My road is narrowing. I am walking into a place where centering is true, and anamorphosis is possible. This is a world closer to my kind, to my ability to comprehend concisely, in depth and nuance. Am I not becoming more true to myself? My recent drawings feel true, so they may be true. I am a second guesser. Never do I take an idea to be correct without a considerable body of investigatory repetition, truth tested by research.
Today's drawing feels right and good. It is not the forms we see that inform; it is the absence between the form, the negative space between the residence of forms, that makes information. I know this. I am working to feel this. I am working to make my knowing into real visual information. This is one more tick to be ticked on my list of quests. There is (i) centering. Now there is (ii) negative space as potent information. If you doubt my reasoning, take a good look at works by Egon Schiele. "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 5), oil on canvas, 52x57⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} If you have been paying attention, day by day, I am taking a walk with the painting, "Honorable Terms". It is a walk toward centering. I am mindfully working to find center in every way possible: intellectually, spiritually, emotional, compositionally. This is honorable work, this is great work, thus this painting's title is apropos.
In front of me now is a paperweight with this quote from Oliver Wendall Holmes: "Every calling is great when greatly pursued." "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 4), oil on canvas, 52x57⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} I am in simple mode, dedicated to centered mindfulness. I am potently aware of my task. Awareness has place me on a path of enhancement, step by step. Actually, this feels more like journey by continuum, not click by click stepping. This relatively simple painting, "Honorable Terms", reflects the simplicity of the idea that has become my mindful journey. This painting is aptly titled for this moment in my present tense mindset.
"Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 3), oil on canvas, 52x56¾ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} Can it be done? Can an image be made that is complex yet centered well enough to absorb the viewer? If centering is robust, the viewer remains to dwell upon the nuances within the whole. That was my challenge in making yesterday's drawing. Does that drawing work well? Does it accomplish my goal of viewer involvement? My painting yesterday was far simpler in its goal.
"Gonna Speak to the Crowd" (2021 No.5, state 11), oil on canvas, 64x57⅜ inches, {"I'm gonna spare the defeated — I'm gonna speak to the crowd. I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd. I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered. I'm gonna tame the proud." - Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues" (2001)} Yesterday's labor was immense. I wrestled the painting, "Gonna Speak to the Crowd", from before-times into the present. It was not easy. I was totally consumed. I lost track of who I am and where I am. I ended the day in total exhaustion. The worth of such exercise is in the product, which speaks well of me. I do not need to say anything. "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" is the definition of centering. Centering is a topic I have tried to describe but failed to do so adequately. This painting is more intelligible than my words.
"Gonna Speak to the Crowd" (2021 No.5, state 10), oil on canvas, 62¾x57⅜ inches, {"I'm gonna spare the defeated — I'm gonna speak to the crowd. I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd. I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered. I'm gonna tame the proud." - Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues" (2001)} I am not happy with the way this is going. Is "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" getting away from me? I am concerned about centering. Is this painting reluctant to find center? I am working to find center, but trouble continues. I am concerned. Engaging by simplicity has been difficult. Is it possible? Can "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" become centered in both personal and compositional realms? I have not given up. Somehow this painting reminds me of a complex painting by Richard Diebenkorn. "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" (2021 No.5, state 7), oil on canvas, 62¾x57⅜ inches, {"I'm gonna spare the defeated — I'm gonna speak to the crowd. I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd. I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered. I'm gonna tame the proud." - Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues" (2001)} Very early this morning I was in the studio. This painting, "Gonna Speak to the Crowd", had to change. What is that weird, playful form on its lower left?" It is a distraction, albeit interesting to look at. This painting's core composition is solid. Why distract from its core mission? As of this writing much of the periphery of this painting has been destroyed, replaced with simplicity. This is my effort to find core value. That is singular "value." Over the last few weeks my mission has been clear. It is personal impetus seeking singular center. "Finding center" is both figurative and literal. I am on a mission to find myself through my work. I want to make it visual. I understand vision better than storms in my brain.
The lines at the bottom of today's drawing used a solution from my most important teacher, Philip Guston. Here I exhibit Guston's continual influence on me. I accept Guston's discovery of impactful compositional solutions. It is not just an idea espoused by Guston; Guston is in the good company of Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, and me. It is the in-your-face solution: this is a great means to capture and involve the viewer. Do images require a primary form. Is there misdirection without a primary form. Yesterday I read an article in the New Yorker, "My Struggle with Cézanne," written by the art critic Peter Schjeldahl. It is the following two paragraphs that spoke loudly to me:
"It’s a return to roots for MOMA, which initiated its narrative of modern painting in 1929 with a show that included van Gogh, Seurat, and Gauguin as well as Cézanne, whose broken forms made the others look comparatively conservative as composers of pictures. He stood out then, as he does now, for an asperity of expression that is analytical in form and indifferent to style. The appearance of his works is an effect, not a fulfillment. He revolutionized visual art, changing a practice of rendering illusions to one of aggregating marks that cohere in the mind rather than in the eye of a viewer. You don’t look at a Cézanne, some ravishing late works excepted. You study it, registering how it’s done—in the drawings, with tangles of line and, often, patches of watercolor. Each detail conveys the artist’s direct gaze at a subject but is rarely at pains to serve an integrated composition. Cézanne was savagely sincere in his ways of looking, true to what he called his “little sensation” in how things, bit by bit, met his regard. He made pictorial vision the exercise of an artist’s concerted will and a challenge to a viewer’s understanding." Recently I have this fear, a fear that my complex vision, the manner in which I make art, is broken into minute qualities and quantities of form, all searching for a coherent composition. With my "tangles of line," and "little sensation" after "little sensation," I find a composition. I fear I have a propensity to work like Cézanne, who Peter Schjeldahl says, was "rarely at pains to serve an integrated composition." Now I am at pains to serve an integrated composition. My recent idea is to identify a central form, or central thematic area, in each of my works. Yesterday's drawing is such work. |
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April 2024
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