 "Doublethink" (2019 No.3, state 8), oil on canvas, 68x58 inches {"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty Four" (1949)}  Drawing 08·29·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Swimming in the open ocean is for the self-determined. It is risk-taking. Without risk-taking my art would be repetitive, I'd be bored, and I would have no chance of self-realization. Strange instigates change, instigates reality. Reality is deceptive. It confuses the ability to see truth. As example, there is a reality defined by the likes and dislikes of commercial art gallery dealers. They like art they know, not art that challenges them. This is not just from me. Jean-Michel Basquiat (from the little book, Basquiat-isms) said, "Most identifiable things are what [commercial art dealers] like. I did some portraits last year and they really hated those. But the artists like them." This was exactly my experience with my three recent exhibitions. This does not make me feel better or worse. I feel a need to question all my past art, a need to create chaos in order to seek true ground. This happened yesterday. If yesterday's images disturb you, then good for you and good for me.
 Drawing 08·27·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Over and over I have been asked to identify the artist who has influenced me most. I react different to two kind of Artist Influencers. There are artists whose splendid paintings I admire; Picasso comes to mind. There are artists who make splendid paintings, but I also admire their process, their methodology. This second category is more important to me, I have often referred to Matisse as a major influencer; of course the many discussions I had with my primary teacher and mentor, Philip Guston, will always influence my quest for truly satisfying process-methodology. Until yesterday! I have often looked at, often admired, the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a little book entitled, Basquiat-isms. This book is filled with splendid snippets of ideas, direct quotes from Basquiat. Here are three from that book; these make total sense to me: "I am trying to communicate an idea; I was trying to paint a very urban landscape. I was trying to make paintings different from the paintings that I saw a lot of at the time, which were mostly minimal, and they were highbrow and alienating, and I wanted to make very direct paintings that most people would feel the emotion behind when they saw them." "I feel if I work randomly, I come up with a more interesting narrative." Asked, "Do you think you are lucky?" Basquiat responded, "Talented, too." I began yesterday's drawing with as much randomness as I could muster. My intense self-educated skill took over; I worked as thoughtlessly as I could muster. Look what happened!  Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Pork Sans", oil & pencil on wood door, 211x85.5cm, 1981  "Sentence" (2019 No.4, state 4), oil on canvas, 37x61.5 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 08·25·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches My art has not yet taken the rebel leap for which I yearn. The major jump has not happened! Yesterday I listened to the podcast entitled You 2.0: Rebel With A Cause on National Public Radio's "Hidden Brain". Please listen to it.
Several weeks ago I began my quest for rebellion. This activity, me becoming a rebel, is happening. You 2.0: Rebel With A Cause is about Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School professor who studies rebels, people who practice "positive deviance" and achieve incredible feats of imagination. Rebels know how, and when, to break the rules that should be broken. Gino ponders the traits of successful rebels. Recently, in my blog, I have written that I am afraid that my vast education, my high skill level, is holding me back from becoming my true self (read the blog posts that immediately precede this one: Talent versus Skill, Noxious Truth, and Radicalizing Me). Yesterday's studio work is challenging me, but it is not yet the rebel leap I desire.  Drawing 08·24·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Things must change! I am well educated; thus I am well tied to past knowledge. This restricts me because knowledge is the stuff that came before me. I am uncomfortable because the past does not adequately inform my present. I am not those who came before me. I am me. I am here, I am now. That which has happened is useful, like a good diving board, but it does not fully clarify who I am. Education is who and what there was, not who and what I am. I do not want to be redundant. I do not want to be repetitive. I want to be myself.
In yesterday's drawing I stopped myself before I overwhelmed it with past history. I require radical alteration. I accept my despair. I have made great art, but my art is in the books, my art is in this blog; my past art appeared like fungus on a log; it grew from art history and personal history. That is not good enough! It does not make me. It does not represent me. It represents acquisition of all that has come before.  Drawing 08·22·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The unpleasant reality of being an artist is living one lifetime is not enough. I am getting there. I am becoming more true to myself. This process of self-becoming is slow and steady, punctuated by insights, but devoid of a grand insight that rocks me out of my current reality. I am looking for a reality closer to bottom-line truth. Will I perceive it when I see? I believe I will. I do believe in the old aphorism, "I'll know it when I see it!" Bottom-line knowing is impossible. This is not a reason to give up. I know I am getting closer than ever. My struggle feels right and good. I am getting closer, step by unknown step. I accept my lack of knowing; it is the process that unravels deeper knowing. Knowing is an unfathomable task, but it is also a necessary journey of trust, one I continue because of reward, failure, and success. Yesterday's drawing has a lot of smarts to it. It questions the management of the page, at least in the manner I was managing the page in many previous drawings and paintings. There is no touch of the ground above the forms, yet the viewer can perceive the ground. Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Charles Burchfield would be disturbed by this lack of touch, but not Philip Guston. (Kudos to Mark, my friend who reminded me to look again at Charles Burchfield.)  Charles Burchfield, "Orion in Winter", oil on canvas, 1962  Philip Guston, Drawing from the "Poor Richard" Suite, ink on paper, 1971  Drawing 08·21·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The world is strange because I have given up the past. There is no possibility of a better past. There is no choice; I move forward. Trying to repeat the past is insane.
