This painting had been sleeping in my studio now for a couple years. I had left it unfinished in 2009 and moved on to other ideas. It was originally inspired by my friend from home Quincy Mumford who was about to put out his second album and asked me to design him an album cover. His management and I didn’t quite see eye to eye so it never progressed much past a sketch on the canvas.
A couple months ago though, I was flipping through the jungle of ideas in my sketchbooks and rediscovered this sketch which I thought had some real promise. It was already kind of started on the canvas, so I figured I’d put it up on my easel to reincarnate it.
Original sketch from August 2009
I had intended to make it a bit more surreal, having a snowboarder morphed into the guitar player’s arm. Quincy and I both love surfing and snowboarding and I felt it important at the time to combine both. But after recently re-working it, I wasn’t convinced that really worked visually or was necessary. I did like the idea though of being caught between winter and summer both metaphorically and literally. Being born and bred in Jersey, we all have a love/hate relationship with the seasons. A lot of people seem to just hibernate during the winter. For me it was always a time to create and reflect.
This piece needed to reflect where I mentally was now though since years had passed since it’s conception. The concept of living the moment between two transitional periods of life became my main focus along with attempting to illustrate ‘the zone’ that artists and musicians share a passion for. That place we all go to bend reality around our visions, where logic and potentiality take over seamlessly.
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