 Drawing 03·29·2020 No.1, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 03·29·2020 No.2, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches Insight and disease are not mutually exclusive. However, this pandemic, this disease, this Coronavirus, is helping me see more clearly. Insight is upon me. I have slowed to a pace of inevitable knowing. Peculiar it is, the greatest creativity occurs in the most stressful of times. It feels similar to a bicycle crash I once endured. I lost control of my bike; I was speeding down a tarmac road; the road was covered in a glaze of sand left over from winter salt & sanding; during a turn the front wheel slid on the sand. As I spun and churned toward the tarmac, I made decisions on how best to hit the surface of the road; a fraction of a second turned into an extended time; I was able to make a creative decision to save my life. I pushed the bike away so I could roll, rather then remain beneath the soon-to-be horizontal bike to be forced to scrape myself to the bone. I was wearing a bike helmet, which cracked, but otherwise I had nothing on but a T-Shirt and thin nylon pants. I ended bruised, with minor scrapes. I am taking scrapes in this virus outbreak. So far, my loved ones, when infected, have recovered. Me, I may, or may not, have had the Coronavirus. I experienced a period similar in symptoms to Covid-19, but no test to verify.
Yesterday was an exciting time in the studio. I had insights a-many. I believe many past works were confused in purpose. I have a simple objective; I wish to express simple truths; I wish to express being here and now. In response to this realization, my drawings are becoming basic truths; these drawings are more simple than previous ones, more direct, more felt, more readable by their viewers. This time of stressful quandary is rewarding me; I am experiencing good within the distractions a world dominated by disease.
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 Drawing 03·28·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I am taking my own advice, actually the advice of Rumi: "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." You can see my acceptance of this principle, and my acceptance of my limitations, in this drawing. I am here and now. That is my job.
 Drawing 03·27·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Paying attention to emotional truths is the diminution of bias. Truth telling is the work of a true detective. A true artist is a true detective. Yesterday's drawing succeeds; its process was one of truth detection. I refused to accept less than emotive truth. My job description demands more of the same. Practice is required. More to come.
 Drawing 03·26·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 03·24·2020 (state 2), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I hate bias. Being biased means no original ideas. An excellent artist must be open to original ideas. Anything creative requires openness. Successful problem solving requires receptiveness. My art-making is open to everything I have seen, the mistakes I have made, and my successes. I do not take any idea as gospel truth. I try the untried.
I finished the drawing began on 3/24/2020; I create a new one. I am working hard to weed out bias. Perhaps no artwork is fully successful; nevertheless there is truth in bits, pieces, and places. It is my job to pick up the truths, recognize those bits, work toward excellence and authenticity. I am watching a country being hurt by bias. Wrought by political morass, our nation is in a state of disease. Bad ideas matter; they slow the process of problem solving. Bias is not precluded by saying things like "I am a successful person," "I am a stable genius," "Drain the swamp!" I make art because I wish to dismiss idiocy. Spouting bias, incorrectness, is not helpful. Our Covid-19 problem will be solved. It will be solved by the many of us who are working in earnest to solve without bias; in other words, creatively. I am optimistic. We will get through this. There is force of true intelligence within us. True solutions will win. Happy days are ahead. We are slogging toward a better world, one good idea by one good idea.  Drawing 03·24·2020 (state 1), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches My drawings, and my paintings, are turning, churning, transforming me and my art. The end of pretense has occurred. Take a look at the trend in my recent work. This is serious stuff, but not devoid of humor. Life goes on. Covid-19 goes on. My art goes on. These are difficult times. There is no such thing as a time devoid of worry. Art continues to be made; despite the fray my art gets made; it is a way of dealing with the fray. I think of my art as an evolving species. The fit survive; the new ones are better than those in the past. The archeology of my work clearly describes Evolution.
Yesterday's drawing is state 1; today I will examine it, alter it, become satisfied with it. This drawing will not change drastically, but it will become nuancedly better. There is another species that is working hard to disappear: Republicans. Every Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has overseen a recession, This goes for Ronald Reagan, this goes for Donald Trump. Democratic Presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton among them, have pulled the U.S. back from the mistakes of their Republican predecessors. There were no recessions under Obama and Clinton; the Markets surged under these Democratic presidents, then fell during the terms of their Republicans successors; very bad recessions occurred under Bush II, and now a terrible one is occurring under Trump. Are not Republicans ripe for extinction, at least in the form they now exist? When does idiocy not alter a species?  Drawing 03·22·2020 (state 2), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 26), 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 have written about Leo Tolstoy's "Great Man Theory." I called it Tolstoy's theory, but that is not correct. I called it Tolstoy's Great Man Theory because it is to Tolstoy's ideas that I subscribe. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" features criticism of Thomas Carlyle's Great Man Theory. According to Tolstoy, the significance of great individuals is imaginary; as a matter of fact they are only history's slaves realizing the decree of Providence. I do not believe in the Great Man Theory of Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle originated the idea that History is created by individual Heroes. This is idiocy! Carlyle's Theory cannot describe the rise of Adolf Hitler; Post World War I German society called for a bombastic man, a man full of hate. Hitler was not a Great Man, but Hitler did force every culture, in every nation, to change! History, like science, like my art, takes a step backward for every two steps forward. Our society is in the midst of a step backward, but soon our society will take two steps forward. I am watching our nation's Republican leadership fade into History; they will soon be replaced by their betters. Pandemics will be better handled; Global Warming will be tackled. Our society is living through a confused time. Almost half our population believes there is this man who will fix our problems; they made him