 Drawing 08·28·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 08·29·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I am coining a new phrase, Referential Representation. My art-making is most satisfying to myself when my images refer emotionally, and intellectually, to my innermost ideas and feelings. I recognize I feel most successful when I represent my deepest psyche with my images. This full acceptance occurs when my images exhibit references to known forms in my real visual world. These forms are the basic connection we all share, they are our visual reality; as such, they are our visual references to all we know and feel. I believe all abstract art is referential to nature. Nature is in every existing visual form, forms seen in the cosmos, forms seen in our normal-sized everyday living, forms revealed by electron microscopes. forms created by the imaginations of artists, people living today, and those who in the past. I am a compendium of all I have seen.
The drawings I show you today are successful because they are Referential Representation. This is what I feel and this is what believe.  "Find a Man" (2021 No.8, state 1), oil on canvas, 55¼x59½ inches, {"When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to an author, and we find a man." -Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), "Pensées", 29 (1670)}  Drawing 08·26·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I remain flexible in my approach. On one day I am dominated by one element, another day, a different element. My progress is toward utilizing all elements, all principles, all acting well, all controlled, all spirited. all engaged simultaneously. Perhaps I use the term Principles and Elements of Art too loosely; below this post are the formal definitions. To be more specific, the artwork I show today is intensely interested in surface. Surface is denoted by texture. Texture indicates space, proximity, rhythm, contour, and harmony. So, for me, in my present state of mind, today's works are a mishmash of the Principles & Elements of Art transported thru my basic desire to create space that is touchable, that is harmonious, that rhymes and rhythms itself in front of the viewer. Principles & Elements of Art (from Wikipedia)  Drawing 08·25·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 08·25·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Being human makes it impossible to dismiss visual imagery. It is impossible to make an image devoid of reality. We are reality. Everything we make is real, Everything represents reality. We know nothing but real. Yesterday's drawings can be read as abstract. Yesterday's drawings can be read as representative. Yesterday's drawings can be read as non-representative. "Painting is silent poetry, poetry is eloquent painting." -Simonides c556-448 BC: Plutarch Moralia  Drawing 08·24·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Aristotle wrote, "Style to be good must be clear.... Clearness is secured by using the words that are current and ordinary." In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman states, "He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher." And here I am. I have learned from my teacher (Philip Guston). I have now removed all his idiosyncratic ideas from my works. I did not destroy him, as Whitman suggests I do, but I have moved away from him, I have created my own style. Clearness is an issue with me. I am working toward strong personal engagement with my viewers. Aristotle's idea is important to me, i.e., use of ordinary language is necessary to clarity. For me, the visual artist, ordinary language is visual art's most basic principles and elements. The most basic language of art is non-representative; it is color, form, composition, surface, value, et cetera. Basic visual art language also contains imagery because it has form and it contains the artifice of light. The viewer may call this "Representative Imagery," but I do not want to dilute meaning in art by representing something perceived in the real world. I have destroyed one idea of Philip Guston's. Guston's late work, it allegiance to simple, Representative Imagery, is the distraction I have destroyed. It must be destroyed because it hinders perception of the actual expressive quality that resides in the basic language of visual art. Yesterday's drawing exhibits an exploration of surface, surface as a flow of light and space. As I made this drawing I thought of Mark Rothko's work. Rothko's clarity was his reduction; his painting are reduced to expressive play on surface and light.  Mark Rothko, Blue & Gray" oil on canvas, 1962  Drawing 08·20·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 08·21·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Whatever I do I think it is but one of many ways. Yes, but... it could have that way, or this way, or that, or this.... It is endless.
 "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 11), oil on canvas, 52x59⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)}  Drawing 08·19·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The quest is getting more simple. My understanding is less hindered by confusion of the goal I seek. I just want to be common. I want to be common in my ability to engage other human beings. I am looking at a lot of Art that I find intriguing. I am looking at Art that speaks easily to me. I am examining Art for common threads that are its successful means of communication. The work I show today is the result of this quest for commonality.
 Drawing 08·15·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 10), oil on canvas, 52x59⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} You have to see it to believe it. Reproduction does, indeed, suck. Reproduction cannot represent the fine quality of a fine work of art. The more nuanced my work becomes the more my effort at adequate reproduction fails. The drawing I show you today took me three days to complete. That is long time for me. It is a complex drawing; it is subtle and nuanced. The painting, "Honorable Terms", has not changed since last I showed it here. I photographed "Honorable Terms" a second time, it remains in state 10. This reproduction of "Honorable Terms" is much better than last I showed here.
 "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 10), oil on canvas, 52x59⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} It takes darkness to make light. This is true for canvas and paper. In the real world, the actuality of light is electromagnetic waves from an energy source. Paintings and drawings have no energy source, except the intellectual and emotional energy of construction. Thus comes the painting "Honorable Terms". A note about reproduction: There is nothing so difficult to reproduce as subtlety of nuance within the darker values of a drawing or a painting. I am intrigued with gradations of light found within darkness. So was Albert Pinkham Ryder.  Albert Pinkham Ryder, "Jonah", oil on canvas, 1885  Drawing 08·11·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Yesterday I talked about the emotionally informative supremacy of negative space. Yesterday I made a drawing seeking that. All my drawings going forward will seek that. That is the call on myself, and upon my viewers, to be emotionally and intellectually engaged; attracted to the image because of the stuff between the forms, the negative space. The forms, of course, ultimately hold the message. But you can't get to the message, you can't be engaged by the positive, unless forms sit with strength and allurement within the negative, Gustav Klimt, a mentor to Egon Schiele, knew this mandate, the mandate I apply to myself. (Work by Schiele's was shown here yesterday, today I show work by Klimt.)    Drawing 08·10·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches It is not the forms we see that inform; it is the absence between the form, the negative space between the residence of forms, that makes information. I know this. I am working to feel this. I am working to make my knowing into real visual information. This is one more tick to be ticked on my list of quests. There is (i) centering. Now there is (ii) negative space as potent information. If you doubt my reasoning, take a good look at works by Egon Schiele.   |
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September 2023
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