 Drawing 10·13·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 10·12·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Yesterday's drawing feels familiar; the one from 10/12/2019 feels strange. Both done by the same guy. Both completed yesterday, but one began two days ago. No one can say I am not searching. I get surprised too, you know. The tale told today is one of insecurity. I walk forward, step by unknown step, because I am not sure who I am.
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 Drawing 09·28·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches From where does it come? I step up, I begin, it happens. I am giving into me the conduit. I channel the water to the barrier that separates the internal from the external. I work to allow it to spill over the dam. In my earlier living this dam held it back. I have found a means to open the gate through the process of mindful questioning. Without criticism I will continue this process. I know not where I go. I know this: the art I am making is me blurring the distance between that which I know and that which I can make real on paper and canvas.
Yesterday's drawing came in fluidly. It felt real and right, yet I continually questioned if bias, i.e., previous decisions, were tilting my process away from immediate truth telling. The questions remain, the answers will continue. The continuity of mindful questioning will yield truth to be told.  Drawing 09·25·2019 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 09·25·2019 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 09·25·2019 No.3, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Yesterday exhibited great potential. Every step I made brought me closer to pure internalization. I witnessed myself as I witnessed my drawings. Each drawing came easier than the last. The last made most sense of all — it had, and has, intense meaning. I felt my way through it as I feel my way through a conversation of great meaning. Here I am. These drawings are profound; they contain revelation and revelation again. I made them till I exhausted all meaning.
 Drawing 09·08·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  "Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5), oil on canvas, 47x30.5 inches {"My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull... Images gunfire across my consciousness... I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse." -Christopher Nolan, Irish Writer on his reasons for writing "The Eye of the Clock", in November 8, 1987 "Observer"} Making art is making the unexpected. You never know what you are going to get. Oy vey, that sounds like Forrest Gump: "My momma always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'" Yesterday's efforts surprised me. I fell into them as one falls into the scramble to get upright after being hit by a large ocean wave. It is the work to get upright, to breathe comfortably. Security is the issue. This is my struggle to get out of danger. I will always feel insecure. I will always be making an effort to make it better.
Now to a little technical information: I began yesterday's drawing to study the spatial perception I created in the painting, Gunfire Across My Consciousness. It is about the space under the form moving from the lower right as it moves diagonally up and over the central form. It creates a bridge with one abutment being the central form. I am fascinated by the negative three-dimensional space it creates, like perceiving the gap between a bridge and the surface of the water below it.  "Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5), oil on canvas, 47x30.5 inches {"My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull... Images gunfire across my consciousness... I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse." -Christopher Nolan, Irish Writer of his reasons for writing "The Eye of the Clock", in November 8, 1987 "Observer"} Astute readers of my blog will notice the title of my newly begun painting has changed, from yesterday's intended title to today's actual title. I introduce to you, Gunfire Across My Consciousness. Technically it is oil on canvas. However, the drawing on the canvas is oil based markers, colors copper and gold. Never before have I used oil-based markers to begin a painting. Never before have l used the colors copper or gold. The thought is this: My inculcated ideas must be challenged. Hence comes oil markers, copper and gold, and the methodology used to begin this painting. The methodology is not simple alteration of technique, it is change in attitude. I challenge myself. My mind acts quickly, feels quickly. I made an effort to hang in there during its making, I allowed the marks to happen like gunshots hitting the canvas, straight out of the avalanche that is my mind's activity. (See below the full quote from Christopher Nolan's interview, published in the November 8, 1987 issue of the Observer.) "My real motive is to describe how my brain-damaged life is as normal for me as my friends able-bodied life is to them. My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down into my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness and while trying to discipline them I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse. Try then to imagine how frustrating it is to give expression to that avalanche in efforts of one great nod after the other."  Drawing 09·04·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Work is required. That's all I got. My anxiety surrounding the work I am required to do is very present. Yesterday's drawing is a good one, but it also has a lot of open space, a lot of negative space. Do each of those negative spaces sing their propers notes, notes that radiate emotion and intellectual satisfaction? Blank spaces bring fear; they scarily call for resolution, either by mind or mark. Yesterday I chose mind over mark. Successful? I think I will go the other way today. I want to see which way is more satisfactory, open spaces filled by the mind, or mark filled spaces filled by a road map of specks and speckles.
