the mona lisa

no painting should ever be worth more than the mona lisa.....never ever ever ever should a painting be valued more than the M.L. especially not modern art..if you disagree I will punch you.

the mona lisa

I have always wanted to paint a copy of the mona lisa. This is a true test of skill, like playing Beethoven's 5th. I always have too many projects but I may attack this one. I wont do it half assed, it will be 155%.

Matisse

I am very excited not to go to the Matisse exhibit. Matisse was a genius, he just isnt my kind of genius. I prefer Picasso to Matisse...I like early Picasso, before he started "painting checks"

a pirate looks at 40

Mother, mother ocean
I've heard you call
Wanted to sail upon your waters
Since I was three feet tall
You've seen it all
You see it all
I've watched the men who rode you
Switched from sails to steam
And in your belly you hold the treasures
Few have ever seen
Most of them dreams
Most of them dreams
Yes I am a pirate
Two hundred years too late
The cannons don't thunder
There's nothing to plunder
I'm an over forty victim of fate
Arriving too late
Arriving too late
I've done a bit of smuggling
And I've run my share of grass
I've made enough money to buy Miami
But I pissed it away so fast
Never meant to last
Never meant to last
Well I have been drunk now for over two weeks
I past and I've rallied and I sprung a few leaks
But I've got to stop wishin' got to go fishin'
I'm down to rock bottom again
With just a few friends
Just a few friends
I go for younger women Lived with several awhile
But I've ran them away
Hell, they come back some day
And still can manage to smile
Just takes a while
It just takes a while
Mother mother ocean
After all these years I've found
This occupational hazard be
My occupations just not around
Feels like I've drown
Gonna get drunk up town
Feels like I've drown
When I get drunk up town

NAME DROPPER: richard thomas

I met richard thomas in a restaurant in little italy a ways back...(he was john boy in the waltons)...He was a really nice guy, he was a lot like john boy...god bless john boy.


american alex

New painting by gardega

Here is my next painting. Yes, I am painting it from a photo (and sketches as well) it will be my masterpiece and a work for the ages...starting it has been hell. Every time I start I get hit with another project. The final work will be a mix of the various photos I have taken. The model is my ex girlfriend, She is a good girl and took the time to pose and get fitted into the dress etc. When I think of my exes I think of a certain line from a jimmy buffet song...

I go for younger women, lived with several awhile
And though I ran them away, they'll come back one day.
And still could manage a smile
It just takes awhile, just takes awhile.

Mother, mother ocean, after all these years I've found
My occupational hazard being my occupations
just not around.
I feel like I've drowned,
Gonna head uptown.

(them is some good words... )

painting of the day: st thomas by velazquez

I chose this painting because It is a spitting image of me ( minus the mustache) I am a huge fan of Velazquez. He is one of my favorites of all time and a great genius among men...I am glad he painted me 500 years before I was born.

St. Joesph Windows

I have been commissioned to create 5 windows for a mausoleum. This project starts Sept. 1 and will last 3 months approx...they will be etched glass (not stained glass.) St. Joseph was a carpenter--he was Christ's father..I am looking forward to starting this project two of the 5 window designs have been approved.

sold

Sketchy Folk Gallery

professor ripple

sketchy frog

sketchy fish

Sketchy Chicken

frog prince

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

all works copyright sketchy folk...(above images are all sold)

new images will be posted soon.

New Sketchy Folk painting: Frog Prince

This painting is currently on hold for two days for a client. It will be released for sale after two days. Sketchy Folk made a nice piece..Nice job, Sketchy.

approx. 12 x 12 acrylic and oils on masonite.

gardega world update

www.gardegaworld.com

Will soon be updated. It is a work  in progress, an organic thing. I figure it will take a full year to have all the websites and links alive.

But it is not forgotten--- anymore than one can forget ones toes.

Nassau County

This is the next book cover for the ambassador yellow pages. (Nassau county) I like painting water and beaches..Next best thing to being there. If you look closely you can see Nassau in the waves. I thought this was clever...my friend laughed at me and said I was "above" hiding words in waves. I think it falls between the twin seas of "corny" and "clever"...Maybe the kids of Nassau will like it...I used to be a pretty hardcore artist/ person but now as I get older (and softer) I take pleasure in the occasional happy sun-shiney picture. In a few years I will be the guy in black socks and shorts with the metal detector on the beach... I am sure of it. This painting is for sale but I may gift it to a friend...who knows..

