It has happened again! After all my experience it seems I should recognize this cycle! The drawing in my previous post is decrepit and confused. It marked an end of a cycle of creativity. Like gravity waves, this cycle has a long wavelength and has peaks and troughs. Now I am ascending out of a trough. Yesterday surprised with a substantial drawing and first marks on a new canvas. It was a day that lifted my spirits. Out I came from befuddlement and disarray!
Very difficult for me is to admit to cyclical defeat by uncertainty. I go into the studio, knowingly in a muddle. I power on, making a mess of that before me. The question I ask as I trudge is, "Is it better to try with ineptitude, or is it better not to try a all?" Mostly my discipline overwhelms me, so I ineptly hang in there, making bad art. The question I ask continues to have no clear answer. On Friday (January 29), my ART Business Day, I worked hard on a new set of Business Cards and Art Portfolio Post Cards. It was a 12 hour work day. The next day I had no creative energy (Saturday, January 30), so... I took a day of reading and watching TV-Series. Yesterday I did get into the studio. Like many days when I return to the studio after time away, I felt a bit foggy about direction. The result is a couple of playfully instructive drawings. I like them very much. It had been a while since I intensely foreshortened a figure. It has been a while since I had taken two characters and aggressively contrasted them in size and scale. Fun. I am still a bit tired. I am going to take tomorrow as a "Rest and Recreation Day". Today is my Money Monday. My next post will be Thursday, February 4.
Times they are a-changing. My revisit to the painting "Beloved" has now made it into the painting "Crazy Love". It is better, more appropriate. You figure that out, because I am working on comprehension as well. Interesting, isn't it? Strange days are here to stay.
J.M.W. Turner, "Rain Steam and Speed", 1844 and "Intestinal Forms", 1990, both oil on canvas One hundred and forty-six years separate J.M.W. Turner's painting, "Rain Steam and Speed", from my painting, "Intestinal Forms". Despite the chronological distance between the two, I find similarity in the attitude in which they were created. Turner became more and more himself as he aged ("Rain Steam and Speed" is considered a "late" Turner, produced in 1844 when Turner was 69 years old). During my time away from making art I have been contemplating the manner in which I make art. Turner became himself by realizing, on canvas and paper, his deeply discerned intuitive knowing. I sometimes veer away from my own deeply intuitive knowing. I get distracted by searching for more knowledge. This quest for the ephemeral must end. When I return to painting I will follow the complexity of my internalized expressive self and make the art I was born and bred to make. This will be nurture and nature coming together, unified in my art. I admire Turner for accomplishing this in his lifetime. Other painters have also achieved this lofty success. Here I name a few other artists who I see as having succeeded: Willem de Kooning, Henri Matisse, Richard Diebenkorn, Alberto Giacometti, and James Ensor. These five are the ones that immediately come to mind, but of course there are others. The five I have named, along with J.M.W. Turner, are most on my mind as I seek my own redemption from the failure I witness when I seek knowledge, rather than perform my knowing.
Before I go, let me show you one of my favorite paintings by J.M.W. Turner, "Burning of the Houses of Parliament", 1834. This painting is also considered a "late" work of Turner's. "Burning of the Houses of Parliament" is much less abstract than "Rain Steam and Speed", and it was painted 10 years before "Rain Steam and Speed". I prepared, then delivered, a painting and a drawing, for exhibition. This distracted me from my normal routine of creativity. Fragility of the nuances of self-knowledge is apparent when daily activity is interrupted. Yes? No? More complex is the answer. Working hard sometimes confuses, rather than clarifies. Yesterday's drawing does feel confused to me, but it was fun in the making. I will stick with the latter idea and move on.
Moving on includes preparing a new canvas for a new painting. The frame was made yesterday. Today I will stretch the canvas. This process of traditional preparation takes more time than I would like. The resulting canvas, on its stretcher, takes up room and calls out permanency, which is not always a good thing. I am thinking of trying the method used by my mentor, Philip Guston. He simply tacked canvases on a wall. When a painting was completed, he had the canvas stretched on a properly dimensioned frame. This method allows one to get to painting more quickly, but there could be problems with it. If odd in dimension, a uniquely sized canvas must be manufactured, rather than using standard stretchers bars, as I now do. Also, stretching stresses the paint on its canvas support. This could lead to cracks in the paint. Guston got away with it. His works have thickly applied paint and no apparent cracking. I will give it try. Abstract and concrete, confusing and clear, alive and well. All of these seem to go together. At least, that is the way it feels today. Intellectually I am aswim. There is an ocean about me, full of life and objects and detritus. My job is not to know all of it, but to wander through it looking for truth, not beauty. Finding beauty is too easy. Beauty is a distraction from the facts of living which require introspection, followed by some kind of answer. My answers come by me poking around, touching this, touching that, asking, "Does that make sense?"