President — nothing says confusion clearer than that! For my part, I am divorcing myself from it. There is no such thing as a Great Man. There are smart men, men who see and understand the intelligence of the most balanced of us. These men advance the ideas of us who wish to run society based upon ideas known through intelligent and realistic thought. For instance, science tells us Global Warming is a problem; most people believe this; most people see the world correctly. We have a President of the United States who does not believe Global Warming is a problem. We have a President who believes the Coved-19 cure is worse than the disease; he says we should ignore the Covid-19 outbreak after Easter Sunday 2020. Science tells us otherwise. I am the product of the time in which I live. I am expressing myself by stepping forward. The body of knowledge I have been given is my stepping-off point. This knowledge is helping me express my perception of here and now. You can see this in the work I show today. BTW: The paintng, "Something Else Entirely" is in State 26, but this state took only one small stroke of paint to move to this much more satisfactory conclusion. Little things do matter! Thomas Carlyle stated that "The history of the world is but the biography of great men", reflecting his belief that heroes shape history through both their personal attributes and divine inspiration. In his book "On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History," Carlyle saw history as having turned on the decisions, works, ideas, and characters of “heroes".  Drawing 03·22·2020 (state 1), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." ― Rumi It is difficult to sort it out. Hello and goodbye to rationality. What do I do now? I continue. Continuity is the key. Change is inevitable. Change happens within continuity because memory discards specificity of details, particularly as related to the many poor decisions attached to failures. Failures get lost, removed from the mind. I go forward, I take the next step, change happens! Continuity means change for the better. My art proceeds. My life proceeds. I am getting better one moment at a time. Yesterday's drawing is an interlude. It came fast. My time in the studio is limited. I am nursing my wife, who has taken ill. Our doctor has diagnosed her from afar. There is no testing for Covid-19, so what do we know? We know she is getting better. This, thankfully, is the truth. Most of you, when you read today's Blog title, thought I was talking about the Republican at the top. Several doctors and scientists have said the dishonesty of that man, his crazy expressions of optimism, have badly hurt our nation's efforts to get the Covid-19 outbreak under control. A few weeks ago he said, "It is just going to disappear." More disastrously, his lie about the widespread availability of testing ("Everyone who wants it can get it.") squashed development of the test. Scientists backed off development, believing the Center for Disease Control has a test available (they did not). His extreme dishonesty has put our nation into its current difficulties; weeks behind in testing, weeks behind in solutions. South Korea, early in the outbreak, successfully ramped up testing. South Korea has control of the virus outbreak. Our Scientists and Doctors say we are running blind; we can't figure this out; there is too little data. Rumi  "Your Decisions Matter" (2020 No.2, state 4), oil on canvas, 52x55½ inches {"It's essential that you believe as if your decisions matter... reality isn't important; what's important is your belief..." - Ted Chiang, "Exhalation", 2019} Perhaps, just perhaps, I understand the direction my art is going. This is phantasmagoria. My art is beginning to express phantasmagorical experiences. My images are each part of a sequence that is the real confused with the imaginary. My images are like those seen in a dream. My dreams, like yours, are connected to walk-around reality, but are expanded through emotions and intellect. I do not recognize the places in my drawings and paintings. The painting, "Your Decisions Matter," represents a dream. We are hunkering down in our respective spaces. Our current world feels like a dream. We are waiting for the next shoe to fall. This is surreal. It is unlike anything we have experienced. It is not normal. It will never become normal. It shall pass. It has enlightened me; I believe it has enlightened everyone. Our entire world is involved. We live as one organism, fighting off the same foe. My enlightenment is expressed in a selfish manner; I make art. Through art-making I understand more about myself. I am asking myself this question, "What things are really worth making?" The images I am making require the viewer to cease security, cease personal realms of seeing. Come with me into a place whose space is not normal, where one can live without the stresses of reality. Give into my images and you shall know more. The sights you live with, those you see outside of these images, are limited to your personal reality. These images are a world unto themselves; these images are like you; they are individual expressions. Each expresses itself as itself. Each of you express yourself as yourself. You are all different. My images are all different. The measure of my art's success is self-enlightenment; do you know more after viewing them? If my art succeeds, you will understand more about yourself, you will understand more about here, now, and each step you choose as you go forward.
 "Your Decisions Matter" (2020 No.2, state 3), oil on canvas, 52x55½ inches {"It's essential that you believe as if your decisions matter... reality isn't important; what's important is your belief..." - Ted Chiang, "Exhalation", 2019} Fantasy and reality become the same in a painting. Such it is with the painting, "Your Decisions Matter". In this painting I see reality. I can feel reality; I also see fantasy. Big blockbuster TV series do much the same, like Game of Thrones. It ain't real; that depicted never happened, but it mimics, rhymes with stuff we know exists. That is the way my art is going. This painting, aptly entitled "Your Decisions Matter", is proof. I had to work many years to get clarity. All my work, the hundreds of paintings, the thousands of drawings, led to this. I know better who I am. I know better the means to express myself. This is reality. I feel safe. I can now come out.
 Drawing 03·18·2020, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches I had intended to go back today, into the studio, finish this drawing. This drawing is not dated, nor signed (it was made yesterday). Looking at this drawing this morning, I call it done. There is a freeform play about it; I enjoy it, so I will accept it.
Today will be my first full day in the studio in quite a while. The Coronavirus outbreak has distracted me for many reasons. Today I feel fine. All my preparations, food, family, and friends, financial and shelter, feel comfortable. I feel a sense of security in this topsy-turvy world of disease and political missteps. This may not last. I will grab it while I can. I am off to my studio as soon as I place the period on this sentence. |
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April 2020
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