SOLD


---captain alex

RIP houseplant

I keep houseplants for years. I have a green thumb. Once I had a plant for 7 years, twice as long as my longest relationship. I like my plants--- I move them around so they can have new environment and not get bored...When I was in hospital my sister threw away one of my plants...she thought it was dead-- It was just in dire need of water. I actually find myself missing my plant...I dont name my plants--that is for crazy folk. But I miss the damn thing...I knew when it needed water...I let the poor thing down, sorry plant.

MAN BUYS ANSEL ADAMS NEGATIVES FOR $43.00

A 64 year old man in California bought a box of negatives for $43.00 ten years ago. They seem to be Ansel Adams original negatives worth 2 million. Not bad ROI (return on investment) even Bernie madoff couldn't get you such numbers...I like ansel adams but I am a better photographer. The reason I am better is that I am still alive and he has passed on...Once I die he will be a better photographer. A living artist (even a crappy one) is better than a dead artist because dead people dont paint. I am a sucker, If I sold those negatves for two million I would have to give the poor slob who sold them to me money (if he was a nice person) if he was a jerk he would get nothing..it pays to be nice.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_ansel_adams_lost_work

warts and all

someone told me my blog was pompous and that i name drop...I had to laugh out loud...she forgot to mention I use horrible grammar.

a.

twas a bad three days

I am fine now and my wounds are healing....Will miss my ole appendix it was a friend of mine for years...poor little fella

moving pictures

the worlds oldest living things

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/07/26/eco.oldest.living.things/index.html?hpt=Mid

sketchy folk street rap

Im the king of the empty page
its my domain, its my stage
sketchy folk and sketchy fish
ill draw chickens if I wish
with colours bright
and lines so true
sketchy red and sketchy blue
happy trees and snappy clouds
when I draw I draw a crowd
sketchy folk in page six
sketchy folk is in the mix
sketchy is as sketchy does
sketchy folk creates a buzz

and so on...

Jazz

I am not smart enough to understand Jazz. I dont get it...my IQ is too low to understand the dischordant essence of modern jazz. I like swing jazz. I get swing jazz. It has harmony and chord structure. I also dont get contemporary art, again, my IQ is too low. I wish I was in mensa so I could get it! Einstein hated modern art because he understood it. I am not einstein...I am too dumb to get it...I am a neanderthal---I like the old dusty masters like Raphael...They are easier to understand...they are obvious...for the avg. lunkhead.

The Rocking Chair Test

I don't have a true Pole-star driven Philosophy in life. For much of my life it has been to paint art I believed in like a crazed madman and pray to make enough money not to get evicted..There is one thing, however, I think about quite often and I call it "the rocking chair test.."

When you are old and grey and tired and worn and stretched ever too thin over the drum of life and you sit on the porch of your twilight years and watch your final sunsets bleed into the horizon what will you look back on?

A life of safety and regret, a life lived on the sidelines, on the beach with only a toe dipped into the water.?

did you give your guts to your dreams? Did you listen to the music inside? or did you dance to the music of another..did you sell your dreams for small desires? for a ticking trap, a falsehood? Did you lose your race to the rats of security?

These are ugly questions and most men tuck them far away in the bottles of some psychic pantry behind a door they will never open...

If you dont do what moves you in life, if you go against he grain of the universe your twilight years and final sunsets will be long and sad and tainted with the remains of what "could have beenn"

"all the same we take ourt chances,
laughed at by time, tricked by circumstances..." N.P.

on the wing

I will be on the wing in 9 days. I am off to Colorado to paint a mural.. It was my desire to drive to Colorado to but it makes more sense to ship out my art and fly...another great plan ruined by logic. I will be in Colorado for about a month and then I return to find a new apt in NYC or Brooklyn and start my mausoleum work. I guess I should be married in the burbs at my old age but I have managed to keep art as my true and twisted passion for the last 20 years of my life without any major regrets and more stories than I could ever write or tell....

Sketchy Folk paints a Sketchy Frog!

Sketchy Folk paints a Sketchy Frog from sketchy folk on Vimeo.

Peter Gabriel » Tom Waits from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

These has all the qualities of things that are awesome

I am Cygnus: bringer of balance

V. Cygnus:  Bringer of Balance
I have memory and awareness
But I have no shape or form
As a disembodied spirit
I am dead and yet unborn
I have passed into Olympus
As was told in tales of old
To the city of Immortals
Marble white and purest gold
I see the gods in battle rage on high
Thunderbolts across the sky
I cannot move, I cannot hide
I feel a silent scream begin inside
Then all at once the chaos ceased
A stillness fell, a sudden peace
The warriors felt my silent cry
And stayed their struggle, mystified
Apollo was astonished
Dionysus thought me mad
But they heard my story further
And they wondered, and were sad
Looking down from Olympus
On a world of doubt and fear
Its surface splintered
Into sorry Hemispheres
They sat a while in silence
Then they turned at last to me
'We will call you Cygnus,
The god of Balance you shall be'

Looking For Mercy: Screenplay by gardega

 I am writing all day--or is it typing--I forget..I have almost gotten as far as I can before I have to fly to texas for the final research on my work of genius/ screenplay...

