Date: 2010-01-28 20:33 Subject: Racing The Tide Security: Public Tags: captain, clipper, crabs, ship, tide

PREBREEN

POSTBREEN


I took some runners and turned them into captains and sailors racing the tide. Years ago, Mrs. Breen and I were strolling the shore barefoot at dead low tide in Brewster on Cape Cod. The tide started to come in and the crabs that were buried just under the sand woke up. They were like little land mines, and we had to sprint in from the beach as they nipped our tootsies! Maybe the crabs weren't as big as the ones in this painting, but thy felt like it when the little monsters scissored our feet!
This one isn't for sale yet, its going into my Captain collection.

Date: 2010-01-26 12:38 Subject: Are You Going To Eat That?!?!? Again? Security: Public

Well that didn't work! Put it up with a buy it now for $700 which disappeared when someone bid a penny. Looks like this one is going to be stolen!
Bid on this breen here.
This is an old but yummy breen which I'm kicking out into the world. Art students may buy it and practice comically falling against it so when they come near a Picasso they'll know what to do! This painting has never been for sale, I kept it around because I liked it. But now I hate it. Don't look so shocked.

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Text on this painting says, 'Are You Going to Eat That?'
Several years ago, I discovered I had Diverticulosis, which means that now, instead of eating lots of crap like I used to, I have to eat Kashi cereal and spinach and black beans and graze on lots and lots of greens like a cow in a field. This put a crimp in one of my favorite activities, going to Richdale's convenience store in Newburyport for their 25 cent hot dogs. You could get 4 for a buck, smothered with onions and mustard, and be guaranteed a pleasant nauseated feeling for cheap. Of course, Mrs. Breen hates this, since she believes these delicious dogs to be as poisonous as antifreeze, so I have to sneak over there. But I took Mrs. Breen's thrifty sister and commonlaw boyfriend over there anyway.

Walton and Emma

That Richdale hot dog is front and center of this piece. I thought the subject of this portrait looked like William S. Burroughs and this painting is a real 'Naked Lunch' moment, before you put the fork to your mouth and take the food into your body - '...a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork'.

Prebreen


Postbreen




In my postbreen, the 25 cent hot dog is contemplated with horror. Maybe it's the toenail on it. Throughout the painting are weird foods I have eaten. Snake, chocolate-covered ants, grasshopper, dog(in China), snails and mescal worm are mixed with not so weird, but unhealthy foods that I love, such as Boston Kreme Donuts, McDonald Cheeseburgers, pepperoni pizza and Smarties. I would uncontrollably eat myself to death if enough Smarties were placed in front of me. There is also a monkey offering a quarter for the hot dog – I never did eat monkey brain, but it seems like the ultimate fear factor food to me so I dropped it in. Bon Appetit!

Date: 2010-01-19 16:43 Subject: Voodoo Nuns Security: Public Tags: nun, nuns, voodoo

I haven't done a nun in a while, but this girl's angelic face begged to be put in a habit. What to do with the doll though? Stick her full of pins of course! Taking this tack defined the nun as a Voodoo Nun. I put the doll in a Flying Nun habit as I've always thought that regular nuns must be jealous of flying nuns - because Sister Bertrille can fly and also because their convent is in Puerto Rico - nice and tropical! Now the frame is angry at Voodoo Nun for performing such dark arts within it's realm so is slowly creeping in and will eventually cover the nun in gilt.  'This painting's disapproving frame is slowly covering Voodoo Nun!'

Want to buy it? Go HERE.

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POSTBREEN

Date: 2010-01-07 09:48 Subject: You Have Squid On Your Lip! Security: Public Tags: capyain, fish, jellyfish, sea, squid, sting ray

This is my latest captain, part of the captain collection I'm stringing together, so not for sale yet. This gentleman was taken out of retirement and really worked over! As many of you know, I travelled to the Cayman Islands recently with the family, and ended up taking a charter with Captain Dexter to Sting Ray City, a sand bar about 4 feet deep, where stingrays have learned to congregate for the past 20 years to get fed by people about 10 times a day. Of course, all though they are gentle, these rays are pretty huge and bump you to get your squid if you torment them by holding it out of reach too long. With the Crocodile Hunter's well publicized death by getting stabbed through the heart by one of these things, I couldn't help but be nervous.

