Carl Mehrbach's Art Blog
  • About
  • Making Art

Albert Camus & Me

1/30/2017

 
“Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.”  -Albert Camus

I could not agree more. There are days I enter the studio with lack of intension. Motivation is there; I want to do something. I resist soullessness. I cannot, will not, be stifled. You can see the problem. I am not dead. I do not want to die. So, I forge on, I begin, I make art! In actuality, I find myself through work. It is my way to link myself to this state of being. It is my work that recognizes my soul. This revelation enlivens. I do exist with purpose. Yesterday's drawings were invigorating. They revived me through disclosure. They exist as exposé. I am what I am. This three-dimensional compositional research I am doing is opening a floodgate. Here it comes, with many answers. It is my job to sort, to find the answers that confirm purpose to existence. 

More & Better

1/27/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.3" (state 1), oil on canvas, 27.5x50 inches
I am optimistic. This year, 2017, is off to a prolifically strong start. Yesterday I began my third painting this month, this year. It is strikingly different. Is that better? No, but it continues my research. Seek and I shall find. Yesterday's drawing also has robust queries. This is, indeed, more and better!

The Normalcy of Abnormal

1/26/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.2" (state 7), oil on canvas, 74x55 inches
From whence comes impulses? Do I follow them? Am I wary of narcissism? Or, are these impulses effectively communicative of emotional and intellectual normalcy? The test may be comparison to historically effective decisions and historically effective results. I am unsure. In the heat of making art I can only comprehend that which feels justified, right now. The painting "2017 No.2" looks finished to me. I will look again when in the studio. Art-making is the search for normalcy. Normalcy is substantial. Abnormalcy gets immediate reaction, immediate attention, but has no long lasting substance. Of course, I want my work to sit in front of viewers with so much to say as to be enduringly communicative.

Busy, Busy, Research Busy

1/25/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.2" (state 6), oil on canvas, 74x55 inches
Yesterday produced a volume of work seldom seen in one day of work: four drawings and a new state to the painting "2017 No.2". Art-making busy means verbal scarcity and visual abundance, at least in my case. Such is visual research. In the midst of this current research all is to question. At this moment, I want answering appropriately to be undefined. I do not wish to clarify further because I fear it would characterize my work, which might distract me from the questions I must continue to ask.

Picasso to Morandi

1/23/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.2" (state 5), oil on canvas, 74x55 inches
As a young Buck I thought I wanted to be like Pablo Picasso. Lo and behold, from years of work and consequential decommissioning of my original, desperate impulses, here I am. Picasso's work is unrelentingly attractive to me. But, I think I am more like Giorgio Morandi, the slow and careful researcher of image, rather than the blustery, exaggerator of visual reality. If you look below this post, you will see reproductions of paintings by Morandi and Picasso. I love them both. They both have influenced my work. You can see similarities in Morandi's light and form in my work; you can see in Picasso's painting similarities to my forms. Stepping back... "Who cares?" I am becoming myself. That is the importance. It is not important that my work references other artists' work. I very much enjoy looking at the works of both Giorgio Morandi and Pablo Picasso. This is the significant message. There is great value in identifying that which attracts me, makes me look with pleasure and glee. It aids me in knowing me.

Picture
Giorgi Morandi, "Still Life with Flask", oil on canvas, 1953

Picture
Pablo Picasso, "Couple on Beach", oil on canvas, 1928

Buffoonery as Art?

1/22/2017

 
Is means a satisfactory route to an end if the end is a good one? I cannot answer this in political context. In terms of art-making, "No!" For me, art is ongoing research. Day by day I ask questions. Day by day I get answers. Some days the answers are more profound, more meaningful, more important to accept as valid. Through effort, over an enormous amount of time, I find authenticity through the art-making process. Currently it appears buffoonery is accepted by a great number of those who have wealth and political clout. These are the people who have the resources to buy the best art that has been made on this planet. I must ask the question: Should art follow? I say, "No!" Art is a different animal. It is a process based upon personal values and personal truth. It is a practice, like meditation, different for each us but filled with commonality. Through commonality profound communication occurs. Such communication cannot be offensive. Thus the difference between good art and politics.

Yesterday's drawings continue to explore simpler forms against contrasting backgrounds. This, plus the three-dimensions advanced by the foreground forms and shadows, create an artifice of 3D space. Pattern is also being explored as instigator of defined spatial planes, as seen in drawing No.2, and also seen in the current painting on my work wall, "2017 No.2."   

Inauguration & Hope 

1/20/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.2" (state 4), oil on canvas, 74x55 inches
There is an inaugural sensation to the painting "2017 No.2". It plays with space and light in new ways. It is hopeful in its brightness and clarity. It radiates something new. It is the beginning of a new period of personal artistic substance.
 