 

 someone asked me how they can get their screenplay in page six:

 

the answer--you cant..unless, of course, you have a name like gardega which stands for destiny above the great unwashed masses of swirling intellectual impotence and bad sophmoric art and abstract dribble and ill formed thoughts and concepts better left on dusty shelves...

 

Never bow to your audience, lift them up to you..gardega

 

 

We hear . . .

Last Updated: 5:06 AM, June 11, 2010

Posted: 1:16 AM, June 11, 2010

Comments: 4

| More Print

That the Mets will honor the military on July 5 at a game against the Reds by having retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, the first Jewish Medal of Honor recipient and an NBC News military analyst, swear in several hundred troops and then throw out the first pitch . . . That Donald Trump Jr. was spotted with a "Celebrity Apprentice" camera crew at at Gold's Gym at West 54th and Eighth Avenue on a challenge involving healthy popcorn . . . That "Looking for Mercy" -- a screenplay by artist Alex Gardega about an artist who has a mental breakdown and moves back to his small hometown to find sanity -- is getting a lot of buzz in Hollywood

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/we_hear_vw40xHHgOetKhvk5r10pWL#ixzz0ucQnb47v

update

today I will be working on my world famous screenplay that was in Page Six and will be a movie in a few years...8 hours sitting and typing...no sketching, no painting..me and the laptop and my fan and talk radio...

Deep fried Bacon Wrapped Twinkie

As I am sitting in my buddies restaurant (the wonderful Rain Water Grill) (I like to do my blogging from here as it gets my butt out of my apt.) they dropped a little surprise for me on the bar..A deep-fried-bacon-wrapped twinkie..Seeing as how I just had my appendix removed I dived right in and ate the thing---sketchy food for sketchy folk..it was jolly good but I think it is a once in a lifetime thing, kind of like birth, death or losing ones appendix...or virginity

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy birthday to my mother, the greatest of all possible moms. When no one else believed in my wretched scribbles my mother was always there to pick them off the dusty floor and file them neatly for me and tell me they were great.

To My Mother by Robert Louis Stevenson

You too, my mother, read my rhymes
For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.

Sketchy Frog!

There has been a lot of requests for Sketchy Frogs..They sell very quickly...There will be some new ones this weekend (sketchy folk has promised me at least two by sunday) If you want to get on the email list for a sketchy frog you can email me or if you paypal to my email you are guaranteed one by this weekend. Sketchy Frogs are $25.00 and that is damn cheap for a world famous street artist painting.

alexgardega@gmail.com

Professor Ripple: Copyright Sketchy Folk 2003- 2010

Sketchy Folk has painted a new work. Here is Professor Ripple. There is a great back-story  to Professor Ripple but that is a tale for another day. Professor Ripple is copyrighted and trademarked 9 ways to sunday (so all you art thieves who steal my ideas can hit the proverbial road.)

"So many different fishy- fish,
swimming in the sea!
I'm Professor Ripple,
wont you come and swim with me!"

This piece is for sale 


I am sketchy folks unofficial art dealer because he is lazy and doesnt have a website--damn street artist/ urchin..


to purchase:


alexgardega@gmail.com

 

personal repsonsibility

to be an artist you must be 100% responsible for your success or failure. There are no excuses. you cant blame your parents, you cant blame anyone.You alone hold the blame. You cannot blame the previous administration. you create your own reality.

leonardo learning: energy

all enviroments have energy. - am very sensitive to energy. I once rented a one bedroom apt. and I refused to sleep in the bedroom for the entire year I lived there. I slept on the couch in the living room every night. As I was moving out I asked my landlord about the bedroom and he confessesd the last tenant died in the bedroom from a drug overdose. True story...There are always rooms I can work in and rooms I cant work in. My present studio has okay energy but the kitchen has better energy so I work in the kitchen. I can do mechanical work in my studio but I cant create in there. I am also very sensitive to human energy. Sometimes people sit near me and I get a bad vibration and I get up and leave. the universe is built on energy and vibration, it it in fact all there is. you are part of the vibration of the universe, not separate from it. this is not crazy talk, this is quantum talk.

