Carl Mehrbach's Art Blog - Making Art

Carl Mehrbach's Art Blog

At Last the Inflection Point

6/1/2019

"How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2, state 16), oil on canvas, 60x33 inches {"And I want to know the same thing everyone wants to know, how it going to end? Drag your wagon and your plow over the bones of the dead out among the roses and the weeds. You can never go back, and the answer is no, and wishing for it only makes it bleed." -Tom Waits, song lyric}

How's It Gonna End has ended! Today you see its 16th state. This wondrous solution occurred as much in my mind as on canvas. The last two months of my studio life has been more about preparing works for exhibition than making work. All the while I was doing other stuff the painting How's It Gonna End sat there on the work-wall. I saw it every day. Somedays I looked hard, other days I did not pay attention. Slowly I deciphered its need. It wanted to be resolved through simplicity. The day came when I needed to do it. The true solution came from my working the canvas itself. I eliminated some of it, then I exaggerated what was already there. Bingo! Done!

The inflection point came when I knew all is prepared for my exhibitions. I relaxed. The solution to How's It Gonna End came quickly and easily. Suddenly I feel in control of my artistic life again. More good things will come soon... after I deliver my works to Bromfield Gallery on Monday June 3.

Making Sense thru Complication

5/31/2019

Drawing 05·30·2019, 16x20 inches, pencil on paper

I have many artistic ambitions. I worry I have too many objectives. I aspire to make art that functions well through many means: value, form, negative space, three-dimensional space, two-dimensional space, composition, and much more. I worry this may lead to confusion. A good work of art must show it itself through initial simplicity. A simple entry entices the viewer to become engaged, to pay attention, to look deeper, to see more. Complication is enriching only if the viewer hangs in there to absorb it. I think yesterday's drawing achieves this fullness; simplicity first, then satisfyingly complicated. This drawing is the last I will frame for my one-person Bromfield Gallery exhibition, opening June 5. Enjoy here! But please, see it in person at Bromfield Gallery. It is better than its reproduction.

A difficult drawing

5/29/2019

Drawing 05·28·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

Nothing feels easy right now. I am five days away from delivering my art to Bromfield Gallery. I am trying to continue being an active, creative artist. Distractions due to assembling an exhibition dominate my time. There are logistics (making sure timing of everything works wells, from truck rental to delivery and hanging), to framing, to price list preparation, to final touches on canvases. In the midst of all these practical concerns I made this drawing. The distractions slowed this drawing's creation to three days. Does creating over an extended time period diminish spontaneity? Not sure, but it is a good drawing. Will it appear in my Bromfield show? Perhaps it will.

Knowledge About Me

5/24/2019

Drawing 05·23·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

Yesterday's drawing centered itself with three various forms; you can follow them up its center. The three-forms culminate in the blimp-like object, which is largest of the three. My struggle to make this drawing took two days despite my marking it as yesterday's. It is about me. The struggle to make it is me. It started simple; it became dark and questioning. This drawing illustrates insistent centering. That is me. I am trying to find a way to center myself as I move through the muck; the muck that is practicality. I am preparing for my Bromfield Gallery Exhibition (paintings & drawing to be delivered June 3). This preparation distracts me from the impetus of my art, i.e., self-discovery.

Light & Enlightenment

5/22/2019

Drawing 05·21·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

My major artistic struggle right now is staying open to instinctive possibilities. If I touch success I discover grandness of light on forms and between forms. My effort is a struggle for enlightenment. I am working to be fully aware of everything, from the emotional potency of negative space to the emotional potency of forms and light. A piece a paper is an artifice of light, form, and negative space, but it absolutely is not an artifice of my personal awareness. My art measures me. It slams me up against my knowing. I am trying with all I have to stay so open as to fully know success and failure. This is a blunt process. I walk away from each art-making event knowing the depth of my comprehension, as well as the limits of my seeing, my knowing, my feeling. Yesterday's drawing was just one more step along this path, my journey in quest of light and enlightenment.

Looking for "Eureka!"

5/19/2019

Drawing 05·19·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

My methodology has changed. My last two drawings were made in faith, trust, and confidence. Risk has become easy. Conscious thought is not present. Drawing is a simple exercise of distinguishing truth from falsehood. Drawing is an exercise of distinguishing veracity from mendacity. Drawing is about fabrication without falsification.

I am creating images never seen before. This might seem a stumbling block to truth-telling. How can one know if something is right if it never existed before? My images are emotional truths built upon classic standards of visual art. Therefore, differentiating truth from fiction relies upon my experience of seeing and feeling. I know a visual truth when I see and feel it.

