 "Your Decisions Matter" (2020 No.2, state 4), oil on canvas, 52x55½ inches {"It's essential that you believe as if your decisions matter... reality isn't important; what's important is your belief..." - Ted Chiang, "Exhalation", 2019} Perhaps, just perhaps, I understand the direction my art is going. This is phantasmagoria. My art is beginning to express phantasmagorical experiences. My images are each part of a sequence that is the real confused with the imaginary. My images are like those seen in a dream. My dreams, like yours, are connected to walk-around reality, but are expanded through emotions and intellect. I do not recognize the places in my drawings and paintings. The painting, "Your Decisions Matter," represents a dream. We are hunkering down in our respective spaces. Our current world feels like a dream. We are waiting for the next shoe to fall. This is surreal. It is unlike anything we have experienced. It is not normal. It will never become normal. It shall pass. It has enlightened me; I believe it has enlightened everyone. Our entire world is involved. We live as one organism, fighting off the same foe. My enlightenment is expressed in a selfish manner; I make art. Through art-making I understand more about myself. I am asking myself this question, "What things are really worth making?" The images I am making require the viewer to cease security, cease personal realms of seeing. Come with me into a place whose space is not normal, where one can live without the stresses of reality. Give into my images and you shall know more. The sights you live with, those you see outside of these images, are limited to your personal reality. These images are a world unto themselves; these images are like you; they are individual expressions. Each expresses itself as itself. Each of you express yourself as yourself. You are all different. My images are all different. The measure of my art's success is self-enlightenment; do you know more after viewing them? If my art succeeds, you will understand more about yourself, you will understand more about here, now, and each step you choose as you go forward.
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 "Lava" (Painting-05·03·2015, state 11), oil on canvas, 52X60 inches Wait for it... Wait for it... Sometimes you just have to wait for it! It took a few weeks of observations, and a night of dreams, to get to the changes seen in this painting, Lava. The wait was filled with frustration, and anxiety. My suspicion, that something was wrong, is vindicated by the result. The new distortions, and new colors, enhance the painting. The enhancements are few, but their importance is great. Witness here a change in attitude, not simply a change in the physical make-up of a painting. Once again, I prove to myself, that intuition, i.e. knowledge hidden beneath layers of hyper-consciuoness, is more authentic than simple, superficial reasoning. I especially enjoy the leftward tilt of the major figure, reactive as it is against other forms in the painting. This play of forms is a play in motion, right, left, up, down, across, and back. Then there is the light, its contrast now animates from light to dark, stirred, as it is, by the pure white dabs added to the background. This version of Lava (#12) is by far the best. More importantly, it is a precursor of great things to come.  Drawing-06·11·2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches   Drawings from 06/10/2015, both pencil on paper, 16X20 inches I dream every night, a lot! The subject matter of last night's dreams were different. Instead of being a hodgepodge of various scenarios, last night's dreams were dedicated to art, painting in particular. I remember viewing paintings by artists I admire. These were artists I invented. Their art was the kind I am driving toward, but more thoroughly realized. The paintings had figures and forms among abstractions invented through brush strokes and the energetic use of paint.
 Drawing-05·05·2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches There is something Fellini-ese about yesterday's drawing. Tuesdays often surprise me. As long-time readers of this blog know, Mondays are my "Take-Care-of Business" days. I rarely get into the studio on Mondays. A Monday absence generally stores creative energy within me, which ends up energizing my studio work on Tuesday. This drawing has that feel: surprise, and a weird visual invention, with great clarity, but no clear message. Through its spontaneous invention it reveals intuition. It looks like a clue to deeply buried questions, not appearing at all to be a visually descriptive answer to already known intellectual ideas.
Drawing-03·17·2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches
I awoke this morning dreaming of many approaches to my image creation. All had to do with challenging the space of the flat canvas. It took me hours to make this simple drawing, and it merely touches the images I saw in my dreams. With a few minutes to spare I began preparing a new canvas for a new painting. All is moving fast in my mind and spirit. By the way, I once again got rejected from Jury Duty. Hurrah for me!
Untitled Drawing-12·27·2014, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches
The last two nights I have had dream, after dream, after dream.
Two nights ago it was about a new kind of art, toward abstraction, in search of a new manner of emotional conversation. It was still formal in its compositional solidity. I saw myself setting up the image on the canvas with raw, three-dimensional forms, not precluding natural forms, but working with and against nature. It was me searching for emotional images. I wanted the viewer to deeply feel that which I feel. Last night it was about being lost. I was back in high school, thrown out somewhere in Los Angeles, far, far from home, without money, without identification. I was not lost. I needed to create a means to return to school because I was expected to announce a basketball game. Lost I am. In search I am. I am about to return to the studio with a mandate. That which I have done in 2014 is merely a transition (as always!). The year 2014 saw me moving myself out of my confusion toward acceptance that authentication requires a new way seeing. I have to create a means of getting home to myself. My dreams have given me clarity and strength. I can do this! I am about to make art that does not fully resemble the stuff I did in 2014. This new direction requires a greater embrace of abstraction. That, it appears, is the only way I will adequately express myself. Obvious it is!!! |
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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
March 2020
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