The Big Blue C: Live painting at the Catalina Bar and Grill

Bill Henderson and I

So there i am kneeling next to the legendary Bill Henderson cracking jokes and taking pictures amongst jazz greats like Barbara Morrison, Marcus Miller and Stanley Clarke. The event was the 25th anniversary of The Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood. It all started a few months earlier when I was doing a live painting at a HARK event in the Hollywood hills. HARK (Healing Arts Reaching Kids) is a guild that was set up some years ago to help raise money for the art and music program at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where i have been an Artist in Residence for over 8 years now. When HARK has an event i try and help out in any way that i can, and at this specific fundraiser, i was asked to do a live painting which would then be raffled off at the end of the event, I brought along my friend Kengi who photographed it. I chose to paint an Alphonse Mucha, one of my biggest influences in Art.

Alphonse Mucha - 'Fruit" - 1897

Like Mucha, i love painting the female form and portraying them in natural states, focusing on their strength and beauty. When doing a live painting, the artist must do a majority of the painting before hand so as to be able to finish in time, as an event normally lasts 2 - 4 hours and an average painting can take from 5 - 10 hours or more to complete. with that in mind, i did 80% of the painting at home using Acrylic paint, which is not my first choice because of its obscenely quick drying time (3-10 minutes) where as Oil paint has a drying time of... forever. That is much more my style because I can spend more time mixing colors and tones. But for the purpose of a live painting, where someone will be taking it home at the end of the event, Acrylic is more appropriate.

Beginning - "Fruit" - copy

It took me the whole time of the event to finish the painting, not because i painted slowly but because i was multitasking, meeting people and networking. There were alot of amazing people there

"Fruit" - 99% complete at the HARK event

Among those many amazing people, I met Lisa Spalding and chatted with her for a while, she looked at my portfolio and was impressed with my work, in fact she told me that she would like me to do a live painting at one of her future events, needless to say, i was excited! A few moths later she called me and told me about the 25th anniversary of the Catalina bar and Grill and that she wanted me to be the principal artist there. I was honoredn and as soon as I hung up with her I began to feel stress, mainly from what to paint! What i normally paint would probably not interest an older Jazz crowd, so i began to think about different ideas, after a few days, I had a vision of a Billie Holiday-esque scene. I immediately called a fellow Artist/ Musician friend Carmen Perez who came over to my place for a photoshoot. Carmen has great multi-cultural features, she was the perfect model for the painting, not to mention she is a singer and posed perfectly for the painting. I began composing the painting reference on photoshop, adding images of a bass player and trumpet player (Miles Davis) that i found online. them came the painting, which i was not looking forward to... reason being, Acrylic paint is a transparent medium meaning that you have to go over an area 2 or 3 times with the same color to get a solid color effect whereas with Oil paint one coat per area is enough to get smooth consistent coat, its like painting with butter!

So for the first 40% of the painting, I was NOT happy with how it looked but i know that this was part of the process so like the buddhist that i am, I just went with it. I continued through and when I got to 60% completion, I felt that It began to look good.

I arrived early the night of the event and met Catalina, the owner the the bar and Grill, she was very kind and courteous amd showed me where i could set up. I began putting my Aztec Goddess paintings out along side my live painting. I still wasn't sure how these would be recieved but i went with my gut feeling. I met with my fellow artist friend Alexandra Kube who was also there painting. As we set up our areas, the crowd began to arrive and started drinking. I had alot of interest in my live painting as well as my Aztec Goddesses which made me feel better about my decision and to my surprise I began to sell a few prints!

after a few drinks, my painting began to come together..

I kept getting onlookers which fueled my drive to finish it

As the night progressed, and the live jazz filled the air I was more and more in the zone

As my painting came to a completion, lisa instructed me to place it amongst the other Auction items locaed in the front lobby area

I was pleased with how it turned out, of course i would have loved for it to be Oil and not Acrylic but hey what are you gonna do...
it was now my chance to mingle and listen to some great live Jazz by the legends themselves, I ran in and was instantly met with a drink, compliments of one of the bartenders. I settled in and turned on my camera.

Bubba Jackson on stage

Bubba Kackson from KJAZZ was the M.C. for the evening He was on stage getting the crowd ready for the next perfomer

Barbara Morrison on stage

Just my luck, I happened to walk in as he was introducing the legendary Barbara Morrison! Barbara had recently dealt with some life threatening health problems but you never would have known it because she was shining as brightly as ever!

I was lucky enough to catch her rendition of "Love dance" a slower, more sedate standard

then she picked up the pace and jumped into "I'm going to Chicago" which she sang directly to Bill Henderson who was in the first few rows, he eventuallly gave in and joined Barbara on stage for what was an awesome finale!

Afterwards I got to meet and hang out with Bubba Jackson and his lady who are both very funny, warm and charasmatic people.

We exchanged stories about the changes that KJAZZ has gone through over the years and how i used to listen to the station back when I worked on the Simpsons when the call letters were KLON

I told them about my art and showed them some pieces at which point they told me that they would be interested in having me do some portrait work for them! I was so excited at this prospect as we exchanged info. As the night drew to a close I got the word that my painting was had been auctioned off for several hundred dollars, I was ecstatic!
all in all it was a great night working along side great people and and meeting some other great people a big thanks to Alexandra Kube and Lisa Spalding