Bolt III copyright 2010 by Martha Putnam

Martha has painted five images of our American Bulldog puppy, Bolt, so far. He is nine months old now and at about 90 lbs no longer a puppy. But this painting captures the cute and cuddly puppy stage perfectly. That stage didn't last long. Bolt quickly moved from cuddly to demonic. It is a good thing to have a demon in your life. Such a creature reminds us that life isn't one big bowl of cherries. Life is a trail of tears or worse, a tsunami of tears. Sometimes simply keeping your head above water is the most that can be expected.
The only thing worse than all these tears would be no tears at all. The only thing worse than a cuddly puppy turning into a demon is for him to always be a puppy. If life were always sunshine and cuddly puppies, then we would all die of boredom. This painting reminds me to smile through the tears and ruefully rub the bruises on my body caused by my young bulldog using his head like a wrecking ball.

Mother and Cub (over life-size) copyright 1999 by Dave Putnam

This sculpture is made of stainless steel wire, steel structural bars, and fiberglass-polymer concrete. All these materials create a single composite material we could call wire-mesh-steel-reinforced-high-strength concrete. It is incredibly strong, able to withstand a collision with a car traveling about 60 mph (Mother and Cub probably saved the driver's life by absorbing the impact before the car hit a nearby brick wall). These bears are in Antioch California where a tradition has arisen around them. For most major holidays locals dress the bears up; for instance at Christmas they wear Santa hats and on Valentines Day hearts and ribbons.

Miracle of Hope paintings inspire fantastic article

The Miracle of Hope paintings are featured in an article in the Scientist magazine. The article does a terrific job of explaining where the paintings are now and how they are affecting peoples' lives. Below is the link to the article, which includes a photo of the triptych in its new home.
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57747/

Wire Horse IV copyright 2010 by Dave Putnam

By using Jackson Pollock style splatter painting techniques I can try to paint a representional horse and it will still come out highly abstract, even if I really try to make it realistic. I deliberatley handicap myself by using only a broad spatula for smearing background colors across the canvas and then flinging narrow splats of paint from at least two feet away to make the horse itself. I then go back and clean up the horse's outline with more background colors from my big steel spatula and introduce a bit of splatter to the background to anchor the figure in its environment. Of course Jackson Pollock would never permit any figures from entering his purely abstract work. I too have resisted introducing figures for the last couple years. But now forces outside my control are demanding a return of the figure. I am tiptoeing into the post-modern world. The wire horse paintings you've seen here recently will be soon be shipped to our gallery in Santa Fe: akhadoure@gmail.com

Primary Explosion copyright 2010 by Dave Putnam

Here I am showing primary colors emerging from their home: a mixture of white light. Once they emerge the primary colors form secondary colors. This is how light behaves in the real world. However mixing all colors together in the world of paint and canvas produces brown. And in the real world black is created by the absence of light; the opposite is true in the world of paint and canvas. I am exposing the artificial aspects of the art world on a structural level, hopefully gleaning some perspective in the process.

Wire Horse III copyright 2010 by Dave Putnam

For this painting I orginally channeled cave artists in southern Europe circa 50,000 BC. I then needed to jump forward in time to 1995 and across the Atlantic to California to channel an earlier version of myself to complete the "wire horse" part of the painting. I didn't quite make it. I wound up in the 1800s and in the central plains of the American continent where I ended up channeling plains Indians who were raising war horses for their upcoming tangle with the US Army.

Wire Horse II copyright 2010 by Dave Putnam

I am galloping ahead with my wire horse series. For these paintings I am forced to channel an ealier version of myself, a younger Dave who made sculptures out of wire back in the 90s. Plus I have an element of cave art in these wire horse paintings. That means I must also channel the neandrathals who orginally made cave paintings. Luckily the 90s Dave had many neandrathal characteristics, making the channeling task much easier. The current Dave studies yoga and flirts with the idea of a vegan diet. He could never make a painting like Wire Horse II.

Cave Horse II copyright 2010 by Dave Putnam

Cavemen (maybe cavewomen also) were great artists, better than their modern equivalents. The job they were asked to perform was much harder than what is asked of today's artists. Back then your art had to be both esthetically pleasing and it had to produce real magic in the way of buffaloes killed or deer slain. For that reason it as important for a current art student to study cave art as it is for him/her to study Picasso.

Natural Killer cell 2 copyright 2010 by Dave Putnam

The human immune system's greatest warriors, the Natural Killer Cells (NKC), can destroy cancer cells in either a close up grapple or by standing a short distance off and bombing the bad guys with shrappnel. It is important that the NKCs have the ability to kill cancer cells at a distance because the bad guys fight back and in a close up grapple the NKC can be destroyed by the cancer cell. In this painting I show the NKC in the upper right hand corner; it is unloading its bomb bays and showering the green weed-like cancer cells with a savage salvo of shrappnel. You will notice that one of the central chunks of shrappnel takes on the aspect of a superhero, this helps with the visulazation process.

Natural Killer Cell 3 and 4 copyright 2010 by Dave Putnam

As with yesterday's painting I am depicting the human body's greatest microscopic warrior, the Natural Killer Cell. However, I am using more fanciful imagery for this pair. In both panels the NKCs look like killer bees. In the first panel the bee-like NKCs are swarming a green clump of cancer cells and are begining to shred it.

In the second painting in the series the bee-like NKS have destroyed the cancer cells and with the fighting done they assume a more peaceful posture which almost makes them look like daisies, a reminder that while the NKS are savage at destroying malignant cells they are friendly to their fellow human cells and stop attacking once the enemy is vanquished.