One day I know, the next day I don't. Yesterday was a large struggle for me. I could write about my life and tell tales of energy absorbing events, but this is a blog about my art, not my life. I do not see much major work being made during this season of holidays. Oh, I'll stick in there alright, but I can feel my need to be with friends and family welling up and consuming me. I am not complaining. I am being rewarded. I enjoy it. It is, however, strange to have the driving force of self-expression always at my back, pushing and pulling. I feel the greatest elation, and the most peace, when the need to examine and express myself is gone. This occurs in the studio when I am totally engrossed in the making of a work of art which is unravelling in authentic expression. The desire to experience these moments brings me back into the studio. My ability to be in these self-contained moments of self-expression is expanding. It is like a drug. Being consumed by discovery is not elation, but deep satisfaction outside of space and time. One knows it when one sees it, but acknowledgement that it has occurred is in retrospect, since the consumption is total and thus without conscious identification of "this is it!" This brings me to yesterday's work; two drawings. I was so tired I actually fell asleep while making the first one. These drawings are me futzing around. I showed up and I moved my hand; I made marks on the page. I am so well trained that the marks make sense in terms of seeing forms, but these drawings do not speak with expressive clarity, at least to me. Hopefully you see something in them. The best quality of these drawings (for me) is their sense of being compositionally arranged. I consciously fell into researching composition since nothing else was driving me. Composition is something worth rehearsing. My day in art was not a waste. A technical note: I have begun to show all my work in its actual photographed color. This means the drawings posted here are now retaining the color of the paper. Until recently I told Photoshop to go to "Grayscale" when preparing my drawings. I have become aware of the paper's color as part of the expression. When testing a drawing in Photoshop, going back and forth from "Grayscale" to "RGB Color," I always prefer the full color version, though the color is nearly imperceptible. In Grayscale my drawings lose a bit of their life.
In yesterday's mail I received the bimonthly member's "Preview" magazine from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. On its cover was a Degas "Nude." Instantly I recognized the approach. It was a late Degas, After the Bath, Woman with a Towel (1893-97). Degas and I had shared an experience, of seeking and finding the form, composition, and light via the immersed process of discovery. You can see this happen in my "Nude," made yesterday. Degas' Nude (below) is in pastel, my Nude (above) is in pencil. In both works the viewer experiences the same activity, Degas and I sought and found. The importance of this process of discovery, of my kinship with Degas, is new to my work. Degas and I are separated by more than one hundred years, but we have now shared the common experience of the supremacy of process in art-making. After the Degas Nude I show my first drawing from yesterday; it was made similarly.
I am impatient with my art-making. Granted, there is much going on in my life. My energy to create is undiminished, but the stuff of life, which has included a car requiring repair, holiday gifts being bought and packaged, and the usual financial juggling, has taken a bite out of my time in the studio. The art-making goes on, but has been mostly drawing, with only a little painting. The drawings are leading me in their new approach. I find manipulating, while making, very exciting. The give and take of seeking and finding form, composition, color, and light, absorbs me fully. This manner of activity touches my psyche and soul. It exudes who I am, from intellect to spirit. The first drawing I made yesterday (above) was found over hours, rather than minutes. The erasing was as important to the drawing as the markings with pencil. The manipulation of the graphite marks was akin to adding and subtracting clay as one builds a ceramic object. This fashioning of form and composition consumed me; for those hours nothing but the activity of creating existed. Knowing this is the most legitimate activity has inspired me to seek the same in painting. Yesterday I stretched a new canvas. I hope to begin a new painting today, working from this intuitive center.
Today the drawings are displayed in their actual color, rather than in gray scale. The slightly warm paper seemed important. The second drawing (below) was a playful lark, a celebration of finding core. A final note in a series of questions: Could I be working toward process as the subject of my art? Might I be moving toward replacing image, allegory, metaphor, and mythology with the examination and celebration of process? Is process the ultimate display of our existence? A drawing of five men by Leonardo da Vinci had a startling impact upon me when I first saw it. It still does. Yesterday's second drawing (above) reminded me of da Vinci's drawing (below). This is not the first time I have drawn, or painted, an image of several men in a circle of deliberation. In graduate school, and after meeting Philip Guston, I produced a similar figurative composition (see it at PICTORIAL HISTORY of 1977-1979). Events like this, producing works which full circle into images which ignited my passion to make art, are base indicators of who I am.