Northumberland

This is my favorite word..not sure why...gardega is my second favorite word followed by gold and this is followed by alizarin.

alex news network

I read an article today speculating as to whether barry satoro (obama) would bomb Iran. W (to his credit) refused to bomb Iran. I would be very interested to see how the sheeple and the media react of he did bomb Iran. Would the left stay with him as he irradiates women and children with a nuke? Or would they condemn him (as they should) like they would if W did such a thing. If he does bomb Iran and is not condemned for such an act then I will have used up all my hope for the sheeple, they are too far gone. Their brains stolen by the cathode rays many years ago. one fish two fish red puppet blue puppet...

zombies

someone recently told me they give obama an 8 out of 10. I replied that you must love george w. because all the policies are the same. this is where the zombies get all confused...all the policies are the same minus a few superficial ones. does not compute, IQ too low..will robinson..

Sketchy Folk: New painting--sketchy frog

My buddy the street artist Sketchy Folk painted a new piece. I like his new work even though he is a slacker.

Slacker has not built his website yet. So I have to sell his crap for him..on a good note it is cheap.

13 x 15 acrylic on masonite.

$25.00

alexgardega@gmail.com

leonardo learning: Listen to your painting

Here is the latest update on my American Shaman painting. Something was not working for me in the painting. The figure of my friend in front of the buffalo was competing with the buffalo. It was an issue that couldn't be solved with color or tone or value etc. Then I began to listen to the painting and I realized that the solution the painting wanted was for the figure to be a ghost, a silhouette, a quantum phantom in time space.  This painting already had a "heightened" reality to it. When you learn to shut up and listen you can make progress as an artist or a shaman..this is called artistic maturity...it takes about 10,000 paintings to get there--start painting.

Dear Alex-

 

Based on your recent surgery and the help from your Mom & Sis, note the following written by Louise Hay--

 

"All the healing techniques in the world won't really help unless love goes with them".

 

Glad to know you are back to yourself and doing the art.

 

Hope you remember me because I am reminded of your great work in every room of my home!

 

Best,                                                        

A

professor nothing

never trust academia. never trust those who have spent their lives in classrooms. they have nothing to teach you about art or life and they certainly should not be in positions of government. those who cant do teach or go to work for the govt.

work in progress: American Shaman...by gardega

This painting will be one of those in rotation on my easel for a year. Ill just keep working on it until someone buys it. Art is never done, it is just "let go" I have a lot of work to do on face. The buffalo is starting to work. he matting on its fur is fun to paint. I am slowly adding houses in distance. I think the houses add a certain element the painting needs.

oil on canvas 6 x 4 foot

BMI (body mass index)

The news and the blogosphere is abuzz with the gov't/ nanny states desire to know your BMI. Your BMI is a ratio between your height and weight. There are calculators to be found on Google. The pound of flesh that will come with the health care bill is ever increasing govt intrusion nto your life and bedroom. --you voted for him, not I. The sheep are not able to watch out for themselves--the almight shepard must step in and tell us what is best for us. 1984 was so yesterday and electronic books finally surpassed "real books" in sales on Amazon. My BMI is a full point lower than Lance Armstrong's. I guess he is getting pudgy and lazy in his old age. I probably pace around as many miles as he bikes in a given day. There is much to be done and so little time... 

Eakins: The Gross Clinic

For the doctors in the house ( I know I have at least two doctors who read my swill and one soon-to be doctor) This wonderful painting was recently cleaned. I will go into details soon..Being a lazy sot here is the Philly Inquirer on this painting.


http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20100720_Restoration_of_Eakins___quot_Gross_Clinic_quot__deemed_a_successful_operation.html

alexo

High Art

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNtK9wRF1JI&feature=related

quote of the day

"Have you noticed that all the people in favour of birth control are already born?"

Benny Hill

champagne found in shipwreck: Gardega News Service

Divers earlier this week found 30 bottles of bubbly believed to date back to 1780 and possibly be Veuve Clicquot--the Mercedes of bubbly. It has been perfectly preserved and supposedly tastes perfect. Each bottle could possibly fetch $65,000 it the authenticity can be verified. The bottles were found july 6th off Aaland island


View Larger Map


The find supposedly has a dark golden color and intense aroma.
There is theory that it could be Louis the XVI'S own champagne sent to Peter The Great. If this is the case it could fetch several million.

