Feburary 2010 News | Opt out of News

Landscape #6 (a river less traveled)

Landscape #6 (a river less traveled) | 38 x 54 inches | oil on canvas 2010
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This is the last in a series of 6 paintings featuring the mighty landscape! While traveling last Labor Day, we encountered this small settlement of floating cabins. When I was a boy, I can remember reading Huckleberry Finn—and in fact, this is the Mississippi River. This painting shows the domain of the young and the old. In between these ages, we fool ourselves into thinking that we need much more than the simplest of living to achieve contentedness. Or perhaps, it’s just a fantasy to believe we can live with less. I am in the camp of the former. Perhaps one day my circumstances will again require this of me. In the mean time, I will depict in art my belief in an ideal.

Sticks in Water #5

Sticks in Water #5  | 10 x 12 inches | oil on canvas 2010
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Almost every morning I wake up with a snippet of music in my head. Sometimes it’s a song I’ve heard before and sometimes it’s one I’ve never heard. This usually plays out when I’m in the shower. Once in awhile it isn’t a song I am hearing at all but rather, a phrase. One day it was a just a repeating string of words — sticks in wa-ter, sticks in wa-ter, sticks in wa-ter. Over and over again I heard it. So I started to repeat it out loud until it became a chant — STICKS IN WA-TER, STICKS IN WA-TER, STICKS IN WA-TER!! That chant spawned images in my head of these branches and twigs, partially submerged. I clarified the soft forms of thought into these 5 pieces. Please enjoy without moderation

state of the studio

Been a long time since the last newsletter! My humble apologies. What excuse do I have? Well, only that I was somewhat incapacitated with ruminations. But one can’t wallow forever, or death is waiting to snatch one away. So I choose to grow and develop and to view the world with optimism.

I am developing a new appreciation for 3-dimensional forms in my ceramic and sculpture classes. This is no easy form of craft! And to take it to it’s artistic potential is even more difficult. However, I have had some small successes, which I will share with you in future news.

why i paint

“Once something is sketched, it belongs to me and I thoughtfully arrange it on my painting surface where it is reborn.”

Todd Starks creates paintings using a variety of visual languages to talk about emotional space, shape, color, pattern and humor. With a painterly style, Starks carefully builds up impasto layers, using wet into wet oil paint, and allowing shards of underpainting to show through. Formally, the pieces are about composition, color harmonies, shape, and texture, yet each piece reveals a sensory and spritual connection to the landscape around him, and a dynamic interplay between conscious and subconscious thought.