 "After Words" (2023 No.1, state 03), oil on canvas, 49¼X45 inches Self-deception is a thing. Mostly I have believed I am not party to personal lies. Now I think personal dishonesty is inevitable, for all of us. I have liked to characterize bad ideas as theory-testing, hypotheses gone wrong. Too bad, because I have been more wrong than right, which hurts. I have told more lies than truths.
Recently I have been more able to stand back, assess, recognize my dishonesty, move myself, and my Art, toward truth. I am not perfect. I am learning to accept my deception. I am in the midst of a strong effort to see my dishonesty for what it is. I am in the midst of reorienting my sinking ship, making it upright. I fear there is much about me that must be made right. Am I able to grapple with my vast amounts of personal confusion? I am making the effort to do so. This painting, "After Words", is stepping in a better, more truthful direction. It does look odd, doesn't it?  "The Beginnings of Caution" (2022 No.4, state 2), oil on canvas, 47¼x47 inches The painting,"The Beginnings of Caution", is better. It is witness to my awaking, it is in the midst of invention of a strategy that will allow me to be more me. All I really want to do is be kind to myself; be real, authentic, don't shy from truths so bold as to be frightening. Call this me becoming “woke." In truth, it ain't easy being oneself. Being oneself is being different from everyone else; it is being different than everything that has come before. Getting woke is difficult because the more you know the more truth and lies you have witnessed. My job is to weed out the lies I have been told, then visually invent the world with truths only, the ones I know are true to the core that is only me.
 Drawing 11·18·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches It appears impossible. I cannot get there by straight and true. I go in spirals, circling truth, hitting falsehood, saying "Ouch!", saying "Hey, that makes sense!", i.e., I am in an activity of assembling successes and failures. Through the work of assemblage truth is revealed. When my work sits in front me, naked and alone, assembled for my introspection, that's when I see truth and dishonesty. My job is to weed through confusion, toss out the weeds, bring truth back home. It ain't easy to recognize lies and personal deception. Truth hard to see when deception is part of every extended activity. There are few moments in my my life when I have the simple feeling that all is right, all is what it should be. I am doing OK. Yesterday's drawing is better than most.
 Drawing 03·22·2020 (state 1), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." ― Rumi It is difficult to sort it out. Hello and goodbye to rationality. What do I do now? I continue. Continuity is the key. Change is inevitable. Change happens within continuity because memory discards specificity of details, particularly as related to the many poor decisions attached to failures. Failures get lost, removed from the mind. I go forward, I take the next step, change happens! Continuity means change for the better. My art proceeds. My life proceeds. I am getting better one moment at a time. Yesterday's drawing is an interlude. It came fast. My time in the studio is limited. I am nursing my wife, who has taken ill. Our doctor has diagnosed her from afar. There is no testing for Covid-19, so what do we know? We know she is getting better. This, thankfully, is the truth. Most of you, when you read today's Blog title, thought I was talking about the Republican at the top. Several doctors and scientists have said the dishonesty of that man, his crazy expressions of optimism, have badly hurt our nation's efforts to get the Covid-19 outbreak under control. A few weeks ago he said, "It is just going to disappear." More disastrously, his lie about the widespread availability of testing ("Everyone who wants it can get it.") squashed development of the test. Scientists backed off development, believing the Center for Disease Control has a test available (they did not). His extreme dishonesty has put our nation into its current difficulties; weeks behind in testing, weeks behind in solutions. South Korea, early in the outbreak, successfully ramped up testing. South Korea has control of the virus outbreak. Our Scientists and Doctors say we are running blind; we can't figure this out; there is too little data. Rumi  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 19), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} "Something Else Entirely" has been very difficult for me. I feel I have encountered my evil within. This painting is in state 19, and it is NOT complete! Seeing my evil within is seeing the habits that have distracted me from reality. As I make this painting I am unearthing my faults, encountering my bad habits, seeing the manner in which I fall into erroneous steps while in process. Putting it more positively, because of this painting I have grown more truthful; I have thrown faults into the trash bin; I have accepted a more lucid view of reality. The painting, "Something Else Entirely", is much better now than it was before I worked on it yesterday. Also, I am much better. Honest reflexion upon my failures is the best means to comprehend truth and reality.
 Drawing 11·21·2017, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches This morning The New Yorker sent an email to all its subscribers with the cartoon I reproduce below. It is apt in many ways. It relates to our society, but also embraces the constant internal arguments I have. Only I get me, and I don't completely get me. That is the major reason I make art. It is also the reason my work bounces around in search for consistent, relentless truth. Can any human endeavor find absolute truth? I think there are absolute truths, like honesty. However, complex endeavors, like making art, do not easily reveal absolute truth. Thus comes my drawings, one simple, the next complex. There are those that are dominated by lines and those that are dominated by hard core black graphite. Yesterday's drawing exhibits the blackest I can get with that pencil of mine.   "2017 No.13" (state 11), oil on canvas, 62x69 inches I always make an effort to see everything at once. I try for universal comprehension. Instead, I get distracted by the ugliest deceit first, then I see the rest of my dishonesty, The floating ring in 2017 No.13 is gone! Yesterday the truth of its deceit hit me hard. After removing the circle I noticed the inappropriate blue flame-like shape (in the upper left). Now it glares at me with its fraudulence. It does not deserve to be there! Unfortunately I am capable of only one step at a time. This undermines my soul. It is personal deception. I was lying to myself and I did not know it. This is why I must live a very long life. It is going to take me a long time to correct all my missteps. Finding right is not a straight path. I want to do this right. I am obsessed. I want to stop messing up. I want to find the simplicity of living within truth.
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November 2024
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