If it was simply the collection of some Finnish guy named sturg, then it isnt worth quite as much, Methinks.

sand painting union square

 This guy makes great sand paintings in union square. The funny thing is when he is done and steps way you can watch the oblivion zombies walk right across them as they stare into the zombie inducing cellular device in their hands..

basquiat

If you are a white artisto you are supposed to like basquiat. I always hear these skinny white artists from brooklyn with their glasses and their keds talking about how great basquiat was. They are wrong. His art was crap, it was fish soup without the fish. The only thing I will give him is that he had a little bit of street cred but most junkies have a certain level of street cred. The movie basquiat wasnt that bad but his talent was so overblown. I can overlook lack of skill if there is something else to hang your hat on but there is no other hook...just a bunch of hype---typical 1980's sushi and blow hype. I am not saying he wasnt a good guy--I never met him...I just hate hype it is the hobgoblin of modern sensibility. Someone needs to smack theses tofu eating skinny brooklyn white kids and learn them some velasquez.

bethesda fountain

tis better to be silent and leave people guessing as to whether you are a moron than to open your mouth and remove all doubt...

silence

Sometimes I stop talking completely. I just dont talk. People ask me questions and I dont answer. I just sit in silence. I used to feel I had to explain this to people because I would worry they would get upset. I nolonger care. I dont talk sometimes, I dont answer questions, I dont ask questions. I find it interesting how many questions people will continue to ask when I havent answered the last four. There are times I just have no use for words or conversations and it has always been that way and it will always be that way. It doesnt mean anything, it just is. Empty space doesnt need to be filled, a vacuum is a s beautiful as anything in this universe.

Silence is the curse of the chattering classes---alex said that

The Oblivions

Today I was in the farmer's market and some lady walked right into me, bumping into my freshly stitched stomach. She seemed to be in another world, just kinda spaced out. I see people like this everywhere today..I see them squeezing tomatoes in supermarkets or meandering down the streets of NYC. Sometimes they stop in a doorway--they walk right into a store and freeze in the doorway as if they have run into an invisible forcefield. The only forcefield there (I fear) is stupidity. They are stuck on "stupid"--- either that or the pressure of modern life has burned out their main "gasket" and they have gone into lizard brain-mode...They are on biological auto pilot. Maybe the main circuits have gone down, like a 1950's robot that overloads and "cant compute." I am not cruel, I have compassion..I am just observing an ever increasing phenomena. People are lost on another planet, a planet I dont understand. They are tourists in a strange land, a gimp-walking intrusive thing prone to bumping into strangers and dropping things in stores and walking poorly and without skill. I have named these people The Oblivions, They are not an east village rock band. They are modern zombies, people whose frontal lobes have been fried out like cheap marshmallows from too many years of stress and fear. Today I was buying a GOYA print at the farmers market and another lady reach right over me to grab some dishware--right over my arm as I was handing my 5 dollars. "Its an Oblivion!" I said to her startled confusion. Maybe People are on the worng "meds" the wrong dose or the wrong happy pill and the butterflies of happiness have turned into cobwebs. I am not sure, One cannot tell from "out here" what is going on "in there." I fear evenutally The Oblivions will overtake the population, it is a critical mass kind of thingy. Soon they will hold positions of power in the state dept and in law firms and county courts---maybe they already do...where was I? I had a point in here somewhere...

Leonardo learning---glazing

In oil painting, glazing is the use of transparent layer upon layer of paint suspended in a medium (usually linseed oil) that allows for a richness of color and for graduation of tone that you cannot achieve in other ways. Each layer must dry completely before the next can be applied. This method is how maxfield parrish was able to achieve his great color range and his magical blues. It is a time consuming method but it is well worth the effort. An example would be to take a blue and glaze it onto a white panel and let it dry, next you glaze a red on top and you will then have a very RICH purple. If you try to paint a purple direct from the tube or by mixing blue and red together you will never have a satifactory effect, it will be dull. The reason modern art sucks is because there is no attention paid to technique it all slipshod craftsmenship. It is not unlike modern life--so much rubbish.

Leonardo learning----the mona lisa

Here is some info. on the mona lisa.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100716/ap_on_en_ot/eu_france_da_vinci_1

Detail: american shaman painting by gardega

video of painting in progress

Recovery

While most people take time to recover from surgery by sipping tea and watching TV, I hit the ground running right out of the hospital and have been working 15 hour days. It only hurts when I laugh and that is when I worry the stitches may rip open in my belly. Today I started this painting. It is a painting of my friend, the artists marshall arisman standing in front of a buffalo. I call it "american shaman" It is oil on canvas 4 x 5 foot. I think it will be one of my better paintings, the energy is there. It doesnt want to be painted realistically, it wants to be loose and and have a flow...be careful not to "kill the flow" in your art. Listen to the univerese and shut up. Marshall Arisman is one of my favorite living artists and a great friend. Here he stands next to an american buffalo. I took a photo of this many years ago when I wrote an article for a magazine about him...My near death experience has turned on the super jets in my ambition and I am suddnely atttacking projects I have wanted to attack for years.

