a trial run. Now I have a 30 x 40 and am starting over.

Warren 7/5/18

7/4/18   
7/5/18

7/7/18

7/11/18
Drain,  oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, in progress


6/25/18

6/25/18


7/03/18

 I don't know, so don't ask. After several months with no new images, only a few reincarnations of old ones, so that I was really beginning to accept that the muse had left me for good, this is what she brought me. I was in the upstairs bathroom filling my watering can for my tomatoes' afternoon drink, when my eyes suddenly focused on the bottom of the sink, where fallen drops of water from the faucet were reflecting the overhead light in strange ways. Something I had never seen before! Just when I thought I had seen everything worth seeing and there was nothing more to discover and therefore nothing more to paint. When I started to draw it, I saw the spiral curling into the drain. The dead bug seemed to animate it all somehow, but I have no clue to what, if anything, it might mean as an image.

So that night I dreamed of another painting. "Again, Mr. Benny?!" This one also had some kind of sink in it, but in the foreground was a landscape, a highway, the kind of thing I've painted way too many times, but this looked different somehow. But when I tried to sketch it the next day, I realized it was the same image! So I started painting. I don't even know what the title is. But a desperate artist doesn't question the muse. You just paint the damn thing.

"Only one thing in art is valid - that which cannot be explained." Marcel Duchamp

(However, if you want a deep reading of this image - an explanation of the unexplainable - by a well informed viewer, check this out.)
Warren 6/28/18 


6/26/18


6/27/18

 

 

 


5/28/18

 


6/30/18

 
#1438, acrylic & oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

 

 After failing twice to make a print of Fly Me to the Moon, like Sisyphus I decided to try again. Here is the result. It is a linocut, basically, but part of it (the tree) is printed intaglio over a base printed in relief and a pastel enhanced sky. Plus the collaged leaves. So each one will be a little different--but then so are all my prints.
June 7, 2018 

 

 
Fly Me to the Moon, 2018, linocut with pastel, collage & other stuff,
image 10 x 7 inches

 
Key block

Ground block

Color block

Intaglio block 

 And then there's this one, an artist's proof, in which the leaves began to evolve ...


Fly Me to the Moon, 2018, linocut, a.p. 1/1

 


 Overpass, 2018, oil on canvas, 40x 30 inches

Eat Now (Again), 2018, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches


Fly Me to the Moon, watercolor, 30 x 23 inches



Fly Me to the Moon, 2017, oil & collage on canvas, 40 x 30 inches 

Installation view of Fly Me to the Moon


8/7/17, 5 x 7 inches 
 
8/25/17, 5 x 7 inches
 
8/25/17, 5 x 7 inches

After telling Margueritte in a letter that I was burnt out, I got up and made that first sketch to illustrate how I felt. The rest followed in a tortuous series of frustrations and failures. I thought it might be my last painting because I might never finish it. But then on Oct. 7, Saturday evening, I had a breakthrough. The thing suddenly caught fire! So I decided to try to finish it.

 
9/30/17


10/15/17
 
10/10/17
 Burnout, 2017, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
 

 
 

9/4/17
 

9/7/17


9/5/17
Ghosts, watercolor, 23 x 30 inches

 

Found this little watercolor in a box of old cards, this one a Christmas card from 2008 of my wife and me walking in snow out by the pond ...



... and even though I didn't know why this ghostly image grabbed me (100 degrees F. outside with a solar eclipse approaching), I finally decided to make a print of it. I guess, besides depicting ghosts, the print itself is a kind of ghost of the original watercolor. Ghosts all the way down.
 (8/21/17)


2 of 12, 8/21/17, the day of the eclipse
Ghosts, 2017, 3-color linocut, image 7 x 10 inches 
 

Key block

1 of 11, 6/20/17

Ground block
A Man Following a Woman with a Dog in Norwood Creech & Tri Watkins' Driveway, 2017,
2-color linocut, image 7 x 10 inches

 

A Man Following a Woman with a Dog in Norwood Creech & Tri Watkins' Driveway, 6/16/17, watercolor & pastel on recycled paper, 5 x 7 inches
On June 4 Norwood Creech posted this photo on Facebook, saying the light reminded her of Warren Criswell's paintings:

David Bailin warned her that Criswell might steal that image from her, and so of course I had to take up the challenge. I did that drawing as a joke, but then it sort of grew on me, and now I'm making a linocut from it. (See above.)
 