The Irish writer, Christopher Nolan (born 1965, not the well known British screenwriter) said, when speaking of the reasons for writing The Eye of the Clock, "My real motive is to describe how my brain-damaged life is as normal for me as my friends able-bodied life is to them. My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down into my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness and while trying to discipline them I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse. Try then to imagine how frustrating it is to give expression to that avalanche...." Today I begin a new painting, which will be entitled, "Gunfire Across My Consciousness".  Drawing 09·01·2019 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 09·01·2019 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I am surprised. I feel wonderment. Where is this stuff coming from? Am I naïve, or am I a simpleton who is easily fooled, easily surprise? I have done this long enough to distinguish valid from bogus. Perhaps I am bottom-feeding, dredging the sludge of my Atman. This is my hope! Yesterday's drawings are different. They are informative, but are they emotionally and intellectually meaningful? I plug on. atman | ˈätmən | (also Atman) noun Hinduism the spiritual life principle of the universe, especially when regarded as inherent in the real self of the individual.  Drawing 08·24·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Things must change! I am well educated; thus I am well tied to past knowledge. This restricts me because knowledge is the stuff that came before me. I am uncomfortable because the past does not adequately inform my present. I am not those who came before me. I am me. I am here, I am now. That which has happened is useful, like a good diving board, but it does not fully clarify who I am. Education is who and what there was, not who and what I am. I do not want to be redundant. I do not want to be repetitive. I want to be myself.
In yesterday's drawing I stopped myself before I overwhelmed it with past history. I require radical alteration. I accept my despair. I have made great art, but my art is in the books, my art is in this blog; my past art appeared like fungus on a log; it grew from art history and personal history. That is not good enough! It does not make me. It does not represent me. It represents acquisition of all that has come before.  Drawing 07·26·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Part III: Wall with Objects OR WallpaperPaintings and drawings are flat, two-dimensional surfaces. If an artifice of the third dimension is created there are two choices. In order to deal with the inherent two-dimensionality of canvas or paper an artist can... (1) create a box, or landscape, by using a ground defined by a horizon, or (2) hang forms from a flat wall (the wall being defined by obvious positioning of the forms on the wall). There is third way to deal with two-dimensional canvas or paper: Float flat objects in an amorphous space. This third option, flat on flat, is always unsatisfactory. It is decoration. It is merely wallpaper. It cannot be art! Decoration is nice and pleasant, it may fill a void on a wall, but it cannot speak deeply of the human spirit, complex as the human spirit is, with intellect and emotion. Joan Miró tried doing both; he made paintings with the artifice of the third-dimension, and he made paintings that have flat objects on amorphous backgrounds. Miró's paintings with the third dimensional deceit mostly succeed, Miró's flat on flat paintings mostly fail (they are decorative and may fit well as decorations in a home, nothing more). Below, look at two paintings by Joan Miró. I admit, the second painting, which is flat on flat, exhibits Miró's effort to define the ground by using uneven areas of paint (in this way a viewer, at least, is cognizant the painting is on a flat surface). Henri Matisse did both. He created flat on flat works (e.g., his late paper cuts), but most of his career was spent making drawings and paintings with an exuberant questioning of color and three-dimensional space. I will discuss Matisse's work tomorrow. In yesterday's drawing I experimented with the lack of a horizon line; however there is an obvious horizon and an obvious ground.  Joan Miró, "Harlequin's Carnival", oil on canvas, 66x93cm, 1925  Joan Miró, "Blue III", oil on canvas, 270x355cm, 1961  "Doublethink" (2019 No.3, state 6), oil on canvas, 65x58 inches {"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty Four" (1949)} The painting "Doublethink" is living up to its name. Its process is me thinking twice. It is straightforward problem solving (though an outsider may believe it being solved in a roundabout way). I am pushing up against current knowledge; In order to solve this I must make new knowledge. This is exhilaration! It's a wonderful life!
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October 2019
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