When I went to visit my Mom for Thanksgiving 1999, I (naturally) paid a visit to Bob Rankin's studio to see what new styles of work he'd developed. Since his annual Holiday Houdio show (houdio = house + studio) was the week after Thanksgiving, he had come up with quite a few new styles of work, many of which were inspired by his trip to Italy earlier in the year. This style, however, is based somewhat on an earlier style of Bob's known as "Shape Whimsy"... seemingly random shapes arrayed in front of a backdrop of some sort.

These works have great energy... there are a multitude of colors and shapes. Some of the shapes (small circles) are connected by lines so that they resemble stellar constellations, while others interlock with each other or float free. The background uses a really cool gradient of black and purple that looks a lot like space, or the space within a nebula. Finally, there are quite a few specks of white throughout the work; these are made by flicking a toothbrush loaded with paint at the canvas... half of the paint goes on the canvas, and half of the paint goes on the artist. :-)

Very cool! (You may also want to check out Rankinsky's Pick-Up Sticks.)

Going down the page, these works are Rankinsky 1 and Rankinsky 2.

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