Sailor's Delight, 2017, 3-color linocut, image 7 x 10 inches, t.p. 1 of 6



 Sailor's Delight, 2017, watercolor, 23 x 30 inches


5/18/17

5/19/17


Sailor's Delight, 2017, oil on panel, 13 x 18 inches
 

 


As the Crow Flies, 2017, 3-color linocut with pastel, image 10 x 7 inches

 



Smoke, 2017, 2-color linocut with pastel, image 7 x 10 inches

 

This was image inspired by "The Half-Finished Heaven," a poem by Tomas Tranströmer, which ends with these two lines:

The water is shining among the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth 


 Half-Finished Hell, 2017, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

 


Mid-Autumn Festival, 2017, 3-color mini-linocut,
image 2 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches
 

 

 


 10/10/16 First sketch


Autumn Leaves, 2016, watercolor & collage, 30 x 23 inches

I tried to make a print of this before but failed. After listening to the song again - via a video of Dietrich Fischer-Diskau and Alfred Brendel, sent to me by Lisa Bostic on Facebook - I thought I might try it again.


Vapor Trails (der Leiermann), 9/20/16, linocut with pastel, image 7 x 10 inches, 1 of 12


 While I was waiting for those to dry completely so I could do the "post-production" work on them, working on my studio catalog, I stumbled upon another pole dancer, this one less vaporous, an old drawing from 1996, Rita. Comparing the drawing to the lioncut I made from it, I noticed some things I seemed to have missed when translating the drawing to the print.... That was a traditional linocut, made long before I invented the "Criswell Linocut," so I decided to make another version of it using my present methods.

First I ran it with 2 blocks, white over black...

 

9/29/16

But then I cut a 3rd block and overprinted a red glaze.

 

10/1/16
Rita, 2016, 3-color linocut, image 5 x 7 inches 



Blind Man's Bluff, 2016, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches




Summer Solstice, 2016, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches


 

 

 

 
4/27/16 Preliminary sketch

Video


Götterdämmerung (or The End), oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches

 


Working on "And now you're even older"
 
"And now you're even older," 6/7/16, monotype,
image 10.5 x 8 inches

And now you're older still!

 


Ticks Crossing, 2016, cover art for Steve Whiteaker's next CD,
oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches



Smoke, 2016, watercolor, 23 x 30 inches

 


 Smoke, 2016, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

 

 


Oracle, 2016, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

 

 Winter Solstice, 2016, watercolor, 23 x 30 inches

 


Vapor Trails (Hurdy-Gurdy Man), 2015, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

Vapor Trails (der Leiermann), 2015, watercolor, 23 x 30 inches

 


color block (orange)
 


ground block (black)

key block (white)
 Mid-Autumn Festival, 3-color linocut, image 10 x 7 inches, edition of 12

 



 Two Buzzards, 2015, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

 

 

Key block


T.P., 9/14/15
 
Ground block

Dark Road,
2-color linocut, image 10 x 7 inches

 


Girls & Gulls, 8/26/15, acrylic, oil & pencil on paper, 30 x 23 inches 

 


Crescents, oil on canvas, 2015, 20 x 16 inches

Crescents, 2015, watercolor, 30 x 22 inches

Crescents, 2015, 3-color linocut, image 10 x 7 inches
Venus and Jupiter are again in conjunction, and even though I recorded their last encounter in 2012 with an oil, watercolor and print, I felt obliged to do it again. This was the lineup around June 25, a crescent Venus, Jupiter, Regulus (in Leo) and the crescent moon tracing a larger crescent in the western sky. The woman appeared as I was applying the final glaze. A complete surprise! 7/12/15
 

 

 



 As the Crow Flies, 2015, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

 

 

Flash Flood, 2015, 2-color linocut with watercolor,image 7 x 10 inches

Two Transients, 2015, 3-color linocut,
image 7 x 10 inches

 


Two Transients, 4/17/15, pencil & white charcoal on tan paper, 9 x 13 inches

Nocturne, 2015, 3-color linocut,
image 5 x 7 inches

 


Sketch (inspired by JMW Turner), 2/1/15


Trial proof 6/10, 2/16/15

Trial proof 5/10, 2/10/15
 Revelation, 2015, linocut, image 7 x 10 inches

 


It Took Four Vultures, 2014, watercolor,
30 x 23 inches

Never Look a Crow in the Eye, 2014, watercolor, 30 x 23 inches

 



Spider, 2014,watercolor & box cutter on paper,
30 x 23 inches

 



 Arc, 2014, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

 


The Secret Sharer, oil on canvas,
20 x 16 inches, detail

The Secret Sharer, 2014, oil on canvas & wood panel,
34 x 25½ inches

(If you want to see how this image evolved, click here.)