Yesterday's drawing has a black cloud, a wall of stone, and a ground with ominous objects. Yet it is filled with light. Life is good!
Picture
Drawing 01·19·2017, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

A Life Worth Living

1/19/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.2" (state 3), oil on canvas, 74x55 inches
Problem solving is a gift we all have. What a wonderful life! The painting "2017 No.2" continues to unravel before me. This morning I walked into the studio, as I always do, turned on the heat. While there I looked at "2017 No.2," immediately realized it requires a more robust background, one that increases its push on the foreground, forcing that foreground even more forward. That will happen today. I find this process marvelous, astonishing, breathtaking. This isn't craziness. This provocation to make better is a basic human prompt.

I am not completely happy with yesterday's drawings. I show them, one after the other, to exhibit my thought process. Only the last one is worth itself as art (IMO). 

Rigorous

1/18/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.2" (state 2), oil on canvas, 74x55 inches
As rigorous as I am in the studio it sometimes does not translate to my reproductions. Today's reproduction of the painting "2017 No.2" fails to have the light-filled and sensual qualities it actually possesses. State 3 will occur today, so tomorrow I will give another try to adequately reproduce this painting.

​I very much like yesterday's drawings. They are not as clogged with information as some of my drawings, thus more accessibly emotive. This seems to be a trend. It is happening in my painting as well.

Hopefulness as Consequence of the Ethical Dilemma

1/16/2017

 
Picture
"2017 No.2" (state 1), oil on canvas, 74x55 inches
My ethical dilemma is visually apparent and alive. You see it in my works shown today. Quandary is the game of art-making! The world, as it is now, enlightens me. I realize this game I play is played on a scale as large as all of us, and it is played on a scale as small as each of us. Optimism or pessimism, no matter; it is the work that instructs and unravels and clears the cobwebs that contain lies, conceit, and truth. Slowly I proceed towards enlightenment, whose hallmark is truth and authenticity. Look at yesterday's three drawings. Compare and contrast them. Each sings a different tune of space and time, yet they were all made by me. This is me under inquisition. The only way I can sustain this is with hope. My hopefulness is based upon experience. I comprehend more than I did the day before. There is a jump here, albeit small, noticeable in its visualization. That is the wellspring of my hopefulness. 

On January 18, 1915, six months into the First World War, as all Europe was convulsed by killing and dying, Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal, "The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think." Dark, she seems to say, as in inscrutable, not as in terrible. We often mistake the one for the other. Or we transform the future's unknowability into something certain, the fulfillment of all our dread, the place beyond which there is no way forward. But again and again, far stranger things happen than the end of the world.

Who, two decades ago, could have imagined a world in which the Soviet Union had vanished and the Internet had arrived? Who dreamed that the political prisoner Nelson Mandela would become president of a transformed South Africa? Who foresaw the resurgence of the indigenous world of which the Zapatista uprising in Southern Mexico is only the most visible face? Who, four decades ago, could have conceived of the changed status of all who are nonwhite, non-male, or non-straight, the wide-open conversations about power, nature, economics, and ecologies?

-Rebecca Solnit
from 
"Hope in the Dark", First published in the United States by Nation Books in 2004
<<Previous
    To read my profile go to MEHRBACH.com.

    At MEHRBACH.com you may view many of my paintings and drawings, past and present, and see details about my life and work.