My Olive Trees

5/18/2019

Drawing 05·17·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

I continue to struggle to keep thinking, to keep making art in the midst of manufacturing. I am making stretchers and wood panels, putting my paintings upon them. For my drawings I am cutting matts, placing them in frames. Within the discomfort of my current situation I made this drawing. It is a good one. It triumphs over my struggle. Right now I feel this is my plight. Perhaps this is always. I believe, if I just keep doing it, I will triumph. I stick-in there, keep thinking, keep doing; I have not found a problem I cannot solve. My ideas pull me forward. The first limitation is the quantity of my ideas. The second is the amount of time I have to research, to solve these ideas on paper and canvas. I have many ideas, more than I have time to follow. Ideas just keep spilling out of me. I worry about time. It is the limitation of time I worry most about. In his poem, On Living, the Turkish poet, Nâzım Hikmet, wrote, "You must take living seriously that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees — and not for your children, either, but because although you fear death you don't believe it, because living, I mean, weighs heavier." My paintings, my drawings, are my olive trees; I plant them because my ideas weigh heavy. I must nurture them, make them real. I do not relish looking forward because, although I fear death, I do not take my time to believe in it because living overwhelms me, is heavy upon me. Yes, I take my moments one at a time.

On Living   --Nâzım Hikmet (1902-1963)

I
Living is no laughing matter:
   you must live with great seriousness
       like a squirrel, for example--
   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
       I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
   you must take it seriously,
   so much so and to such a degree
   that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
   or else in a laboratory
   in your white coat and safety glasses,
   you can die for people--
   even for people whose faces you've never seen,
   even though you know living
   is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
   that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
   and not for your children, either,
   but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
   because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II
Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get up
           from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
           about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
       for the latest newscast. . .
Let's say we're at the front--
   for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
   we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind--
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

III
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
   and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
      I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
      in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
   if you're going to say "I lived". . .

From Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, published by Persea Books.
Copyright © 1994 by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Used with the permission of Persea Books. All rights reserved.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

5/16/2019

Drawing 05·14·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Tonight at 5:30pm I give a Gallery Talk at AVA Gallery. Yesterday and today I have been preparing. I have assembled a slide show of works; this was extremely instructive. I have been given a gift of speaking about myself for an hour! The slide show illustrates my artistic development, from pre-student days until today.

I made the drawing you see here during the last couple of days. I continue to be distracted by preparation for my exhibits. It is intruding on my artistic investigations. I have been drawing, but not painting. I relish contemplation of my current ideas and my current art. In writing today I am trying to convince myself there are merits to looking back. Looking back is preparation for being now. The process of becoming an artist is not a straight line, nor is it filled with assurance and confidence. It is questioning everything created. Along the way there is insight, exhilaration, and depression.

I very much forward to being an everyday artist again. I delight in the simplicity of going to the studio, working through my many ideas. This will not occur again until mid-June of this year.

Distraction is Annoying

5/13/2019

Drawing 05·10·2019 (state 2), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

This blog informs my art because it is here I view my work with fresh eyes the morning after it is made. My blog is a personal, mental disruptor. Everyday I leave the studio feeling I have done good work, thinking it the best I was able to do on that day. The next morning I come here. I upload photos of the images I made the previous day. I am always surprised. They are right, or I missed something. I know when they must be altered, fixed. Today I show you the drawing began on 05·10·2019 but now revised; this is its second state — my subtle alterations have made it much better.

The distractions that are preparing for an exhibit are annoying. The stream of consciousness that is art making is disrupted. This is not all bad. Insight is often found through the disruption of normal behavior. Last year, after I returned from my major exhibit in Brooklyn, I made great, insightful paintings. I fully expect this will happen again after I am done with this exhibition season. Actually, those insights are happening NOW. Seeing my work on the white walls of a gallery is enormously informative. Also, I have been unable to work on the painting, "How's It Gonna End", because I had to put my energy into framing and touching-up older paintings. This distraction has forced me to see necessary changes "How's It Gonna End" is requesting. Order is occurring because of chaos.

Made Despite of...

5/12/2019

Drawing 05·10·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

My AVA Gallery exhibition opened May 10. I have been manufacturing frames and panels for the work going to my Bromfield Gallery exhibition (opening June 5). Between my labor I made this drawing. Enjoy! I have been trying to enjoy. Recently I have been mostly a carpenter rather than an artist. That will end soon. I will be very happy to be totally engaged in making art again. This will happen sometime in mid-June. Till then I will be going back and forth, from planning and executing exhibitions to making art.