There is a very important take-away to the botched response by the Republican political leaders to all things present tense. Currently they have botched the response to the Coronavirus outbreak. The Republicans leading this country behave like Bullies on a playground; always present tense, always self-centered; they are no good at planning ahead; To Republicans, power now is more important than a future that is secure, healthy, and economically sound. Led by their leader, they call-out derogatory names at those who plan ahead; they derogatorily label ideas as nonsense if those ideas differ from Republican policies; Republicans ideas must immediately ingratiate and benefit Republicans. Republicans choose not to plan ahead. They doubt Global Warming is occurring. They think tax cuts fix economic problems. Earlier this year their leader said the Covid-19 outbreak would "simply go away" and "don't worry." Some may call such bullying "street smarts"; actually it is idiotic planning. The earth is warming; a catastrophe is coming if we do not immediately do something to mitigate Global Warming. Taxes have been so drastically reduced on corporations, and the rich, that our National Deficit is blooming to amazing proportions versus our GDP; future generations will pay for the Republicans lining their pockets with money from their huge tax cuts. And now, in the current moment, we are paying with our health and our lives; the Republican Administration fired the National Pandemic Response Team the day after they met to discuss preparedness for the next Pandemic; this happened in 2018, in Atlanta GA, at the Center for Disease Control (they were there at a conference organized to coincide with the 100th Anniversary of the 1918 Flu Pandemic).
My art is one of planning. Yes, I work in the moment. I make the best art I can make in any given moment; I always utilize my total body of knowledge. My plan is expansion of my consciousness; day by day I work. I am getting better. I am getting better because I accept reality, I accept my failures, I accept my successes; I build better stuff through reflection upon my successes and my failures. The drawing I show today plays with many things. I continue to test the efficacy of my ideas; I test their intelligence and their ability to communicate emotions. Thus, in this drawing, you see competing spatial recognition on a flat piece of paper. There is drama in this drawing because it does not accept peaceful spatial coherency, nor comfortable consistency in forms. This drawing is just one question in the many questions I have been, and will be, asking. Studies of successful bursts of creativity indicate a contrary idea; the most creative moments occur when processing is slow, measured, moderate, and deliberative. All of us have read books, seen films, which depict creation as a high energy, manic event. This isn't true. Truth-finding occurs slowly. Inventive creation is a slow recognition of truth. For me, right now, this is such a time. I have slowed. My concern with the pandemic Covid-19 virus has slowed me. Consequently my current work is forceful, honest, true; more absolute in its correctness than I have ever experience before.
Yesterday I finished the drawing began on 3/8/2020. It is left versus right, clarity in form versus less referential form; left side is pure pyramidal forms versus the right side filled with inventively more chaotic forms. This drawing is an allegory in reasoning, one way or the other way. Neither way is correct. We inhabit a world of confusing messages (many contrary messages), a world of chaos, confusion, bad choices, and disease; Is not my art a comfort? My process is pure, stable, and sure. I show up. I do it. It is. Every drawing and painting makes more sense than the ones that came before. Today I offer you a drawing in process.
I am beginning to understand. My paintings are bon mots. They are witticisms thrust upon the world, each an equivoque of reality. Everything I make has more than one meaning. The very idea of creating a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional canvas is an equivoque, having two meanings, 3D-space and 2D-space playing upon one another, having two simultaneous meanings. Some may call my ambiguity of space more akin to malapropism; is it not incorrect to create the artifice of the third-dimension on a flat surface? The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple (correct or fairly reasonable) interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, especially as their usage and meaning are usually specific to a particular language or its culture. There were the Righteous Brothers. Here's a Righteous Image! More images like this will be a-coming; I have learned I relish direct, in-your-face, principled, irreproachable, and uncorrupted images. I have had a difficult time getting here. Discovering images like these is arduous; I am in the midst of arrival. Images are a-coming that will be easy to visually comprehend but emotionally and intellectually complex. These works will require the viewer to slow down, contemplate, have an extended life of involvement; living with images like these is necessary. Living with these works is like living with a mate; there is no quick way to fully comprehend the character of the being; slow, steady observation, coupled with slow steady contemplation, is required to fully understand. "Clever Liars" is in state 4. Its needs are becoming clarified. Today it calls upon me to paint. right·eous | ˈrīCHəs | (adjective) "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 25), 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"} "Something Else Entirely" has a very minor but important change. I challenge you to find it. Hint: I am becoming aware that I see coronae everywhere. The sense of light in "Something Else Entirely" is new to my work. In the back of my mind is the play of light that always inhabits the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud's paintings are filled with coronae, many times more obvious than in "Something Else Entirely". Thiebaud work is light-filled; he uses contrasting and complementary color coronae to exaggerate light. This artifice is most easily seen along the edges of his shadows (see below). I don't know where my work is going. The painting "Clever Liars" took on change as well. I do know my instincts are more powerful than my intellect, so I will follow my instincts, step by step. One of my favorite books of 2019 is Ted Chiang's "Exhalation". It speaks volumes through stories that appear to be Science Fiction but are actually about human reality and decision-making. See below, the full quote from "Exhalation" that led to the title of my newest painting. "Pretend that you have free will. It's essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don't. The reality isn't important; what's important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has," The world feels queasy and uneasy. The drawing began on 2/26/2020 came to conclusion, but everything else in my life (and living) is up in the air, being questioned, is in search of resolutions. The darkness that is "Drawing 02·26·2020 (state 2)" is solidly frank; it speaks in a world in which light is sought, darkness abounds, but clarity can been seen — the forms within are definitive, edges are comprehended, the space in which its forms reside is known. This drawing is solace for the poor of spirit. Our spirits shall be redeemed.
The new painting, begun yesterday, remains unnamed. Today it will receive a name, one that reflects the state of my mind as I begin this new search for truth, clarity, and self-knowledge. |
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April 2024
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