Out of somewhere comes a border to the painting 2017 No.13. Yesterday I made an effort to find ground. I found a border after I found ground. Seeking is finding. Discovery occurs because of the search. Here it is... here it comes... ready or not!
I often worry I am too much into detail. I agressively search to find, thus I am overwhelmed by the activity of seeking nuance. Do I enjoy it? I do. Yesterday's drawing is full of finesse. It surprises me with its clarity of forms, its clarity in shadows cast (both by the forms on ground and on the surfaces of the forms themselves). Spatial play is animated by light. The forms are positioned by their surface values as well as by the shadows they cast on the ground. (We all know the white paper is actually as flat as flat can be.) Am I a dunderhead because I wonder too much? No, this is the intricacy demanded by sophisticated problem solving.
Who's there? Not who you think! These are abstract images, yes, but they are also non-representational. The visualization is emotionally referenced, but not unkind or aggressive, just exploratory. That said, the spatial play, insisted upon in these drawings, is robust. One can follow the floor via shadows and marks. The outgrowth of forms above the plane is scary. The unease within these drawings is, to me, like hovering over a chasm while walking on a rope bridge. I am surprised by my personal discomfort. Is this a good thing? I don't know. When a viewer engages with Picasso's Guernica, or one of the more emotive self-portraits by Van Gogh or Rembrandt, is feeling safe important? Revelatory they are. Representational works are more direct than the drawings I show you today. Representation in Guernica, or in a self-portrait, is obvious. Do not take the images represented in my drawings as obvious!
Drawings from 11/29/2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches I have surprised myself with new images, and also the joy of laying down graphite on a textured surface. The paper is the same paper used in yesterday's drawing. The images are vastly different. From where come these images? One possible connection: Yesterday a photo was sent to me by a friend (in an email I opened before going to the studio). The photo shows a strange room in Silicon Valley with people walking amongst floating spheres. The spheres are white with black circles on them (the ceiling, floor, and wall are red with black circles). Unlike my drawings, the spheres do not inhabit the people (people are walking among the spheres). Influence? Perhaps. Most important is my product. These drawings are different than anything I have produced in recent memory. They started differently, were processed differently, and ended differently. I am exhilarated by their inventiveness.
A note about today's reproductions: Both drawing are on the same textured paper. The paper's surface color on the first drawing is closer to its actual color. I did not white balance my camera prior to photographing the second drawing, nor did I change the lighting. It is beginning to feel more like contemplation and less like intellectualization. Yesterday's drawing shows me going back and forth between my contemplative-acting intuition and my question-asking intellect. The first drawing is me producing a casually flowing drawing, which ends with an intellectualized, verbal question. This conflict may exhibit problems that occur when the id and the ego are in combat. The second drawing is straightforwardly about combat. The transition from drawing #1 to drawing #2 may exhibit this mental confusion, but it may also be about the world's combative confusion. The strongly male component that instigates present world combat is apparent. Thus the extreme maleness of the figure in drawing #2. Artistically, the figure plays against an abstract background. This is more important to me than any contemporary, or classically mythological, message I am trying to convey. BTW: Today's reproduction of the painting, Lava, is the closest I have gotten to the original. In yesterday's blog post, Lava's reproduction is too color intensive, i.e. it is more color saturated than the original. Drawings from 5/24/2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches
My recent work is telling: I have not been true to myself. I am not interested in the figure as a primary image. I believe it is a conduit to expression, but not the end-all of expression. The abstract power of composition, form, and color, are far more important. As example, my devotion to drawing human couples has been a distraction. Why? It has allowed me to acquire knowledge with little expressive satisfaction. In drawing such a mundane subject I have enhanced my technical abilities. I have enhanced my form making, graphic punctuation, and spatial expression. I accept these abstract qualities as my drops of candy. I enjoy them in the way we all enjoy eating incredibly, perfectly balanced, candies (excellent dark chocolates are my favorites). These satisfyingly sweet qualities are clues to the path I should follow. My repetitive return to the figure, in normal reductive space, has been my distraction. I have begun an effort to break myself of this habit so I may seek my candy. I want to follow the path of most pleasure. Example, I find the man's right leg in yesterday's second drawing extremely pleasureable (his left leg is on the viewer's right). The play of form is animated by the staccato of the toes ending an appendage which flows forward in space, as if hovering above ground. The forward thrust of space is partially created by simple punctuation of dark that mimics a shadow on a floor. Oh! This is so very satisfying to me!
