 Drawing 08·24·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Aristotle wrote, "Style to be good must be clear.... Clearness is secured by using the words that are current and ordinary." In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman states, "He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher." And here I am. I have learned from my teacher (Philip Guston). I have now removed all his idiosyncratic ideas from my works. I did not destroy him, as Whitman suggests I do, but I have moved away from him, I have created my own style. Clearness is an issue with me. I am working toward strong personal engagement with my viewers. Aristotle's idea is important to me, i.e., use of ordinary language is necessary to clarity. For me, the visual artist, ordinary language is visual art's most basic principles and elements. The most basic language of art is non-representative; it is color, form, composition, surface, value, et cetera. Basic visual art language also contains imagery because it has form and it contains the artifice of light. The viewer may call this "Representative Imagery," but I do not want to dilute meaning in art by representing something perceived in the real world. I have destroyed one idea of Philip Guston's. Guston's late work, it allegiance to simple, Representative Imagery, is the distraction I have destroyed. It must be destroyed because it hinders perception of the actual expressive quality that resides in the basic language of visual art. Yesterday's drawing exhibits an exploration of surface, surface as a flow of light and space. As I made this drawing I thought of Mark Rothko's work. Rothko's clarity was his reduction; his painting are reduced to expressive play on surface and light.  Mark Rothko, Blue & Gray" oil on canvas, 1962  Drawing 05·25·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches It is becoming increasingly clear to me, profundity requires clarity. Here they come — drawings and paintings with more clarity! Looking back, was I afraid of full, unabated clarity because complexity hid my confusion. When I did not feel a high degree of artistic knowledge I mucked around with complex images, looking for truth within the muck. Well, is that not the way to enlightenment?
 Drawing 05·22·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 05·22·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 05·22·2021 No.3, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 05·22·2021 No.4, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The struggle to be free is also the struggle to be self-lucid. My work is paying off. Often I have thought I am too confusing to understand myself. That confusion must translate into being too confusing for my viewers to understand, Perhaps a true journey in life is one toward simplification based upon enlightenment and insight. Life, after all, is in the moment., making life's work a simple endeavor. True living is being true to undeniable truths. When we accept our transient reality, which limits us into here and now, we live better, we are happier. We are mortal, we are here, we are now, we know in the moment. We build understanding with our monetary insights. These drawings, the ones I show today, are momentary insights. Consequently, these drawing are more lucid to me than anything I can remember in my oeuvre. Perhaps they will be more lucid to you, my viewers, as well.
 "No Living Thing Can Exist Without It" (2021 No.3, state 7), oil on canvas, 58x56 inches, {"Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it." - Boris Pasternak, "Doctor Zhivago" (1958)}  Drawing 04·15·2021 (state 2), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches If there be alteration, let it be toward simple, potent, true. The drawing is state #2 of Drawing 04·15·2021, the painting is state #7 of "No Living Thing Can Exist Without It". Both have moved toward more direct, more comprehensibility, i.e., "Get to the point, damn it!" This is correct way for me. Confusion confuses. I have done confusion to myself too often. I have scurried around, looking for understanding, leaving a trail of questions without pure answers. Purity is required, whether the answer is final, and just a step along the way, "get to the point" is necessary. Actually, both should be true, finality and "just a step" in many more steps.
 Drawing 04·11·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  "No Living Thing Can Exist Without It" (2021 No.3, state 6), oil on canvas, 56x56 inches, {"Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it." - Boris Pasternak, "Doctor Zhivago" (1958)} Nowhere but true. That is my direction. It is coming, it is happening, there is no end in sight, but things can change. I don't want to write, "Things will change," because that is my biggest fear. To be clear, I have no fear of change in my art, I have fear of change in my mindful living, moments by moment.
 Drawing 02·21·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 02·20·2021 (state 2), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 02·13·2021 (state 3), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches These three drawings were begun, re-stated; they are a week's worth of effort. In, out, and about was my journey; two steps forward, one back, two forward. I arrive here. These drawings are keys to my future. I am, more than anything else, an organizer. I need to make real. The reality I seek is available through the process of making art. There is no end-game. There is progress and steady clarification. I am who I am. I am organizing myself as I organize my images. Making clear is most important. These drawings announce my acceptance of a process never to be fulfilled. The journey is exciting, willfully reflective of self-query. I am in the act of becoming, moving with each work of art toward fulfillment.
 "Startle & Lay Siege" (2021 No.1, state 3), oil on canvas, 36x45 inches {"I was learning at seventy-one what it is to be deranged. Proving that self-discovery wasn't over after all. Proving that the drama that is associated usually with the young as they fully begin to enter life... can startle and lay siege to the aged." -Philip Roth, "Exit Ghost"}  Drawing 12·18·2020 (state 2), pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Yesterday was a day of alteration toward clarity and better expression. The drawing is a revisit of one from December 18, 2020, the painting is this year's.
 Drawing 01·19·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Being centered, having a focal point, that's a good thing. An investigation requires a place to rest. Focus is a location of rest. Reality's frightening vastness sits wide open during truthful research. Gazing is not a sedentary activity. It is walking across a landscape molded in time. Time includes everything we are, from emotions to intellect. Yesterday's drawing is one more recognition that a safe harbor is essential within every search. The viewer requires the same.
 Drawing 01·17·2021, pencil on paper, 18x24 inches  "In the Lost Negative" (2021 No.2, state 1), oil on canvas, 49¾ x58½ inches {We only live between before we are and what we were. In the lost negative you exist... Three ages in a flash: the same child in the same picture, he, I, you..." - Robert Lowell, "For Sheridan"} These is a change in me. I am more clear on one fact: clarity of purpose is tantamount. When I was a young painter I felt great satisfaction in finding reaction of space and form to one another within the rectangles that are drawings and paintings. Somehow I misplaced that most deep concern, replacing it with the quality of my draftsmanship. Here I am in my objective, becoming young again, These two works, shown today, are a self-call to justice. Be clear, be oneself, return and renew! As Robert Lowell wrote, "Three ages in a flash: the same child in the same picture, he, I, you..." FOR SHERIDAN - Robert Lowell  Drawing 01·03·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 01·03·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Right my wrong is process. If I do not try I do not fail, nor do I succeed. I sometimes deluge my drawings with lines and forms. I am looking for directness, direct to self-expression. I come closer to right if I allow myself to feel deeply the appearing image. It is attention that is the problem. Mindfulness is not easily sustained. These two drawings appeared more clearly than those when I muck my feelings by replacing them with muddled technical searches, i.e., looking for compositional soundness, or whatever. These two drawings simply said "yes" to my feelings; I felt my way through them as I was making them. Success is being present, not looking back. Looking at a drawing is looking back, but if executed in mindful clarity it is a revisit to self-expression that is permanent.
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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
September 2021
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