First off, you’ll notice that I’ve updated the look of the site slightly by adding some background texture. I still plan on tweaking it some more and it will be a work in progress through out the year.

Second is that I’ve been adding a lot of new pieces to my etsy store. I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting and having a blast exploring different techniques.

Lastly, I’ve created a Facebook Page for fans of my work. So, if you a facebook member become a fan already.

As for rikcat.com, well things around here won’t change much but I do want to give the design a facelift in the next couple of months. I would love to expand the artwork section and utilize the flickr API more to add functionality. That will have to wait, because I have to get cracking on some work for a bunch of upcoming shows.

Take care for now — Rik Catlow

Also I put two new pieces up for sale in the store. One I just finished yesterday called Hatch and the other done a couple of weeks ago called Ground. I have a couple of shows in the fall and I need to get cracking doing work for those shows, so the store will probably only be updated one or two more times until November.

Also, I’ve been doing some experimenting with new techniques and will include some of these pieces to the artwork and store areas of the site. I’ve been working on pieces that have a light, eerie narrative with more muted color tones. My work has become too predictable for my taste and I hope to breathe new excitement into it. Who knows if this will be temporary or a long term thing?

Also I’ve posted a new pieces in the store called Amputated that I completed this weekend. I had a lot of starts and stops with this particular canvas. It has many layers under the final piece that were covered up because I wasn’t happy with it.

There are a bunch of things on the site that are just temporary. The artwork section will be expanded. Currently I’m using phpflickr class to call the Flickr API and bringing back the thumbnails from my artwork set on flickr and using Lightbox JS 2.0 to build the slideshow. Eventually I’ll use more of the meta data from Flickr and display it along side each image.

The store page is temporary as well. I started working on the final version but didn’t finish it in time to launch. The links page is similar to the old site with the addition the tags for each of the links. I came across the tags in the feed so I wrote a little script to read the tags and build links back to the corresponding tags on del.icio.us. The comments on the single post page and the comment from need alot more work as well.

This design is a work in progress and I hope to make improvements throughout the year and, who knows, I might even do a major redesign in the middle of the year.

Happy New Year!

I’m currently teaching myself the programming language PHP. I’ve been tinkering with it for years but I’m finally learning the ins and outs, so I can build my own web apps. I’ve also been fooling around with this Google Map API class that I’ve found. So I put together this mashup with my sold painting locations and Google Map. It just tracks by zipcode not by address to protect the buyers address information.

Another change is the “Paintings on eBay” button at the top. Kind of like the “Hot Doughnuts Now” neon sign at Krispy Kreme’s, it will only be there if I have paintings posted on eBay.

Well i hope you like it and if you find any bugs let me know.