 Drawing 12·29·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I am acutely aware of my failure to use negative space most effectively. I become acutely aware of my failure when I view master drawings, such as those of Philip Guston's (now on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City). Philip Guston happened to be my most important mentor. I studied with Guston for two years at Boston University (MFA 1979). Awareness of negative space is awareness of one's own personal, emotional space. Visual emotional communication is marks on blank paper or blank canvas. The emotional communication occurs by variation of marks and forms, and by the space left between those marks and forms. My drawing from yesterday does not do this poorly, but it is not as potently communicative as I want it to be. I failed to fully succeed because I did not effectively describe the stress between forms and marks; consequently this drawing does not feel as much as I feel.  Drawings by Philip Guston at the Guggenheim Museum (NYC), 12/28/2019  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 15), 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" is in state 15; it is beginning to make sense of itself. This process of allowing a painting to ripen by itself, it calling out its requirements, is a process of wonderment. It is nature at work; like weather, tectonic plates, and the development of species. "Something Else Entirely" has a few more states coming.
 Drawing 12·20·2019, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches Am deluding myself? Or...is my work is getting stronger with every effort? I believe this: The unknown essence that is my understanding of art-making, the art I am compelled to make, is increasing rapidly; my unknown is becoming known! Yesterday's drawing is formally robust, emotionally translucent, intellectually satisfying. This drawing steps in the direction that is solely mine. Seeing it trumpets fulfillment, but not finality of fulfillment.
 Drawing 12·19·2019, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches The crushing solemnity of negative space brings woe. Buddha's awareness informs me; suffering is innate. Suffering allows me celebrate negative transformed into positive. Negative can be black, or white. Here it is both! Yesterday's drawing came in surprise and continues in surprise. That's what effective art does; it lasts and lasts, as does suffering. Great art calls for interpretation and reinterpretation. Francis Bacon, the modern painter, said, "I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility." This idea speaks to this drawing and everything that comes forward, out of me. Suffering creates.
 Drawing 12·18·2019, graphite on paper, 20x16 inches Growing into myself is a process of self-identification, self-expression, selfhood. This is me within my saeculum. I am unique because this is a unique time; you and I are surrounded. I am a fish in a sea, completely immersed in the culture that is my era, my epoch, my age, my period. Now has no resemblance to anything before it, and certainly nothing in the future will hold me or anyone else alive today; unique we are! Our era is unique, I am unique, you are unique, my art is unique. So what? My art is an answer that exceeds this era's expectations. It blossoms, it continues to ripen into a thing of substance and refuge; viewing my art is going on a retreat. It may feel subversive, but that is because it is reflectively complete. My art mirrors the best of our epoch's culture. It makes real that which is already present, but not easily identifiable. The course of our days are confusing, so come visit with me; feel secure in the truly real that is my art. Yesterday's drawing came deliberately, slowly, correctly. Swallow it, revel in its truth. This drawing does not speak in tongues, nor does it persuade or confound. It sits with dignity; there is no dishonesty. View it and feel secure. Only a human in our time could make this drawing. Allow it to pull you into a soft, comfortable bed that you recognize as our culture's deepest understanding of the core truth that is our being. A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or, equivalently, of the complete renewal of a human population. The term was first used by the Etruscans.  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 14), 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"}  Drawing 12·14·2019, graphite on paper, 20x16 inches Magic it is! Magical it is! Abracadabra! My art is stepping up and stepping out. The work I did yesterday is enormously good. The quality of my newest drawing, and state 14 of the painting "Something Else Entirely", is high. Am I satisfied? No way! There is so much more to do, so much more to express. I am happy because I have reached this stage of mastery. However, I am an infant in a realm of greater possibilities. In the media that is drawing and painting I have just touched the surface of a higher order of emotional and intellectual expression. My joy is me feeling the availability of greater possibilities, not me feeling a sense of accomplishment.
BTW, I have renamed the painting 2019 No.4 to "Something Else Entirely". As with this painting's previous title, this phrase comes from Tadeusz Dąbrowski's poem, "Sentence". "Something Else Entirely" is more apt; It invokes a response more directly related to the subject matter of this painting than the title it replaces.  Drawing 12·12·2019, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches I have nothing relevant to say compared to the gravity of the drawing that is in front of you. Of course, you see the reproduction; the actual drawing is more glorious. There is an expanse within me that is my present self-awareness; this profound self-awareness is allowing me to increase my self-perception of the art I make as I make it. My perception is my gaze upon the exterior-to-me world in which my art resides. Thus the realm in which my art is perceived in much enhanced compared to that I have perceived before now. The testimony to this increase in perception is the art itself.
 Drawing 12·08·2019, graphite on paper, 20x16 inches For two days in a row the savior of my drawings has been a graphite stick. There is punch to these drawings. I am enjoying it! Profundity is issued by showing-up, day after day; doing the work. Continuity is important. Reflection is important. A jump in my knowing is occurring. This is happening NOW! When I write, "NOW!", I mean over the recent period of time. Perhaps this enlightenment will not end anytime soon. I must maintain my health and well-being to extend this period. I just revealed my greatest worry. This living, this discovery, is limited by mortality. I am within a great effort to extend both, both mortality and this period of profound discovery.
 Drawing 12·06·2019 (state 2), graphite on paper, 16x20 inches  "Inertia to Movement" (2019 No.6, state 2), oil on canvas, 64.5x64.75 inches {"Emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light, or from inertia to movement, without emotion." -Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1955, translation R.F.C Hull} Drawing 12·06·2019 is much better than state No.1 (shown in yesterday's post). I show the drawing before the painting "Inertia to Movement" because I worked more on it, but also because my internalization through innovation and discover is more evident. The drawing changed drastically, the painting not-so-much. Without doubt, this is one of my greatest drawings.
 Drawing 12·06·2019 (state 1), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches "Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door!" That old saying should apply to my work. No one is more skilled, making more important investigative art, than I. Where's the beat to my door? The knocking is there, but sale prices for my art are minuscule compared to the $120,000 paid recently for an actual decaying banana duct taped to a wall. Amazingly, two editions of this sculpture[sic] sold, each for $120,000, at this year's Art Basil Miami.
In any case, I am not there yet. Yesterday's drawing will be improved. The ground of its upper left portion is indicated by line strokes. I must stop being so pure, insisting (as I have) on strokes of pencil rather than smooshes of graphite. Today I will fill in the upper left portion with smudges of dry graphite. Check back tomorrow for state 2 of this drawing. |
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September 2020
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