 "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 24), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} I declare "Something Else Entirely" finished! The drawing (below) is NOT finished. Looking for completion is an impossible task. I move on when works get to a place where they have said as much as they are capable of saying.  Drawing 02·26·2020 (state 1), pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 02·25·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Discovery continues. Today I post a drawing that is another one of my efforts to find emotional circumstance in the manufacture of three-dimensional artifice. Artifice invokes emotion; here because of the obvious lie, i.e., this 3D image is on a two-dimensional piece of white paper. This not a piece of sculpture in 3D space. Pencil marks on flat paper are able to create emotional reality; simple technique can surprise with emotional complexity. This drawing's emotional complexity surprises me because many of my previous drawings have more animated marks, more complex forms, yet they fail my emotional profundity test. More often than not, forms and marks clutter drawings yet fall short in emotional meaning. This speaks to the magic that is full realization; achieving profundity is not painless, not unambiguous, is complicated.
 "Clever Liars" (2020 No.1, state 01), oil on canvas, 56¼x45¼ inches {"Clever liars give details, but the cleverest don't!" -anonymous}  Drawing 02·22·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I have often referred to the feigning of the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface as artifice. Here is it again, in a new painting, and in a new drawing; both are products of yesterday's studio session. The painting is aptly entitled "Clever Liars"; its third-dimension is a lie. My quotation is an old one, one with no known author. The idea is "details" diminish the cleverness of a lie. Too many details in a lie diminish its acceptance in marriages, business, and politics, not so in art. The more detail in a drawing, or a painting, the more the viewer accepts the artifice. If you don't believe me, or if you don't see this in the work I post today, view the 2014 watercolor painting by Anselm Kiefer, below; you can feel your eye fall into Kiefer's painting, scoping back until the eye hits the artifice that appears to be a sunset. This use of the third dimension is very important to me. I find an image which engages the viewer because it insists upon being seen with a third-dimension, a grandly accepted lie; the lie of depth on a flat plane, forces the viewer to think actuality, i.e., the viewer has an additional incentive to believe the image before them mimics reality. They fall into the artwork as people fall into a con job. I have been told the greatest cons are those the "mark" believe they have determined to benefit themselves; the mark determines they will benefit by causing a loss to the con-artist; the "stooge" thinks the "grifter" does not understand how he, the "confidence man," will lose when the "sucker" goes ahead and takes the bait. FYI: A confidence trick is also known as a con game, a con, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko (or bunco), a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, or a bamboozle. The intended victims are known as marks, suckers, stooges, mugus, rubes, or gulls (from the word gullible). When accomplices are employed, they are known as shills.  Anselm Kiefer, "The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings", watercolor on paper, 2014  Drawing 02·20·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Right when I think I understand, that I got it down and easy, I find I do not know nearly as much as I momentarily supposed. Thus comes the drawing I post today. In organization and approach, it looks and feels the opposite from the drawing I posted yesterday. How can this happen? It is not for me to question process. I am committed to acceptance of intuitive processing. One drawing is followed by the next; the relationship of one to the next can be deciphered in retrospect. I dd not really like retrospection because it is looks backwards. I wish to follow the here and now. That is my path. When I look I see the stepping stones right there, in the now!
 "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 23), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"}  Drawing 02·19·2020, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches Better and better; my art, with every day of thought-labor and physical-labor, is becoming the visual representation of the omphalos of my being.
 Drawing 02·15·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 02·15·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Making art, going from nothing to something, from a blank, white piece of paper, to one filled with graphite and pencil marks, is an act in quest of the worthwhile. Do these drawings have merit? What is merit?
There are many ways to be self-involved, to be self-revelatory. My art is a means for me. It is not the only means; as example, human relationships also lend feedback. My drawings have become lucid notes, each marking a step in my journey toward self-understanding. No two are the same because each is made as a question and each is solved as one possible solution.  "Inertia to Movement" (2019 No.6, state 4), oil on canvas, 66.25x65 inches {"Emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light, or from inertia to movement, without emotion." -Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1955, translation R.F.C Hull} It is work to be open to surprise. The painting, "Inertia to Movement", is coming at me in a very different way than any painting I have worked on before. It looks different. Its process is different. It is an excellent surprise, one that feels right and good.
Yesterday "Inertia to Movement" underwent vertical expansion, as well as additional application of paint.  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 22), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} I wish this was easier. Being patient is painful. Waiting for revelation and realization distracts and annoys. I am required to bear it. Being mortal, having a limited time to get it done, worries me. This is constant. Revelation is also constant. The requisite activity is showing up, being awake and aware, reacting to truth and failure until satisfaction and fulfillment are achieved.
Yesterday's revelation is state 22 of "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4). It took a jump toward fulfillment by becoming atmospherically consistent. It is now close to completion. In fact, looking at it here, in reproduction, makes me feel warm with success. State 22 of "Something Else Entirely" is something else entirely from state 21. It has started making sense.  Drawing 0211·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The drawing I post today exhibits an intellectual and emotional jump. Here are kinetics, here are all kinds of space, from three dimensional and two dimensional space to negative and positive space. This drawing encounters every sort of space a viewer can perceive.
 Drawing 02·09·2020, graphite on paper, 20x16 inches  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 21), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} I do not know what I do not know. There are all kinds of ways to create depth and internal energy on a flat surface. I am working toward that, but look (below) at this painting by Julie Mehretu! Mehretu condenses and releases form. Her work is a revelation to me. In my drawing, the one I show today, I play this way too. However, the depth in Mehretu's "Stadia II" is far greater than that which I create is either of my works shown in this post. In "Stadia II" Mehretu creates depth by use of perspective lines at the bottom of the canvas, and smaller forms at the top. Depth is forced in other ways too. The clogging of darker forms at the top forces the eye to think hanging banners (like in a basketball stadium); the eye passes underneath those banners, back to the gray forms that reside (artificially) behind them. This is an exciting, masterful vision; one that creates a robust vision of three-dimensions on a two dimensional surface. To see Mehretu's mid-career Retrospective, visit the Whitney Museum of American Art (June 26 — September 20) or the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (now through May 17).  Julie Mehretu, "Stadia II", 2004, ink and acrylic on canvas, 9x12 feet |
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September 2020
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