The Secret Sharer, 2014, linocut, image 10 x 7 inches, edition of 12

 

 
Key block

9 of 10, 4/20/14

Ground block
 Alignment (6 AM), 2014, 3-color linocut, image 10 x 7 inches
(For a demo video of the making of this linocut, go here.)

 



4/13/14
Alignment (6 AM), 2014, watercolor, 32 x 23 inches

 

 A Man Following a Woman in Dark Woods, 2014, oil on canvas,
30 x 40 inches

 

 
Key block


1 of 12, 12/28/13

Ground block (with counterproof of keyblock)
A Man Following a Woman  in Dark Woods, 2013, 2-color linocut, image 7 x 10 inches,
edition of 12

 


1st sketch, 10/19/13, pencil on paper,
4 x 5 inches

 

 

12/8/13 

 

 A Man Following a Woman in Dark Woods, animation in acrylic, pastel & charcoal on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

 


7/5/13 


7/7/13

7/15/13

 


7/13/13




7/14/13

Go Ask Alice, 2013, clay sculpture in progress, 18 x 18 x 5 inches

(Warren working on Alice)

 


The key block


4 or 12, 5/28/13 
 
The ground block
 Conjunction, 2-color linocut, image 10 x 7 inches

 

   
 Two minimonotypes, 5/20/13, image 1¾ x 2¼ inches

 


The key block


1 of 10
 
The ground block
Go Ask Alice, 2013, 2-color linocut, image 7 x 10 inches, edition of 10 

 

 
Kayla in the Window, studies in natural light, 5/5/13, pencil & chalks on tan paper, 24 x 18 inches

 


 Go Ask Alice, 2013, watercolor, 23 x 30 inches

 


Go Ask Alice, 2013, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

 


Kayla 1, 4/8/13, graphite & white charcoal on tan paper,
7 x 9 inches

  
Kayla 2, 4/8/13, graphite & white charcoal on tan paper,
9 x 12 inches

Go Ask Alice, 4/23/13, chalks on tan laid paper, 18 x 24 inches

 


The Moon & Six Cents, 2013, watercolor, 30 x 23 inches

The Moon and Six Cents, 2013, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 inches

The Moon & Six Cents, 2013, 3-color linocut,image 9¾ x 7¼ inches,
edition of 10 

 

 

 

 

 

 CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR A DEAD DOG

I found this block while attempting to clean up around my press yesterday. Apparently I had never tried to print it, maybe never finished it, but I liked the way it looked. I remember drawing this on the lino while Skipper (a Schipperke), who died a year later, was sleeping on the floor in my studio in 2007. So I cut a ground block for it and printed it today--a small edition of 5, the same number of years it took to make it. Now I can frame one of them and put it beside Skipper's urn.
12/10/12

Skipper, 2007-2012, linocut in 2 colors,
image 5 x 3 inches

 


Naked Dreams, 2012, terracotta,
18 x 11 x 3 inches

The Temple of the Muse, or Butthead, 2012, terracotta,
12 x 9 inches horizontal,
11 inches vertical

 



Wild Geese, 11/5/12, 2-color linocut, image 9¾ x 7¼ inches, 2 of 10

Wild Geese II, 2013, oil on canvas,
24 x 18 inches


Wild Geese I, 2012, watercolor, 28 x 22 inches

 

 
Sketch for "Wild Geese," 10/16/12, graphite & pastel
on tan paper, 12 x 9 inches
 

 


Sleep Reading, 8/22/12, monotype, image
8 x 10 ½ inches

Sleep Reading, 2012, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches

Sleep Reading, 2-color linocut,
image 5 x 7 inches, edition of 12

 


Aristeas, 1996, oil on wood,
24 x 17 inches

Aristeas, 8/11/12, my animation of the painting.