Text says, 'Only The Great White Sting Ray Dares Eat From Captain Dexter's Mouth!'
Sting Rays dance around Dexter's head, having inadvertently picked up a few hearts, a Great White Ray rises from the bottom of the piece - of course - all rays are white underneath, the view that you are seeing - what look like eyes here are, I think, nostrils. I made the word 'Only' red, so your eye would be drawn to that spot and you would start reading there. But after I painted the squid in, I realized I failed, as you go right to the squid. It looks like it was thrown at the canvas and is soon going to slip to the bottom of the frame. I popped a little self-portrait in there as well, dressed as a captain of course. I covered Dexter's ear in hair, in deference to my Pelbam idols who believe that an ear should hear, but not be seen.

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Date: 2009-12-30 09:29 Subject: Capn' Klaus Security: Public

A little late for Christmas, I'm sharing an original, unpiggybacked breen for your perusal. This is a little something I cooked up for Mrs. Breen as a Christmas card. Inkeeping with my latest Captain themes, I turned Santa in a sea Captain and he has a cotton candy beard and holds a candy cane fish!

Date: 2009-12-06 05:13 Subject: Sting Rays That Didn't Kill Me. Security: Public

The Breen Family just got back from a Grand Cayman Island trip courtesy of Voyage.tv. I entered a contest on Twitter in 140 characters or less describing my dream vacation, and despite my crazy ramblings which contained many <"}))><, I won! My wife, 10 year-old-son and I giggled when we stepped from the plane and were blasted with moist tropical air that licked us all over like Northern popsicles! We checked into the luxurious Marriott Grand Cayman Beach Resort on Seven Mile Beach and Mrs. Breen, who usually has something snide to say about the clashing decor of pretentious hotels was slack-jawed and silent! High praise indeed! I looked furtively around after check-in to see if there were any sneaky marketers lurking around with the intention of selling me a condo, but the coast was clear, Voyage.tv was true to their word!

Voyage.tv shoots hi-def videos of cool vacations spots all over the world which you can see online, and are fond of giving away twitter contest trips which you have vastly better odds of winning than your local high school turkey raffle! On Grand Cayman, first thing, Mrs. Breen, Breen Junior and I rented car and took off to explore the island. It was great fun terrorizing the local British territory island population by driving on the left only some of the time! Give Way! Give Way! we screamed as we barreled into "roundabouts!"

For our transgressions we ended up in Hell where my son made pals with Satan! Next door to the Hell Gift Shop is the Hell Post Office where you mail old school postcards with the Hell postmark. The Hell PO also has a free wifi hotspot so you can twitter all the hokey photos you've shot so far. Beware DATA roaming on your cell phone throughout the islands if you have a US plan as you'll end up spending $20 a minute, which can add up fast!


Eddie soon joins his son in hell for staging the next corny shot at the Grand Cayman Botanic Park.


A great beach to imbibe and eat under the palms is at Rum Point. It is very hard to leave this beautiful spot until you get the insanely high bill for the crappy sandwich you got at which point you storm off in a drunken huff!


In front of our hotel are manmade reefs full of fish, that the guests feed with bits of bagel swiped from the breakfast buffet.




Things get a little scarier when you sail out to Stingray City, a sand bar swarming with huge, alien, black saucer-shaped creatures with long evil swords for tails, one of which by the way, recently stabbed 'The Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin through the heart. Captain Dexter and first mate Samuel take us out for several hours on Fantaseas, a trimaran, and assured us the rays were safe as long as we didn't step on them, which was, less face it, pretty hard to avoid! So I decided to be brave and threw my son in. When he appeared unharmed, I eased in after him and soon found myself being mugged by large hungry monsters who wanted me to drop the stinking squid I'd been given to feed them with. No problem there, here you go, take all of it!



Anyway, it was over before we knew it, and back to reality, but I was inspired to start a Sea Captain painting based on the trip! It's might say something like 'Captain Dexter obsessively seeks the great white stingray who inexplicably refuses to eat squid from his lips!' Many thanks to Voyage.tv for the memorable trip, my son won't stop saying, you remember when..?!



On another topic - are you in the market for a condo in Washington, DC? Or know someone who is? A Breen collector is selling his beautiful place, which just happens to have Breens hanging in just about every room. See if you can spot them in the link below! Click on the photo below to see the whole place and see if you can find all the breens tucked away. Email me and I'll send along his email address to you. If you know someone who needs a condo in DC, he'll give you a $1000 finders fee, or maybe you could work out a deal for some breenage? I don't know, he never mentioned that!

Date: 2009-11-07 12:37 Subject: Capn' Chris Renders Hands Poorly! Security: Public Tags: halibut, hands, sea captain

Ahoy!