HUDSON RIVER SKIES; by gardega

Whenever you get close to leaving a place you get a sense of nostalgia. The main thing I will miss about my time "up here" is the hudson river and here skies..Majestic is the word.

singles night

I am at my buddies restaurant using his free wifi and suddenly it turns into singles night. free buffet and people looking for love in the suburbs. Tis time for me to go home. Even though I am a single male I have no stomach for such things, far to weird for the mind of gardega. no comprende... When I was a young and starving artist I used to walk past the food truck in tompkins square park and say to myself I would sooner cut my arm off than take free food from a food truck. Not that there is a correlation I am just a stubborn and strange animal. One minute you are at a singles night restaurant and the next you are wearing pleated jean shorts..the devil sneaks up on you and sucks you in slowly. Good men must be on guard of thy soul at all times. That is a thing worth fighting for..

update

My stomach is almost healed. recovery time is for the weak---- I was painting canvases the day after my surgery. The only hard part is getting out of bed in the morning, that is tough on my stomach. I had a meeting with a client today. They are one of the largest mausoleums in the northeast. I will be doing a very large project for them upon returning from colorado, this project will last from sept until probably feb. or so. I am going to document the entire process from sketches to completion and finally installation using video and photos. As an  artist it is nice to know that you are booked for the next 7 months. It means less stress and worry about getting more work.

a special thanks

a special thanks to those who quite conceivably saved my life this week.


thanks to Mary who rushed me to emergency room (after convincing me waiting another 15 minutes was not an option)

thanks to my mom who stayed the night in the hopsital.

Thanks to sis who showed up and stocked my fridge with my favorite eccentric things.


thanks to my bud stan who showed up for support.

thanks to everyone at dobbs ferry hospital and emergency room for being warm and caring and nice.

and thanks to all those who emailed texted and called.

Just another scar for an artist who has his fair share..back to the easel...surgery changes a person a little bit, it really does even minor surgery...I cant explain it but it does. you look a things around you a little differently.

post op painting: Lost Souls: buffalo riders

I made my first painting the day after my surgery. It is a theme I return to often. The story here is the idea of eternal damnation in purgatory. The fate of these lost souls is that they are forced to roam eternity on the buffalo that they slaughtered wantonly in their lifetime. These are one of my self painting paintings, paintings that want to be so I just let them out and get out of the way. I dont care about technique only to the point that I get my point across if that requires a classical style then I paint classical..this would never work realistically. it just wouldnt. I still have trouble standing straight so it was painful to paint this work but that helped me feel the pain of the lost riders.

to purchase email inquiries: alexgardega@gmail.com

all are invited!

I am departing for Colorado on Aug. 1 and I will be heading west through Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc etc...I would like to meet some of my collectors etc. along the way and do a meet and greet. Between my art and hot sauce I am sure I could dig up at least one bugger in each state! I will map out my route soon and then check my emails for who lives in what state. I may interview on camera if you dont mind.


alex

On the road again

I am on the road come aug. 1. Heading west to Colorado for the month with a van full of art. In 7 to 10 days I will be fully healed from my emergency surgery and I will be walking normal again and less like the cro-magnum man I currently am. Medicine is amazing today in that they can operate on you at midnight and the next day you can leave the hospital at 3 PM. I am going to cover my entire journey on my blog, it will be like a paul theroux travel book but not as well written. God watches out for artists and fools.

alex is out of hospital

My appendix decided to blow up to the size of a golf ball. This was a level of pain I have never felt. they cut the bugger out and sewed me up. Even my worst enemy doesnt deserve the pain I felt when the ole appy endex decided he wanted out. I made it out of hospital in 24 hours now I walk like an 80 year old man--I call it the pain-hunch. As soon as my mom leaves I am having a beer--doctor didnt say I couldnt...hope she doesnt read this crap.

jesus christ, pain

alex is sick

My stomach feels like I swallowed a silverware collection..may need a doctor..I will do anything before I finally admit I need a doctor. I hate going to doctors but something tells me this is for real..I think the fork lodged sideways in the small intestine--just a hunch. Two days without sleep is a bad sign, cant find a position that doesnt kill me with pain...ugghh.