The painting Leap! is in its final days. The painting Lava begins its journey! I have to say, drawing on the scale of these paintings is wonderfully expressive. My inclinations in line and in form get satisfied. Perhaps I should make drawings on this scale. The real challenge for me is to keep the excitement of drawing continuous through the making of a painting. As Leap! developed I felt the drawing became subjugated to other concerns. I do not want this to happen. My view of all I do is simple. I self-express through marks that make form, light, and composition. Failure to continuously express is failure to come to fruition.
I am playing for real. My basic endeavor is to visually reproduce all I do, know, and see. I am not talking about actual "seeing," but the internalization of "seeing." I think it is working out. I am slow, consistent, and I believe, true to myself. How do I know? I am hoping the art I make is exactly what I know. I also hope it communicates my discovery of the internal workings on my reflections upon existence. Yesterday I listened to a "TED Hour" podcast about Abraham Maslow's hierarchical pyramid of human needs. The base is sleep, the second level is food and shelter. These two essential needs have not been a subject of my art. The next three levels have been subjects: security (safety), human relationship (love), and problem solving (purpose). It is interesting to me that my mentor, Philip Guston, made paintings about ALL five of Maslow's human needs, including food and sleep (which I show below today's reproductions of my work).
Drawings-03·08·2015 Nos. 1, 2, & 3, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches The first drawing is the worst drawing, but it is the one with the rat, the rat of today's blog title. Yesterday, was an interesting day for a few of reasons. It made a big difference for me to be in the studio as early as possible. No blog written, no email, just coffee and breakfast, then out and into the studio. I have always known my best energy is my early-in-the day energy. At last I have heeded reality. What a difference it made! I wonder why I waited so long to do this, to prioritize energy, i.e. to align my best energy with the best part of me. I tried to explain this conundrum in my last blog post: it was all about confusion. I don't feel confused any longer. I just want to do. Yes, I feel like a rat caught in a cage. I am trying to push myself out of the cage so that I may express that which I have been created to express. That is what rats do, they express their animus, their inner angst. What is the difference between me and a rat? Rats have a modus operandi, a particular way of doing things. I can never do the same thing twice. What makes me like a rat? We both need to get out of our cage.
Remember, if you see a Gallery View (as in the three drawings above) CLICK on a reproduction to enlarge it for better viewing. Just in case you are reluctant to do this, let me show you a larger version of yesterday's drawing #3... I feel my fortune of ideas is getting the short shrift. I have not been managing my time well! My artistic ideas are getting curt treatment. I have been spending my early mornings in front of the computer, doing what I am doing right now. First I use Photoshop to prepare publication-ready images of the art I created the day before. Then I write my blog. While here I look at my email, do other daily organizing tasks, then eat breakfast. It is late morning by the time I get to the studio. This schedule results in some of my best and brightest energy being used up. That is wrong. Energy is like a reservoir. It is limited in depth and width. I am reversing this poorly chosen manner of living by writing this blog now, at the end of my creative day, rather than at the beginning.
During the last several years I believe it benefitted me to write the blog just prior to my going to the studio. It was a way to assess the previous day's work. It allowed me to question myself and the validity of each day's work just prior to making it again. I do not need this any longer. My manner of making art has changed. There is no need to assess yesterday's work because I invent and create in front of today's work. I no longer need to contemplate that which has happened to prepare myself for that which is happening. I am becoming my obvious self. I no longer feel confused. I just want to stand up and sing. I want to revel in the moment of creating, dwelling in the surprise of the art I am making! Tomorrow morning I will wake up, get my coffee, have my breakfast, then be out the door to the studio within an hour! My best energy will be with me! |
To read my profile go to MEHRBACH.com.
At MEHRBACH.com you may view many of my paintings and drawings, past and present, and see details about my life and work. Archives
April 2024
|