Usually, if I paint, I will show the painting first. But rats have entered my oeuvre, two days in a row, so let's begin with them. "Why rats?" is not a question I can, or should, answer verbally. It will get answered, but visually. Thus my blog post today is simple frustration. You and I need to wait. The new visual metaphor indicates change. This is important, because this is insight visualized. The painting "Sunrise" (below) also indicates a new level of comprehension, as it is more open to invented form, and invented allegory, than my previous work. All we can do is watch.
Do I know what I'm doing? Not completely. I am seeking images that ring true. December has been an odd month for me. I have been concerned about a lot of things. When this happens I wake early and try to figure it out. It is not all about my life, or my art. Indeed, it is me in transition. Yesterday's drawing displays this quandary of meditation. Rats coexist with us. They are not going away, and no matter how many we squash, there will be more. Thus the rat in the room. I will slog back into this mess today. It is nothing I fear. In fact, it is the animator of my life. There are problems to be solved, and without problems we require nothing but air, food, and shelter. I'll take all of it, with an occasional solution to tell me I am making headway. Of course there is the question, "Headway to where?" I don't know, but that far off, unseen, unobtainable goal, keeps me going. I will be back in the studio today, and I will be working on all the other problems my life presents. It is good.
The last few days have been confusing. I have been burning the candle at two ends, the art end, and the personal end. This brings together strange bedfellows, and conflict. The drawing I show above displays this incompatibility. My art is always important, and so are my friends and relatives. It is holiday giving time and the purchases and packages are being made. Yesterday's second drawing (the one shown above) is a good one. It practices the approach I have been espousing. I find it extremely interesting that a drawing begun through an abstract compositional impulse ends with a statement about my current emotional confusion. As these men appeared on the page I deeply felt the satisfaction of making art as a release via introspection. The first drawing (shown below) was not so satisfying. It was done mechanically. It made me feel more frustrated. There is a lesson here. The best art is a marriage of three: emotion, intuition, and intellect.
This drawing was made quickly, as study of the man on the left in the painting "Sunrise." The woman was added as an after thought, looking for compositional balance. That is NOT the way to balance a composition, or finish a drawing (all should be approached as one, not one after the other). I don't think she fits well, but the study of the man was successful. The rest of my day was spent gathering holiday gifts for friends and relatives.
Yesterday began with a study for the new painting, "Sunrise." I felt compelled to make a drawing to study the legs and feet in the painting because they appeared awkward and unconvincing in the painting's first version of 12/8/2011. After the drawing I went to work on "Sunrise." I now feel more comfortable with the legs and feet, and with the entire painting. I felt much discomfort when I began "Sunrise" on 12/8/2011, committed (as I was) to inventing forms from an internal impulse primarily evinced via composition. In any case, yesterday's drawing is very good, and it surprised me with its robust and invented forms. Important ideas are being made real.
I began with a relatively detailed drawing, knowing it was time for me to begin a new painting. Making an elaborate drawing held off the inevitable, allowing me time to deal with my fear. Fear surrounds when a new painting is imminent. I have heard that Picasso said something like, "Nothing is as scary as a white canvas." There is truth in this. The blank canvas emanates reality, that the ultimate beginning and end is nothingness. In the middle, between the nothingness, comes the questions: Do I know anything of importance? Do I have something important to communicate? Then I begin, placing the first mitigating stroke on the white canvas. The fear does not go away, but is transformed. I begin to question the validity of doing this. The act of making art is risk. Risk means fear. The risk is in the questions. Does this make sense? Is existence important? Art is a game which allows me to live with the unanswerable.
I show the new painting below, in its first impulse. At this point I call it "Sunrise." |
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April 2024
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