If this tummy ailment proves fatal then my good friend mary will take over the blog..there is 4,000 entries I have made that should keep you busy for a while...what happened to my young indestructible body?

advice to young artists

GET THE HELL OUT OF LONG ISLAND----DONT PASS GO!

ten greatest artists of all time

1) Leonardo

2) Raphael

3) Michelangelo

4) Velasquez

5) vermeer

6) caravaggio

7) goya

8) dali

9) rembrandt

10) william blake


greatest living artists

1) odd nerdrum

2) alex gardega

3) marshall arisman

4) ralph steadman

5) who cares

6) who care

7) who cares

8) etc etc etc

gardega in the news

 page six

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/endquote_SwR1rn6Sgdb471ypdnwUGP

page six
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/we_hear_vw40xHHgOetKhvk5r10pWL


page six

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/we_hear_GUIe7rdZkY70HfFBJ4AB9K


village voice

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/forkintheroad/archives/2009/12/rachael_ray_art.php

village voice

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/forkintheroad/archives/2010/06/behold_batali_i.php

gawker

http://gawker.com/501118/alex-gardega-artist-extraordinaire

page six

http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/item_wHt1XSkdTzUJjEZefzjOFP;jsessionid=D1BC5872358F0160F84B6BB615AEB0F8


uk TELEGRAPH

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/bernard-madoff/4214439/Bernie-Madoff-in-hell-hot-sauce-launched.html

FOX NEWS
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479093,00.html

etc etc

those damn horns

take those soccer horns away. take them far away. bury them in a landfill, or melt them and make a plastic mountain...Just take them far away. Maybe use them for funnels for oil but take them away. they are wrong..just wrong and if you like them you are wrong. If those horns dont annoy you then you are missing a part of your frontal lobe. They sound like human bees or maybe like having a misquito in your inner ear. They are bad for humanity..like whooping cough or tape worm...except people pay for them...

my buddies blog

I have a friend I have never met..he is a french sculptor who runs a foundry in france. He makes amazing stuff. I speak rudimentary french but I am fluent in drunkenese and stupid when I need to be--- I have those languages mastered. Artists are one of two things, either instant comrades or jealous bastards like leonardo and michelangelo who would like to burn the respective others studio down. All artists (all real artists who have both feet in the river of doom as opposed to sunday ARTISTES) are like soldiers, they are veterans and wounded and often they dont trust other artists. I dont sweat other artists, I am too busy working to think about other artists but it is nice to come across some good ones. Somehow richard found my blog of madness and I like to check out his blog to see what he is casting or sculpting. One day I will go to france and say hello..Good work richard!

here is his blog.


http://atelieraeris.blogspot.com/

Colorado

I have already started packing my art supplies for my journey to Colorado to paint a gardega mural. I need a change of scenery and a working vaca.--- long time coming. When I return I am doing a commission for a mausoleum in NY.

leonardo learning: matter is an illusion

can you tell how hungover I am in the is video?..ha

new painting by Sketchy Folk

nice job, sketchy..

winnebago man

if you are offended by swearing do not watch this.

great photos

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38129859/displaymode/1247?beginSlide=1

a poem for the rain

dedicated to Kim Peek (aka rainman)

You saw numbers in the sky
only you and god know why
everything you ever read
10,000 volumes in your head
your fathers only son
and your shadows walked as one
and when the song was done
there stood only one
you walked out of the game
like a child from the rain.

kim peek--R.I.P

harper lee

I am man enough to say that this got me a little teary eyed...the gift she was given was a year to create her art and write one of my favorite novels.

you can laugh at me but I may smack you in the ear..


