 Drawing 07·25·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches There is an end to everything. This applies to a painting as well. One can make paintings as walls. One can make paintings as landscapes. One can make paintings that inhabit a room. In ALL cases, there is a ground. The ground is the viewer's agency to find his bearing. An early influence upon my art was Yves Tanguy (1900-1955). Before I began today's post, I thought to myself, "Hey, Tanguy made images without horizons!" NOT true! Yves Tanguy ended his career making surrealistic LANDSCAPES! Tanguy began his artistic career, like all of us, making figurative paintings (see below). In ALL cases, despite my early morning intellectualized doubt, there is a definitive ground in Tanguy's paintings, always! There are horizon lines even when Tanguy creates an amorous background fog; there it is, in every work, a back-ground! And so it goes! Another early influence on my art was Arshile Gorky (1904-1948). The same grounding occurs in Gorky's works (see below). These has to be a defined rear-end to a painting, which I shall henceforth call, "the ground". Without the ground the viewer is left with insecurity of place. It is the relationship to security that makes a painting free, open, and emotive, thus allowing unrestrained creativity. Without security there is only loss; loss means absence, absence means a lie, a lie means dishonesty. The last thing I want my art to be is dishonest! I began yesterday's drawing looking to test the "no horizon" idea. I cannot do it! A ground allows the artist to create havoc or security or insecurity or whatever. Life and art have irrefutable definitions. One of them is this: we exist in a place and in time; i.e., we exist on something that can be called our ground. Art mimics life. That is impossible to deny!  Yves Tanguy, "Indefied Divisibility", oil on canvas, 1942  Yves Tanguy, "The Traveling Performers", oil on canvas, 1926  Arshile Gorky, "Dark Green Painting", oil on canvas, 1948  Drawing 07·12·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches One of my constant regrets in living is my inability to react quickly to a stupid or divisive comment made to me. I must mull. Nothing comes quick and easy. I strike at my drawings and paintings with quickness, criss-crossing in search of forms, space, and composition, but I admit to sometimes missing a bigger idea during my activity. Yesterday I was fine with my drawing... for about 10 minutes. Look at it! After the 10 minutes of mull, I became conscious of the blank white-ness of the ground in upper half of the drawing. I had neglected the ground in the upper-half while in search for the stuff in the lower-half! The forms do play well in the upper-half, but I am uncomfortable for the lack of attitude behind those forms. The comment I made about not reacting to another person's stupid comment is apropos; I think this drawing would be better if I scratched out the ground in its upper-half. Vincent van Gogh learned this. Van Gogh learned slowly too; it took him two years to get from the blank sky in his 1886 drawing (see below) to an animated sky in his 1888 drawing. Van Gogh's solution to a blank upper-half ground is informative in regard to my concern about the white upper-half of yesterday's drawing. Van Gogh continued to learn to his final days — his last paintings and drawings are magnificent!    "The Intervening Tick" (2018 No.6, state 1), oil on canvas, 49x33 inches {"Is that where wise men want us to live; in that intervening tick, the tiny slot that occurs after you have spent hours searching downtown for that new club and just before you give up and head back home?" - Billy Collins, "The Present", from "New Ohio Review" 2017}  Drawing 07·03·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches A photograph was published in my local newspaper; it shows a father and his very young daughter (perhaps 4 years old) on an ocean beach. The forms of the father and daughter occupy approximately just 10% of the photo, dead-center. They are hugging, mugging for the camera, the ocean's horizon is absolutely horizontal and absolutely centered, cutting across and behind them. This photo was the inspiration for my new painting, The Intervening Tick. This photo struck me hard: the figures dominated my attention despite their relative smallness. I thought I would give this idea a try. Yesterday's drawing was a study for the painting. Like the painting, there are definitive forms on a ground and background.
 "2018 No.1" (state 2), oil on canvas, 68x53 inches {"Cave", "At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Bernice Bobs her Hair" (1920)}   One cannot escape reference. Perhaps most of the automatic has no reference, like a heart beating or scratching an itch. Perhaps the automatic is symbolic. Picasso said making a work of art is similar to closing a window because one is annoyed by a draft. I find that true; it is emblematic in that it refers to a well developed sense of problem solving. I am trying to deal with this difficulty of symbolism within my abstracted art. In my daily making of art I internally reference personal questions. Symbolism must be the result of making a particular work.
I reference F. Scott Fitzgerald in relation to the painting 2018 No.1. This painting looks out, into light. The shadowed interior is a place where the viewer sits and wonders. Do I know more today than when a younger man? The activity of art-making feels the same as it did then. Wisdom and knowledge have obviously accrued. So yeah! Wonder on! I do make art better now than at age eighteen! There is light in the darkness. I see that light more easily. Symbolism in a work of art is an absolute. Two very interesting drawings were made yesterday. Interesting is that both began the same way; a plane that sets up three-dimensional space, background left to foreground right. The final drawings are vastly different. Things that start the same can result in vastly different ends.  "2017 No.9" (state 3), oil on canvas, 59.25x54.5 inches The only way I am going to achieve extreme quality is by delivering an extreme number of renditions. I cannot satisfy myself. There is no way I can be content with any one image. Everything I make calls another question. Better, yes; final, no. May I live a long life! This said, I do like the work I produced yesterday. I am finding new ways to animate the canvas and paper. 2017 No.9 is calling for artifice of space, artifice of light, artifice of shadow. It is in light and shadow that this painting most interests me. The object in the foreground is a form requiring low contrast because I perceive it in shadow. The background is fully lit, begging for more light in a high value light source.  Drawing 05·17·2017, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing-03·09·2016, pencil on paper, 20X16 inches I am encountering an expected major problem for an artist with my propensities. How do I integrate the background with the robust forms I create in the foreground? This is a problem because of my natural desire to create sculptural forms. Why don't I just make sculpture? I tried that. I did not like it. It takes too much time to manipulate large forms, as well as enormous studio space and enormous cost. There is also color. I love color. I also love to control and manipulate light. Playing with light crossing forms is so much more direct in drawing and painting than in sculpture. So, here I am. I must deal with the inherent two-dimensionality of canvas or paper as I produce artificially drawn three-dimensional forms. To make the actual 2D work well with the artifice of 3D is not an easy task. It took Cezanne a lifetime. I am committed to this. It looks like abstract forms may allow me to research more directly with this 2D/3D problem than having to worry about the efficacy and meaning of actual forms, human or otherwise. At least, that is how I feel today.
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At MEHRBACH.com you may view many of my paintings and drawings, past and present, and see details about my life and work. Archives
July 2020
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