I don't care about straight lines on the page, but I do care about getting there directly, without straying too far from an authentic path. Here I am in another struggle to keep on a line to self-expression. This is about clarity and correct measurement, and not about skill and being true to form. Yesterday's drawing feels off. It is too ornate and confusing. It looks like a weird being from another planet is encountering a strange fruit from another planet (the objects may come from two different planets — who knows?).
Today I am back at it again! (Lately, I seem to be loving those exclamation points!!!) It has been a couple days since I made the drawing that is posted today. This drawing is about confusion. Tis the season of confusion ― I am caught between art and family. I love both, I enjoy participation in both. The remarkable thing about this drawing is its creation was not content conscious; it spilled out of me with its literalness, which is, "being caught in-between!" That is where I am going to be for the next few days. Family will dominate. I am counseling myself, and you (my readers), not to expect much in art-production for several days.
As usual, I expect my full return to art-making will come with great energy. This full return will happen in 5 or 6 days. Giving up my dedicated involvement comes with discomfort. Right now I am full of ideas. I am actively breaking down the barriers that have separated me from the art that is gigantically mine. Family and friends have reassured me that this once a year distraction will not harm my ongoing research and development. Still, it is very difficult for me to be patient. I must give into Leo Tolstoy's wisdom: "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time." My recent work is telling: I have not been true to myself. I am not interested in the figure as a primary image. I believe it is a conduit to expression, but not the end-all of expression. The abstract power of composition, form, and color, are far more important. As example, my devotion to drawing human couples has been a distraction. Why? It has allowed me to acquire knowledge with little expressive satisfaction. In drawing such a mundane subject I have enhanced my technical abilities. I have enhanced my form making, graphic punctuation, and spatial expression. I accept these abstract qualities as my drops of candy. I enjoy them in the way we all enjoy eating incredibly, perfectly balanced, candies (excellent dark chocolates are my favorites). These satisfyingly sweet qualities are clues to the path I should follow. My repetitive return to the figure, in normal reductive space, has been my distraction. I have begun an effort to break myself of this habit so I may seek my candy. I want to follow the path of most pleasure. Example, I find the man's right leg in yesterday's second drawing extremely pleasureable (his left leg is on the viewer's right). The play of form is animated by the staccato of the toes ending an appendage which flows forward in space, as if hovering above ground. The forward thrust of space is partially created by simple punctuation of dark that mimics a shadow on a floor. Oh! This is so very satisfying to me!
What I need to do now is follow these clues. Follow them like stones laid down in a path. If I do this, I will follow new forms, new spaces, new compositions, and new colors, on my way to multiple satisfactions. I want to walk out of the studio satiated, not feeling as I have recently felt. I have been feeling too much like an explorer with no satisfactory discoveries. Not good. I have been showing up, patiently, waiting for this. Yesterday the girl in the right panel of Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 became right. I am not saying she is perfect, but the solution is there. She has taken on the proper mood. The bend of her body relative to her head is right. Her relative sizes, scale of head to body, scale of her to the rest of the triptych, et cetera, is right and good. If showing up is 80% of success, then hanging in there is 19%. I will go with Thomas Edison for the last 1%: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
Yesterday's drawing is surprising in subject. I am not going to pull it apart by analyzing it. It is Thanksgiving Day today in the U.S. and I feel happy. Not because of my art. I will celebrate, eat turkey. Yesterday I did not work. There were items to get for today's feast. I spent my time helping to make today happen well. Unusual as this is in my world of self-concern and worry, I am taking today off to celebrate being here and now. Yes, there are many problems within and without me, but today I will let it all go to find joy in the simplicity of friends and family, of eat, drink, and be merry.
Two days ago I worked on the painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014. The girl in the right panel got all the attention. Her dress is much better. Her head needs more work, but its newly constructed anatomical rotation, and its size and scale, are better. The drawing is a lark and has no particular depth of message. Mysteriousness is always upon us. Where does all this come from? More than ever I am surprised by the invention within me. This is a result of my slow, but sure, giving into the act of creating without thinking out-loud. In my art I am doing things which surprise ― I don't consciously remember doing them! As example, in yesterday's drawing, there is the shadow cast by the man's head on his chest. It is very right, and works well in creating form and composition, but I can't remember acting on it. This not-consciously-knowing makes me think of Willem de Kooning. Late in life, and late in his artistic career, Willem de Kooning had Alzheimer's Disease. Despite his memory problems, de Kooning continued to make interesting paintings. People who knew him said that his performance, as an artist, was so deeply ingrained that it did not require the conscious, non-verbal, part of his thought. As proof, after my work I show a late de Kooning (in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia).
Yesterday's changes in Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 opened up a new dialogue in this painting. I thought I was playing with intellectual compositional problems when all of a sudden the girl in the right panel got sexier. I don't need to tell you about this major change, you can see it simply by comparing today's reproduction with yesterday's.
I am not thrilled with yesterday's drawing in terms of composition or content. However, in person, this drawing has the same dynamic play of darks and lights, a wonderful use of value changes, that is evident in all my drawings from the last few weeks. Technically there has been a big jump in my drawing, which is now seeping into the painting as well. Yesterday's activity of painting brought me way back to 1991. At that point in my career I was an abstract painter, making what I called "3D Abstractions" (see one of those paintings below the reproductions of yesterday's work). Well, yesterday, while painting, I remembered that sensation of applying light on canvas as I struggled to make three-dimensional forms. It happened in the left panel of Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014, where the artifice of the walls I was creating must appear authentically 3D, forcing this character into his alcove. In Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 I am in the somewhat tedious part of its journey. Subtle changes are occurring, each making the painting better. Day by day, change by change, I will bring this thing to finality (despite a wish to move on to a new painting). For instance, looking at today's reproduction, I believe the wall behind the woman in the right panel must now be subtly alter in order to balance that right panel with the one on the left. What I perceive here is not always true. The truth occurs only when standing in front of the actual work. However, I do find my reproductions here extremely informative. My reaction to them is often true upon return to physically standing in front of the real thing.
Yesterday's drawing was interesting in its unusualness. Why do I feel these things? I see problems and possible solutions, but I am not simply happy. immediately upon viewing today's reproduction of the painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 I see a problem, and it glares at me. The left panel is not reacting as well as it might; it should play better with the other two panels. The left panels is too upright. I believe it requires a rotational structure to animate it, and contrast it, with the other two panels. Funny it seems, because the lines on the back wall of the left panel instigate a rotation. However, those lines complete nothing. Do I know the solution? No! But I know the problem, and that's a beginning. Writing this informs me of a fundamental concern of mine: compositional animation and balance. Its importance is rearing it head. But there is much more to me than that. Look at yesterday's drawing. I continue my efforts to scrape the surface of the human face in my quest of subtle emotional expression. I couldn't make this stuff up. It is primal. I know not where my concerns originate.
I want to hurry, but I find I can only go as fast as my energy allows. Perhaps it is this problem that instigated yesterday's drawing. After I smacked you with my biggest fear, I went to the studio. Yesterday was a good day in the studio. The painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 progressed well, and the drawing struck something basic to me (despite its rather flat, classically redolent composition, read right to left). I wrote about this primal worry in yesterday's post: I am afraid I will not have enough time to unravel all which I know and feel.
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April 2024
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