    Archives

    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010


    Categories

    All
    Ability
    Abstract
    Abstraction
    Academic
    Acceptance
    Accomplishment
    Accuracy
    Achievement
    Action
    Alien
    Allegory
    Alphabet
    Alternative Solution
    Anatomy
    Angst
    Anima
    Animation
    Announcement
    Answers
    Anticipation
    Anxiety
    Apolitical
    Appetite
    Approach
    Art
    Art History
    Artifice
    Artistic
    Art Making
    Art-making
    Atmosphere
    Atmospheric Color
    Attention
    Attractive
    Authenticity
    Background
    Balance
    Beauty
    Beginnings
    Bewilderment
    Bias
    Big Sensations
    Biomorphism
    Black
    Boggle
    Border
    Boring
    Brainstorming
    Buddhahood
    Business Of Art
    Career
    Caution
    Centered Composition
    Cerebral
    Challenge
    Chance
    Change
    Chaos
    Character
    Circular Composition
    Clarity
    Classicism
    Claustrophobic
    Clogged
    Coherency
    Color
    Color Theory
    Comfort
    Communication
    Completion
    Complexity
    Composition
    Compound
    Comprehension
    Conclusion
    Concrete
    Confidence
    Conflict
    Confusion
    Consciousness
    Contemplation
    Contemporary
    Content
    Continuance
    Contrast
    Control
    Correctness
    Creativity
    Criticism
    Curiosity
    Cycle
    Dance
    Darkness
    Deception
    Decision Making
    Déjà Vu
    Deliberate
    Delusion
    Depression
    Depth
    Despair
    Detail
    Development
    Diagonal
    Diary
    Dichotomy
    Different
    Difficult
    Digital Alteration
    Discipline
    Discomfort
    Discovery
    Dishonesty
    Disparage
    Disparate
    Dissatisfaction
    Distraction
    Dogma
    Doubt
    Drama
    Drawing
    Dream
    Dreaming
    Dull
    Dynamic
    Education
    Effort
    Ego
    Elements Of Art
    Emotions
    Emotive
    End
    Endings
    Endless
    Endurance
    Energy
    Enjoyment
    Evaluation
    Excellence
    Exhaustion
    Exhibition
    Experimentation
    Exploration
    Expression
    Facade
    Failure
    Fantasy
    Fear
    Feel
    Figurative
    Figure
    Finality
    Finding
    Finesse
    Focal Point
    Foreground
    Foreshortening
    Form
    Formal Qualities
    Format
    Forms
    Frame
    Frontal Composition
    Frustration
    Fulfillment
    Geometrics
    Gesture
    Goldilocks Syndrome
    Good
    Grammar
    Gratification
    Grit
    Ground
    Growth
    Habit
    Happy
    Harbinger
    Hard
    Heaven
    History
    Honesty
    Hope
    Horizon
    Hue
    Humor
    Id
    Ideas
    Illustration
    Imagery
    Imagination
    Immediacy
    Immortality
    Impact
    Impetus
    Impossibility
    Impromptu
    Impulse
    Individuality
    Influence
    Information
    Inherent
    Inquiry
    Insight
    Inspiration
    Instinct
    Intellect
    Internal Life
    Intimacy
    Introspection
    Intuition
    Invention
    Investigation
    Iterative
    Journey
    Joy
    Judgement
    Juxtaposition
    Knowing
    Knowledge
    Landscape
    Language
    Law
    Learning
    Lethargy
    Life
    Light
    Line
    Little Sensations
    Local Color
    Loneliness
    Longevity
    Making Art
    Making-art
    Management
    Marks
    Mastery
    Mathematics
    Meaning
    Meditation
    Mental Health
    Mentor
    Metaphor
    Metaphysics
    Methodology
    Mimic
    Mindfulness
    Monumentality
    Morality
    Mortality
    Motion
    Movement
    Mundane
    Music
    Mystery
    Mythology
    Naiveté
    Narrative
    Negative Space
    Nervousness
    New
    Nobility
    Non Objective
    Non-objective
    Non Representation
    Non-representation
    Novelty
    Now
    Nuance
    Objective
    Obvious
    Openness
    Optimism
    Organization
    Orientation
    Pace
    Painfulness
    Painting
    Passion
    Past
    Path
    Patience
    Pattern
    Peace
    Pencil On Paper
    Perception
    Perfection
    Perfectionism
    Performance
    Persona
    Perspective
    Philosophy
    Photograph
    Physical Labor
    Physics
    Planning
    Play
    Playfulness
    Poetry
    Pointillés
    Political
    Positive Space
    Possibility
    Power
    Practice
    Precision
    Preparation
    Primeval
    Principles Of Art
    Priorities
    Problem Solving
    Process
    Processing
    Profound
    Progress
    Psyche
    Psychology
    Purity
    Purpose
    Pursuit
    Quality
    Quandary
    Quantity
    Quest
    Questions
    Quotes
    Reaction
    Realism
    Reality
    Real World
    Reduction
    Referential
    Refinement
    Rejection
    Relationship
    Relevancy
    Reluctance
    Renewal
    Repetition
    Representation
    Reproduction
    Research
    Resolution
    Reveal
    Reverb
    Revolution
    Revolutionary
    Rhyme
    Rhythm
    Right
    Risk
    Rules
    Sanity
    Satisfaction
    Savor
    Scale
    Science
    Scintillation
    Sculpture
    Search
    Seeing
    Self Awareness
    Self-awareness
    Self-criticism
    Self-identity
    Self-worth
    Sensitivity
    Sensuousness
    Seriousness
    Shadow
    Shape
    Shock
    Significance
    Silliness
    Simplicity
    Simplification
    Sketch
    Skill
    Social Media
    Soft
    Solutions
    Sophistication
    Soul
    Space
    Specular Highlights
    Spiritual
    Spontaneous
    Staccato
    Static Composition
    Steps
    Stiltedness
    Strain
    Strategy
    Strength
    Stress
    Structure
    Struggle
    Study
    Subconscious
    Substantial
    Subtlety
    Success
    Super-ego
    Surface
    Surprise
    Symbolism
    Symmetrical Composition
    Symmetry
    Tactility
    Talent
    Technique
    Texture
    Themes
    Third Dimension
    Third-dimension
    Three Dimensional
    Three Dimensional Composition
    Three-dimensional Composition
    Three Dimensions
    Time
    Time Management
    Titling
    Tone
    Tool
    Touch
    Transition
    Trapezoid
    Triangle
    Trust
    Truth
    Two Dimensional
    Ugly
    Understanding
    Unknown
    Update
    Urgency
    Validity
    Value
    Variety
    Verbal
    Vibrato
    Viewing Distances
    Virtue
    Volume
    Vulnerable
    Wonder
    Words
    Work
    Worry
    Wrong
    Wrongness
    Zigzag

    RSS Feed

All images Copyright ©2018 Carl Mehrbach
  • About
  • Making Art