Years ago I had a boat, and I would ferry my friends and their kids over to Plum Island for barbecues and volleyball. The kids called me Captain Chris (Chris being the name people know me by in the unreal non-painter world). So this is kind of a self portrait dealing with an art problem I have, which is making anything I paint look like it is supposed to look, especially hands! I know this is why people like my art - I try to make a dog and it comes out looking like a half-human mutant cat and then oh well it looks kind of cool so move on. I populate a canvas with these mistakes and Jesus, it looks great, I don't know why, I would say its the hand of God but I don't believe his hand is doing anything other than trying to squish the life out of me as I dance around trying to dodge the stabbing index finger.

I don't have a prebreen on this one, big mistake, since this was a pretty cool nude before I launched into it. But its probably better off there is no record of what she looked like for dignity's sake. I found this and a bunch of other nudes in Brimfield, MA, so in the future you shall be treated to other naked breens, which will be a good series topic in itself - Breen Exposed!

I thought it would be funny to drag this 'Life Painting' session into my Captain series, and it works well as it always does when the underlying painting is great. The unapologetically overweight model and the painters in the background are elements which strip away any sexuality and proclaim, 'This is a clinical study of the human form, this is ART not porno! So if this painting is arousing you, it is YOUR problem, nothing on me!' I turned the nude and main painter into captains, the old lady into a sailor because someone has to do the work! Text says, 'Captain Chris Found It Difficult To Render Hands!' (although if you use the 'to melt down' meaning rather than the 'represent by artistic means', Capn' Chris renders quite well!) Capn' Chris' hands are the most poorly or well rendered of the lot with grotesque freakishly long nails! No wonder he can't paint hands - how can he even hold a brush?! Cognoscenti of breenishness will recognize a stalk eye in the flying sea serpent, a regular staple in the old days but rarely seen in recent paintings.

This painting is incredibly balanced, and after I breened most of it, I remembered my old college art history course where they would describe how your eyeballs are dragged around the canvas by the different elements and colors. So I put a spot of intense red on the paint brush to bring your eye to Capn' Chris' hands. To further help your eyes around the painting, I peppered little red arrows, like on a weather map showing wind direction. Unfortunately, I realized red probably wasn't the best color to use for this eyeball nudging, as the color demands you look everywhere at once creating chaos. So as usual, the work ends up in a free for all visual food fight. The strange halibut at the bottom of the painting, being flat fish, lay on top of the canvas, defying any attempt at inclusion in the painting's perspective.

This painting isn't for sale yet, as I'm putting together a bunch of Captains so I can have a show somewhere. But I will let anyone on my mailing list know first when a show takes place, so they can have first crack at the paintings.

Regards,

Eddie

Date: 2009-10-30 21:46 Subject: First Breenish Guitar - 'Flying Frying Fingers!' Security: Public Tags: art guitar, eddie breen, telecaster

A while back luthier extraordinaire, Al Reid, proposed I paint an electric guitar which he would have clear-coated and assemble. Not a piece of crap thrift store hunk of unplayable wood, but a new professional instrument that any musician in the world would feel comfortable taking up on stage. Finally! A Breen worthy of being set on fire by Hendrix or smashed on stage by Pete Townsend! Well here it is! the pictures don't do it justice, I'll be taking better ones later. Your pick won't be scraping of hunks of sun and finger because after I painted the body it was professionally clear coated. I call it Frying Flying Fingers, or FFF for short, pronounced phhfffff. I always thought the sunburst style was kind of dull so I breened it into a supernova, and laced in burning, impossibly long fingers. On the back is the guitar's brain, necessary to help you complete your song, since, as a musician, you are completely drugged up and can hardly stand - get to rehab before it's too late!
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Here's a little from Al about the guitar -
This guitar was built by Al Reid Guitars It is a one of a kind custom made Telecaster.The neck,pickups and hardware are  authentic Fender FSR  Standard Telecaster parts. The body  is custom made of Ash and is back routed to accommodate the upgraded electronics. A 4-way selector switch with high end controls expand the tonal versatility. Before assembly the entire body and headstock were treated to a very special encounter with Eddie and then clear coated to protect the image by Julian Miller at Sublime Restoration. Julian is well know for his work with the Whitney Museum in New York .Besides being an extraordinary art piece this guitar is a fully functional professionally prepared instrument. Al Reid Guitars also offers any modifications desired.
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This #1 and I'm selling it for $3500 + shipping. If you want to modify the electronics, Al can upgrade it for an additional fee. If interested in seeing more shots or buying this guitar email me or go to the ebay listing.