This type of drawing comes from anxiety. Yesterday nothing seemed right. Mail I sent two days ago got lost in transit (found this morning in Stamford CT, despite it being addressed to Tunbridge VT, just across the river from me). Yesterday afternoon I went to dispose of my trash at our local dump. I returned; I felt something crawling on my neck. I grabbed it in my hand. It was a tick! Where the hell did that come from? I am always careful; I don't even walk on grass! Ticks around here carry scary diseases. Yesterday's drawing is a dark, marvelous drawing. I believe Mark Rothko would have liked it. I could not find a place to sign it on the image side of this drawing; I signed on the back. Intensity is strikingly upon me. My dialogue never stops. I feel nervous, anxious. The intensity of my anxiety is increasing because I never find enough time in the studio in order to fully explore and to fully question; there are more demands on my time than making art. There is much to do, not enough time to do it. I am filled with fear of failure. I do not want the road to end before my journey is accomplished. I am on my way home. I need time, a lot of time, to find home, to find my personal authenticity. I have seen my true architecture, it resides interstitially between the bits and pieces of the living I am experiencing. It resides in my mind's eye, obscured by experience and education; I live with distorted ideas that I have inherited from people who have come before me. I recognize the ideas of others are not mine; this fills me with anxiety. This is my work; I am becoming my one true self.
"The Doctrine of Liberty" (2019 No.1, state 11), oil on canvas, 66x59.5 inches {"I believe there is a golden thread which alone gives meaning to the political history of the West, from Marathon to Alamein, from Solon to Winston Churchill and after. This I chose to call the doctrine of liberty under the law." -Anthony Sampson, "The Changing Anatomy of Britain", 1982} I am beginning to wake up earlier than usual. My anxiety is increasing. I have begun to worry about my upcoming exhibitions. I need to plan well. I need to get all my ducks in a row. There will be an overlap in two exhibits: AVA Gallery, Lebanon, NH (April 29 thru June 14) and Bromfield Gallery, Boston, MA (June 3 thru June 30). The overlap in timing is nerve-racking because I want to show my most recent works at both galleries. During the last week of the AVA show I will swap a few pieces out, moving them to Bromfield. The best of my most recent work will be at both Bromfield and AVA for their openings.
I will begin to plan both shows today. This will relieve some of my anxiety. Trying to insure my best work is seen everywhere, whenever and wherever it is shown, is a big anxiety maker. Yesterday I nicely brought the painting, "The Doctrine of Liberty", to near-conclusion. This is reassuring. However, making art is so important to me, so imbedded in my psyche as necessary to balance and quietude, that I get anxious when I think about giving up the making of art in order to mount an exhibition. Art-making does not come easy, or does it? My studio activity goes well. But I live a life of worry. Am I making sense? Within certain moments of time I feel great anxiety. Like right now. Does anything I make have importance? The search for significance is simply a search, a process. It is the process that makes life worth living, as says Socrates: "An unexamined life is not worth living." For the first time I understand this. Socrates is speaking of life as process because life without process is devoid of meaning, like a blade of grass, which doesn't care if it lives or not. It simply is. I want more than the simplest of lives. This is being human. I do not want life to be the same as foraging for food because I am hungry. Yes, I am hungry... for meaning. My making art is me foraging for self-meaning, for images that ring true, that communicate with myself and with all who view it. Thus came yesterday. It seems to me that a form that represents me, it having a place within the image I am creating, can substantiate an image. A form, substantiated by its presence, is a force compelling me to deal with the artifice of three-dimensional space as if it reflects my place in existence.
The journey continues. I am amazed; I am constantly surprised. My solutions are not discovered immediately, but require a funnel of time to get there. This funnel is a filter, filtering over days, not hours. The painting "2016 No.19" is better now than it was two days ago. This should not surprise me. It does surprise because I did not know the next step till yesterday. Yesterday's drawing is a good one. I am becoming myself. Today I feel awash, as if depleted and incomplete.
I hesitated to write anything today. Anxiety is here, but so is my confidence in the quality of this work, thus my feeling nonchalant as well. Working never rids me of anxiety. You can see this in the drawings. Each asks a different question. Confusion does not occur in the making, but it appears in comparison, one work to the next. Not so in my painting: I am obviously taking on atmospheric color. This came to the forefront in my previous painting, "2016 No.18".
What's it all about? I am certainly NOT stuck in a rut! I am driving along, turning a corner. The turn feels slow, lethargic. It does feel familiar. I am winding up, the tension in my rubber band of a soul is increasingly stretched. I feel taut, stressed, anxious, ready to jump. The coming recoil may not be pretty. My current work does not look pretty. Everything looks unappealingly unattractive. Yet, I am filled with optimism.
Yesterday's drawings are, in a simplistic way, exploratory. What can I do with that which I know? Is this craziness? I am more interested in the unknown than the known? Thus I explore, looking to push out of my comfort and into the revelatory uncomfortable. It would be healthier for me to revel in the simplicity of being, here and now. Would it not be better to be happy with the pleasures available to me? Am I a hero if I risk looking for the dark and dank? Or just a crazy idiot? Time and effort will tell. Yesterday's drawings are me revisiting my past, questioning it. I realize I am paying for my past. I ask myself, "Of all those things I know, those things I rely upon for daily activity, what is good, and what is a hindrance?" Am I being impeded by that which I do automatically well? Repetition leads to habits, both good and bad. I have to separate those things which I do that help me decipher authentic expression from those things which I do that are habitually, prudently, cautious. Being circumspect means denying risk. Without risk, true self-awareness is unavailable. I do not want to rely upon tricks learned in my past. I want to walk openly, dangerously, on the creative tight-rope. Successful art is made by finding true ground. If I avoid going to places I do not know, if I tread only on the earth that I know, I will never discover the truth I do not know.
No matter how much I wonder if it is complete, refinement is always possible. The intellectual question is... "Does a little more refinement make the painting better?" In this case, I believe, "Yes!" Yesterday I thought I would move on to a new painting. Then I looked at "2016 No.13"; a little part of it annoyed me. I changed it. I think it better. But, for several minutes, before making the change, I sat there, in front of it, looking, wondering, "Will such a small alteration make it better?" I am glad I did what I did. I will not point the changes out to you, since I think my questions should be the same as yours. Then you may answer for yourself.
Yesterday's drawing took an interesting direction. I continue to wonder about the biomorphism of my work. In its extreme, it bothers me. I do not want the viewer to be so involved in references to nature that he/she misses my primary concern. First, foremost, I want the viewer to be wowed by the emotive qualities of the primary artistic elements: composition, color, form, space. Does yesterday's drawing do this? Or, do you, the viewer, first see a weirdly derivative animal on a pedestal? I'd like to know. In yesterday's blog post I wondered, out-loud, about my needing to write about my art. In my conceit, I actually believed it might be speaking, lucidly, for itself. That feeling went away quickly. Mostly I just worry. Anxiety never allows me to go very far into calmness. So I am back writing about my worries. Oh well! I am better for it. I hope you feel the same. I worry! It drives me to the next idea. |
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March 2024
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