 


A Dryad in the Headlights, 6/5/12, graphite & chalk on green laid paper, 22 x 12 inches


Nature Morte: Gnat Traps, watercolor,
23 x 15 inches

 


A Dryad in the Headlights, 6/16/12, 3-color linocut,
image 7 x 5 inches, edition of 10

 


 Simone Jumps! 2012, bronze, 19 x 12 x 13 inches

 


Angry Birds I, 2012, terracotta,
7 inches high
 


Psyche, 2012, terracotta,
17 x 13 x 3 inches

Angry Birds II, 2012, terracotta,
17 inches high

 


2/11/12


2/13/12

2/11/12
Sketches for "Death and the Maiden," graphite & white charcoal on buff paper,
12 x 9 inches  

 


Black Stockings XXI, 12/1/11, monotype on buff paper, image 7 x 5 inches,

Up Close & Personal, 12/2/11, monotype on buff paper, image 5 x 7 inches

 Black Stockings XXIa, 12/1/11, monotype ghost on white rice paper, image 7 x 5 inches

 

 LOST AND FOUND


Concerto, 2001 - 2011, oil on linen, 9 x 12 inches (sold)

 I found this canvas in my closet the other day, begun from a sketch I did at an ASO concert back in 2001 but never finished. So I finished it--or as finished as it's going to get--I like the sketchiness of the underpainting so I left most of it, over-painting only the center. I know it was David Itkin conducting but I can't remember who the piano player was or what concerto they were playing. So it took 10 years to paint this picture.

  RELIEF ETCHING

I'm reading Joseph Viscomi's book, Blake and The Idea of the Book, in which the author tries to reconstruct the obscure printmaking methods Blake used to produce his Illuminated Books. Relief etching looked pretty easy--a sort of reverse process like my linocuts--so I decided to give it a try. Oh, easy for William!


 11/12/11, painting on copper plate

11/12/11, varnished plate with fine lines drawn with needle

11/15/11, 5th proof with watercolor

 This was only a test-- just to see if it would work. Not as easy to draw and paint on copper with asphaltum as it looked in the book. The varnish wanted to spread out on the plate, refused to hold a line. Aj Smith told me the varnish wasn't thick enough, and it turned out he was right. But then I had trouble ethching the plate because my nitric bath was old and produced no bubbles, so I tried some old ferric chloride (it's been, like, 10 years since I've done any etching) and that worked pretty well--too well, in fact, since I got some foul biting in the dark areas--but it bit the fine lines pretty well. Until I get some more acid I don't have a strong enough mordant to bite the large open areas, like the back of the woman picking up a rock. I had to wipe that out with a rag before printing. But I think I might like this technique.
 
11/14/11, 1st proof, with watercolor
  
11/14/11, 2nd proof, with watercolor


11/15/11, 3rd proof


11/15/11, 3rd proof with watercolor
Woman Picking Up a Rock, relief etching with watercolor, 6 x 4¼ inches 

 

 


Roadkill: Keyblock for linocut, 11 x 15 inches, 10/5/10


Roadkill, drypoint-linocut, 11 x 15 inches, 10/7/10

 


Norman Boehm at UALR, 3/29/10, ballpoint on recital program,
8½ x 11 inches
 
 
Satin Doll: Michael Carenbauer at Boswell-Mourot Gallery, 4/3/10,
ballpoint on back of invitation,
4 x 6 inches

 


Pouring aluminum

Demolding
 Low-Flying Crow, 2009, cast aluminum relief, 7 x 22 x 2¼ inches

 


 Bob Among the Buddhas, 2009, oil on hardwood, 7 x 9 inches

Jason at Wolfman Studios, 2009, oil on canvas, 7 x 10 inches

 


Sketch for Sammy Painting (Blue Gloves), ballpoint & pastel on yellow paper, 5 x 7 inches



2/21/07

 
2/19/07

 Sammy Painting (Blue Gloves), sepia chalk and pastel on gray paper,
18 x 20½ inches

(Sammy Peter's website)


 

FOR PRICES OR OTHER INFO SEND ME AN EMAIL

See also

Warren Criswell's Studio Catalog: works from 1978 to the present

 

Warren Criswell Home Page

All images and text on this Website
Copyright
© 2013-2021 by Warren Criswell