From where does it come? I step up, I begin, it happens. I am giving into me the conduit. I channel the water to the barrier that separates the internal from the external. I work to allow it to spill over the dam. In my earlier living this dam held it back. I have found a means to open the gate through the process of mindful questioning. Without criticism I will continue this process. I know not where I go. I know this: the art I am making is me blurring the distance between that which I know and that which I can make real on paper and canvas.
Yesterday's drawing came in fluidly. It felt real and right, yet I continually questioned if bias, i.e., previous decisions, were tilting my process away from immediate truth telling. The questions remain, the answers will continue. The continuity of mindful questioning will yield truth to be told. I am startled. Everything looks new. I cannot repeat myself because I am here, not there, nowhere but here. My practice of mindfulness is kicking in. Still a struggle; I am closer than ever. There is contrariness in me. I say one thing, then I give recognition to the past; a past I claim I am unable to repeat. I am wary of the past. The past is somewhat delusional. I am working to remove delusion. Bias is always present. Recognition of truth is confusing because bias presents itself like speed bumps; always present, effort is required to avoid. My work is selecting the few clean stones from the slightly tarnished ones. Not easy! Renewal is required. Bias is an enemy. Practice and work are required.
Yesterday's drawing finds truth in its marks. It did not come as easily, with as much conviction, as Drawing 09·25·2019 No.3. Conviction confusion questions quality. Not to worry; today brings renewal. Yesterday exhibited great potential. Every step I made brought me closer to pure internalization. I witnessed myself as I witnessed my drawings. Each drawing came easier than the last. The last made most sense of all — it had, and has, intense meaning. I felt my way through it as I feel my way through a conversation of great meaning. Here I am. These drawings are profound; they contain revelation and revelation again. I made them till I exhausted all meaning.
My recent life has been much about reviewing & revising — a massive effort to determine reality by querying my past. Yesterday's drawing looked back to drawing No.2 in yesterday's post. This reviewing is more about method then art-work. Questioning methodological meaning is my current modus operandi. I stoled a form from "Drawing 09·22·2019 No.2" — It's that upside-down "U" that moves from bottom right, up and around, ending just to the right of my signature. Does it work? Does it have meaning? Is this a better drawing than the one from the day before? On it goes...
"There ain't no sunshine when she's gone." The past is important. Correct filtering is difficult. Correctly remembering lessons learned is difficult. Correct filtering means retaining the good stuff; the bad stuff also retained, but filed in the "don't-do-that-again" folder.
As you view the drawings I show today, think of me as questioning my past propensities. I constantly need to shake my ideas. Too often I surrender to ideas that have worked well for me. Perhaps those old ideas they are misconstrued. Doing stuff that comes easy restricts the profundity of my art. The battle for the sublime is never over. "Sentence" (2019 No.4, state 9), 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"} Freedom is not being burdened by tangled-up ideas. Art should be made by the newly sighted. It is better to think without knowledge until a white canvas appears. Yesterday was tough. I worked to untangle the mess I had made to the painting "Sentence" — today I show state 9; I am far from being done with it. Metamorphic rebellions are not made by acceptance. Nothing I have done escapes doubt. Examination and evaluation are never conclusive.
A clarity of purpose is overwhelming me. I am looking with assiduous terror, as if I have just finished my twelfth cup of coffee. Am I mad? Yesterday's drawing is not there yet. No drawing, no painting, will be ever be there yet. But, I can feel myself approaching resolution, a resolution I know will never happen. Is this the definition of madness? I am doing the same thing over and over; the difference between my behavior and madness are the results, they are never the same.
There is a world out there that I find difficult to understand. Accepting this conundrum instigates my art. I cannot stop myself from trying to understand. I want to understand everything! Of course I fail. I lack time, which translates into enormous gaps in my knowledge. If I knew more would I understand more? This too is a conundrum. My mind may be too pure, thus resistively naïve. The world is a messy place, with minds creating all kinds of tricks to deceive, as well as many minds making an effort to make clean and nice. The collision of these two forces overwhelms me. I like the studio. It is comfortably mine. My studio is inhabited by a mind that I am trying to comprehend. I do believe I am making progress.
Yesterday's drawings (I believe) are progressive. I doubt myself, so today I will return to the studio. "Sentence" (2019 No.4, state 8), 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"} I love onions. They go in everything I make, except brownies. Moly has two definitions: (1) a southern European plant related to the onion, with small yellow flowers. (2) a mythical herb with white flowers and black roots, endowed with magic properties. I'll go with the second definition because my work is becoming magical; in the very least, it is magical to me! I have been working very hard on staying mindfully centered while making art. This is falling into play that is totally dependent on recognizing momentary truth in my marks, my forms, my composition, and my attitude. I am not sure this makes sense to you, but it is making more and more sense to me. The result is me getting closer to a reality that I cannot anticipate, but I recognize as one step in my path to an unknown, but totally legitimate, future. Holy Moly! My art continues to become more self-fulfilling. This continually surprises me. It is a thrilling journey! It is filled with unexpected truth.
Yesterday's drawings hunker down, into the stuff that makes me want to draw. Yesterday's painting took one more step toward its satisfaction. Yesterday, in an email, a friend of mine said he preferred Beethoven's Symphonies to Beethoven's quartets. I am just the opposite. Beethoven's Late Quartets have, to me, immediate potency; they are an intoxicant I measure by the great amount of my emotional responsiveness. I feel the same about several of Schubert's quartets, and also of a few of Brahms' piano trios. My drawings are my quartets. My paintings are my symphonies. When over and done, I love them equally, but the drawings are more directly related to my immediate emotions. I believe this emotional immediacy is the reason I thirst to listen to Beethoven's quartets more than his symphonies. Beethoven's symphonies are fully satisfying, but like a painting, they take much more time, and involvement, to fully realize. I am an anxious and needy sort; my immediate connection to the nuanced emotions in Beethoven's Late Quartets allows me to fall deeply, into a passionate trance. Today's second image is state 2 of Drawing 09·08·2019. Titanium white acrylic paint was used to remove the form that dominated the upper portion of this drawing. I eliminated the meaningless. An error in my ways became apparent, it distracted from the important stuff. I reworked the drawing, I found openness, better use of negative space. White, blankness, absence of form; negative nothingness is absolutely required in order to give significance to positive form.
I have been doing too much. I have been making too many marks and too many forms. Allowing discovery without judgment, brings judgment. This authorizes the unavoidable, this emancipates drawing that represents reality. I had relied too much on models. Reliance on models is weakness that engenders error in judgement. My models are the work of artists I admire, also my own work that I believe successful. I had been obscuring my present by relying on ideas from my past, ideas I had seen and understood. My practice of working in the now, allowing my images to spill onto the page, rather than to be manufactured on the page, is correct. My work must represent my knowing and seeing in the moment I am living. This is the goal of mindful art. This is the goal of mindful mediation: (i) Recognize Emotions, (ii) Accept, (iii) Investigate, (iv) Non-Identify/Detach. The consequence is reality. Yesterday's drawing is me practicing the unavoidable. |
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March 2024
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