What I need to do now is follow these clues. Follow them like stones laid down in a path. If I do this, I will follow new forms, new spaces, new compositions, and new colors, on my way to multiple satisfactions. I want to walk out of the studio satiated, not feeling as I have recently felt. I have been feeling too much like an explorer with no satisfactory discoveries. Not good. Yesterday's changes to Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 have moved it from category "messy" to category "up and running". It is now, definitely, on the run! Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 has accepted itself, it is its own life; I have become its conduit. In terms of its reproduction, I did pull back a bit on its color saturation, for better and for worse. In today's reproduction the color in the left panel looks more saturated than it actually is, while the color in the right panel is more subdued than reality. The middle ground is the middle panel, which appears just about right. In its current state the middle panel is calling for today's work.
Yesterday's drawing is a study for the girl in right panel. Yesterday, when I walked out of the studio, I believed Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 was finished. Not so fast! A little later, I asked a visitor into the studio, thinking we would celebrate together the completion of Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014. All went well, for the first few minutes of our visit. She thought the painting to be amazing, and wonderful, and then... she pointed to the left hand of the woman in the left panel‼️ She said her eyes got pulled there! Why? She didn't know. Obviously something was wrong! Of course she was correct. I can see it now, because I am looking here. I did not see it in the studio. I missed it because I was so emotionally relieved — this painting had been finished! In my desire for it to be done, concluded, finalized, and discharged, I failed to see the obvious. This is a personality flaw. This is disturbing, but not too bad, as the fix is easy. It will have to wait until tomorrow. Today is my business day. I will not get into the studio today.
Today I have tried to reproduce Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 in a manner best to show the floor-lines on the red ground. This emphasis of the floor-lines causes the entire painting to appear darker in value than reality. I am leaving it this way, for today, since it helps you understand the entire visual concept of this painting. Also, this is not the final reproduction. This Wednesday the final reproduction will be reproduced here, the day after I fix that girl's hand! I am quietly making a series of excellent drawings in the background to the drama surrounding Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014. These are preps for my next painting, which is eagerly sitting in the studio as three white canvases, stretched and ready to go. Perhaps, this Wednesday... ...negative space that is. Yesterday's drawing continues my recent tradition of reacting with drawings which relate to the painting Untitled-03·19·2014. The negative space in that painting is formidable as well. In the painting a man sits on a chair. To me, the manner in which the chair's back right leg hits the floor is very satisfying. It establishes a spatial ground, as well as a color ground, and simultaneously points the attention to the female figure lying on her back. The diagonal play manufactured by this simple device is remarkably expressive. So, yesterday, when I began this drawing I began with the bench sitting squarely on the floor. It established the spatial-ness of the drawing without the use of lines to force the perspective (as I have done in the past ― e.g. the drawing Untitled-03·15·2014 posted on 03/16/2014). Very good, and a true insight.
My return from New York City feels dramatic. I needed that! Balthus was not as exceptional as I believed prior to my seeing a lot of his works in one space ― Balthus labored through his paintings (although they have wonderful reductive form, light, and composition, they do not glow with inspiration). Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is a beautifully conceived face, but it fails as a total painting (the background has decayed toward black and sits like a dead plate behind the exceptional light and form of the girl's physiognomy and turban). And Magritte found image after fascinating image, but in the end he deadpans it all (the power of image is stronger than the power of inventive painting). And so it goes... I am as critical of my own work as the works of these painters from the past. I returned to the studio with a desire to pull together my various interests. I want to make my multiple driving forces work together in painting after painting, and drawing after drawing. I want my art to represent all I know and all the questions I ask. I need my art to be a conduit to revelation.
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May 2024
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