My drawings and paintings are unsettling. I proceed because proceeding is the only possibility.   Drawing 08·20·2019, pencil on paper, 16x2 inches I have been away from the studio. I was attending serious business. I visited museums. I had a dream in which I dialogued with Picasso. I contemplated. I retreated from Making-Art. I contemplated Making-Art. My many recent exhibitions left me confused. "What am I doing?" and "Why am I doing it?"
The art-making I seek requires skill and talent. Today's contemporary art scene often appears devoid of skill. That said, there is a talent there, one that causes public and private interest and engagement. We live in a world where celebratory personalities head countries and engage many followers. Upon inspection, some of these leaders are devoid of the required skill and knowledge to do their jobs well. However, there is talent there, a talent that causes public discourse and public interest. That is the definition of Artist. This illustrates my personal quandary. My confusion is comprehensible. I received a lot of positive feedback from artists, some gallery and museum directors expressed appreciation of my art. I did not get a lot of sales. I take lack of sales as lack of engagement. My viewers did not choose to put my art on their walls. Desire speaks of engagement. I want espousal; I want my viewers to want my art. If they do not want it they must not need it. I have failed if my viewers don't need my art, if they don't need to buy it, or own it. I feel I did not fully engage my viewers. This saddens me. I want more. I want my relationship with my viewers to be consummated! My skill is extremely high. I can do anything on paper (or canvas) that I can imagine. Perhaps I have restricted my imagination to knowledge already acquired. I must engage my skill with greater abandon, with ambition to disclose more deeply than that which I intellectually comprehend. I am not who I think I am; I am more. The only way to know oneself is to uncover oneself. I must walk naked into the world. People love to look at naked people. They are unable to NOT look. Is this the gap I have been unable to fill between my viewers and I? I need to take off all of my clothes. Referring to popular culture, this is what I see, We have a president of the United States who is more reality TV star than successful statesman or successful business person. This man obtained his lofty position by appearing to be upfront and personal (despite the many questions surrounding his truthfulness). He has engaged our entire population despite his lack of skill for his current office. That is his talent. It is talent that may serve me well as artist. I want to engage. I want people to pay attention to my art. There are NO limits to what I can do because I have the necessary skill to do it. My failure to fully engage my viewers is my lack of a certain kind of talent. One can see the talent I am missing in our current president, also it is present in reality TV stars, in pop music artists, and in show business celebrities. The artist Andy Warhol was more a successful celebrity than a skillful artist. This explains a talent I must nurture in order to fully engage my viewers. My extreme artistic skill is squandered if I do not have the talent to engage my viewers. I dreamed I was with Picasso in his studio. Picasso threw me out. Picasso silently waved goodbye to me. I reluctantly gave in; I said goodbye. I walked away from one of my great educators. I do not need mentors any longer. I must rely solely on myself. It is no longer about what I know; it is about what I do not know, what I need to discover. Yesterday's drawing is much different from the one in this blog's previous post. There is a two-week gap in time between these two drawings. I have begun to take steps without knowing where I am stepping. I step in confidence without knowing where the next step will lead. That is a good thing.  Drawing 08·04·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Even to me, yesterday's drawing sings a radical message. It conserves Western's Art's intrigue with perspective, yet creates a room-like environment inhabited by a form of many forms. It has little comfortable references to reality. This is pure three-dimensional abstraction, simultaneously conservative and radical. Viewing discomfort abounds! Is it good art? It is what it is: a test, a proving ground, research, and profoundly articulate. This drawing is filled with finesse of touch and of pencil marks. It exudes elegance in form-creation and in composition. Yet, it is disturbingly different; it is different than anything I have imagined prior to its existence. My role is not to judge, but to make, then move on to create some more.
 "Sentence" (2019 No.4, state 3), oil on canvas, 37x61.5 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"} The miracle of intuition is happening as I work on paintings and drawings. Yesterday the painting, Sentence, took a major turn toward the better. I began a drawing that fell from me like water from a faucet, controlled and directed, accomplishing its given task. Nothing got finished yesterday; I am gleeful because the activity of making-art felt right and good.
 Drawing 08·01·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  "Sentence" (2019 No.4, state 3), oil on canvas, 36x61.5 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 surprised myself. Insight happened! My art was made as spontaneous spontaneity. It was glorious revelation in real time. I knew my knowledge without knowing I knew. Yesterday's drawing and painting came uninhibitedly, naturally, openly. Instinctively I created images. I acted as I breathe; my activity was as involuntary as my heart beats. Art was made as natural tendency. My intuition was instantly known, accepted as true, there was no barrier between knowing and acting. I did this as soon as I put paint or pencil to canvas or paper.
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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 2020
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