Christmas To Me > by Harper Lee

Several years ago, I was living in New York and working for an airline, so I never got home to Alabama for Christmas--if, indeed, I got the day off. To a displaced Southerner, Christmas in New York can be rather a melancholy occasion, not because the scene is strange to one far from home, but because it is familiar: New York shoppers evince the same singleness of purpose as slow moving Southerners; Salvation Army bands and Christmas carols are alike the world over: at that time of year, New York streets shine wet with the same gentle farmer's rain that soaks Alabama's winter fields. I missed Christmas away from home, I thought. What I really missed was a memory, an old memory of people long since gone, of my grandparents' house bursting with cousins, smilax, and holly. I missed the sound of hunting boots, the sudden open-door gusts of chilly air that cut through the aroma of pine needles and oyster dressing. I missed my brother's night-before-Christmas mask of rectitude and my father's bumblebee bass humming "Joy to the World." In New York, I usually spent the day, or what was left of it, with my closest friends in Manhattan. They were a young family in periodically well-to-do circumstances. Periodically, because the head of the household employed the precarious craft of writing for their living. He was brilliant and lively; his one defect of character was an inordinate love of puns. He possessed a trait curious not only in a writer but in a young man with dependents; there was about him a quality of fearless optimism--not of the wishing-makes-it-so variety, but that of seeing an attainable goal and daring to take risks in its pursuit. His audacity sometimes left his friends breathless--who in his circumstances would venture to buy a townhouse in Manhattan? His shrewd generalship made the undertaking successful: while most young people are content to dream of such things, he made his dream a reality for his family and satisfied his tribal longing for his own ground beneath his feet. He had come to New York from the Southwest and, in a manner characteristic of all natives thereof, had found the most beautiful girl in the east and married her. To this ethereal, utterly feminine creature were born two strapping sons, who, as they grew, discovered that their fragile mother packed a wallop that was second to nobody's. Her capacity to love was enormous, and she spent hours in her kitchen, producing dark, viscous delights for her family and friends. They were a handsome pair, healthy in mind and body, happy in their extremely active lives. Common interests as well as love drew me to them: and endless flow of reading material circulated amongst us; we took pleasure in the same theatre, films, music: we laughed at the same things, and we laughed so much in those days. Our Christmases together were simple. We limited our gifts to pennies and wits and all-out competition. Who would come up with the most outrageous for the least? The real Christmas was for the children, an idea I found totally compatible, for I had long ago ceased to speculate on the meaning of Christmas as anything other than a day for children. Christmas to me was only a memory of old loves and empty rooms, something I buried with the past that underwent a vague, aching resurrection every year. One Christmas, though, was different. I was lucky. I had the whole day off, and I spent Christmas Eve with them. When morning came, I awoke to a small hand kneading my face. "Dup," was all its owner had time to say. I got downstairs just in time to see the little boys' faces as they beheld the pocket rockets and space equipment Santa Claus had left them. At first, their fingers went almost timidly over their toys. When their inspection had been completed, the two boys dragged everything into the center of the living room. Bedlam prevailed until they discovered there was more. As their father began distributing gifts, I grinned to myself, wondering how my exceptionally wily unearthments this year would be received. His was a print of a portrait of Sydney Smith I'd found for thirty-five cents; hers was the complete works of Margot Asquith, the result of a year's patient search. The children were in agonies of indecision over which package to open next, and as I waited, I noticed that while a small stack of present mounted beside their mother's chair, I had received not a single one. My disappointment was growing steadily, but I tried not to show it. They took their time. Finally she said, "We haven't forgotten you. Look on the tree." There was an envelope on the tree, addressed to me. I opened it and read: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." "What does this mean?" I asked. "What it says," I was told. They assured me that it was not some sort of joke. They'd had a good year, they said. They'd saved some money and thought it was high time the did something about me. "What do you mean, do something about me?" To tell the truth--if I really wanted to know--they thought I had a great talent, and-- "What makes you think that?" It was plain to anyone who knew me, they said, if anyone would stop to look. They wanted to show their faith in me the best way they knew how. Whether I ever sold a line was immaterial. They wanted to give me a full, fair chance to learn my craft, free from the harassments of a regular job. Would I accept their gift? There were no strings at all. Please accept, with their love. It took some time to find my voice. When I did, I asked if they were out of their minds. What made them think anything would come of this? They didn't have that kind of money to throw away. A year was a long time. What if the children came down with something horrible? As objection crowded upon objection, each was overruled. "We're all young," they said. "We can cope with whatever happens. If disaster strikes, you can always find a job of some kind. Okay, consider it a loan, then, if you wish. We just want you to accept. Just permit us to believe in you. You must." "It's a fantastic gamble," I murmured. "It's such a great risk." My friend looked around his living room, at his boys, half buried under a pile of bright Christmas wrapping paper. His eyes sparkled as they met his wife's, and they exchanged a glance of what seemed to me insufferable smugness. Then he looked at me and said softly; "No, honey. It's not a risk. It's a sure thing." Outside, snow was falling, an odd event for a New York Christmas. I went to the window, stunned by the day's miracle. Christmas trees blurred softly across the street, and firelight made the children's shadows dance on the wall beside me. A full, fair chance for a new life. Not given me by an act of generosity, but by an act of love. Our faith in you was really all I had heard them say. I would do my best not to fail them. Snow still fell on the pavement below. Brownstone roofs gradually whitened. Lights in distant skyscrapers shone with yellow symbols of a road's lonely end, and as I stood at the window, looking at the lights and the snow, the ache of an old memory left me forever. - - - "Christmas To Me" was published in McCalls December