 Drawing 08·28·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 08·29·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I am coining a new phrase, Referential Representation. My art-making is most satisfying to myself when my images refer emotionally, and intellectually, to my innermost ideas and feelings. I recognize I feel most successful when I represent my deepest psyche with my images. This full acceptance occurs when my images exhibit references to known forms in my real visual world. These forms are the basic connection we all share, they are our visual reality; as such, they are our visual references to all we know and feel. I believe all abstract art is referential to nature. Nature is in every existing visual form, forms seen in the cosmos, forms seen in our normal-sized everyday living, forms revealed by electron microscopes. forms created by the imaginations of artists, people living today, and those who in the past. I am a compendium of all I have seen.
The drawings I show you today are successful because they are Referential Representation. This is what I feel and this is what believe.
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 "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 5), oil on canvas, 52x57⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} If you have been paying attention, day by day, I am taking a walk with the painting, "Honorable Terms". It is a walk toward centering. I am mindfully working to find center in every way possible: intellectually, spiritually, emotional, compositionally. This is honorable work, this is great work, thus this painting's title is apropos.
In front of me now is a paperweight with this quote from Oliver Wendall Holmes: "Every calling is great when greatly pursued."  "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 1), oil on canvas, 52x56¾ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)}  Drawing 07·12·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches There are many reasons people choose to make art. This new painting uses a quote from James E. Miller Jr. (1920–2010) to explain the reason I make art. One of Miller's ideas is quoted in the title of my new painting, "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7). This idea fits me perfectly. I believe that "...feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." Jame E. Miller, Jr. and I are simpatico in our fondness for certain figures in American Literature. Miller loved, enjoyed, and revered Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot. I continue to read the same people Miller astutely critiqued. James E. Miller Jr. (1920–2010) James E. Miller was an American scholar and the Helen A. Regenstein Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago, where he completed his graduate work, taught, and served as chairman of the English department. Miller specialized in American literature, he has published over twenty books and various articles on authors such as T. S. Eliot, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. His books include T. S. Eliot’s Personal Wasteland: Exorcism of the Demons, T. S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet, The American Quest for a Supreme Fiction: Whitman’s Legacy in the Personal Epic, Leaves of Grass: America’s Lyric-Epic of Self and Democracy, F. Scott Fitzgerald: His Art and His Technique, Theory of Fiction: Henry James, and Quests Surd and Absurd: Essays in American Literature. He also has edited the anthology Heritage of American Literature, a Critical Guide to Leaves of Grass, and a Reader’s Guide to Herman Melville. His work on Eliot considers personal correspondence and the accounts of friends as well as an in-depth reading of Eliot’s early work up to and including The Waste Land. Miller also contends that though Eliot lived in England much of his life, he remained quintessentially an American writer. Miller's early work on J. D. Salinger was among the first work of its kind to be published. Throughout his career, Miller traveled and taught extensively in Japan, Australia, France, Italy, and elsewhere.  Drawing 05·29·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches This drawing took a lot of time, hours and hours. Sometimes I know everything feels very difficult during the process of making art, I can't quite get things to jive, or feel like they jive. Yesterday was one of those times. I know I am erratic in my self-acceptance, Perhaps this is a great drawing. Perhaps I had difficulty sorting out truth because I had so much flowing through my head; recent work, recent successes, and recent questions, some answered well, some not so well. In any case, it is days like this that I know problem solving is not a straight line, but a spiraling loop. On my problem solving way I experience erratic emotions. Elation and despair, discomfort and self-confidence; various emotions occur from day to day. Comfort is impossible to sustain.
 "The Opposite of Indifference" (2021 No.4, state 02), oil on canvas, 48x53½ inches, {"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead. His or her neighbor are of no consequence. Their hidden or visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an Abstraction." - Elie Wiesel, "US News & World Report" (27 October 1986)} Yesterday and today are days filled with positive possibilities. Positive and possible are in my air, they sit in me like peanut butter on crackers, full of potential energy. My art is ready to be energized into something profoundly resonant. Resonance is the sound innate to its vehicle. I am the vehicle. Resonance is always possible, In everyone and everything; it just needs to be sparked by a thrust of focused energy. Then, truth is realized in spirit and actuality.
The simplicity of yesterday's work, on the painting, "The Opposite of Indifference", is deceptive in its simplicity. That work, show here, it is the beginning of a clear sound, true in its resonance.  "The Opposite of Indifference" (2021 No.4, state 01), oil on canvas, 50x50 inches, {"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead. His or her neighbor are of no consequence. Their hidden or visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an Abstraction." - Elie Wiesel, "US News & World Report" (27 October 1986)} Things are getting complicated for me. I want to reduce all I feel into abstract qualities. I want to accurately imbue my art with my emotions and intellect. Elie Wiesel warned against reducing people to abstraction, but he also said "The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference." I am not indifferent. This painting is begun because I am at war with indifference.
 "No Living Thing Can Exist Without It" (2021 No.3, state 4), oil on canvas, 56x56 inches, {"Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it." - Boris Pasternak, "Doctor Zhivago" (1958)}  Drawing 04·07·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I am using a sketchbook again. You will not see it here because it is sketch notes to myself. It is teaching me basic needs. It is teaching me the simplicity of vision. I do need to change directions. I do need to go short and sweet. My work, too often, becomes complex. Too often I have solved problems by adding to complexity, rather than paring down to simple messaging. Yesterday's drawing exhibits my confusion. It has duplicity, and self awareness. Yesterday's drawing wants to go simple, but ends with a complexity of forms. Number and kinds of forms can distract. Going toward fewer forms is not necessarily going too little. There are all kind is of ways of making simplicity, sparsity of forms, into grand statements, ones filled with emotion and meaning. I am on the road to blunt and purposeful art. Keeping ideas alive, minute by insightful minute, will help. This is the reason for carrying a sketchbook, everywhere and always. I often awake with insights. My sketchbook was on my bedstead last night. This morning it was the first thing I picked up.
Working toward simplicity is necessary. That is happening in the painting, "No Living Thing Can Exist Without It".  Drawing 03·12·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 03·12·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Simply looking to put a zing to myself, the kind of zing that stings and sings.
 Drawing 03·14·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 03·14·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 03·14·2021 No.3, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches What makes an image sing? What makes an image engage? What makes an image so interesting as to be worthy of an extended visit? What make a visit difficult to give it up? I want my images to be difficult to leave behind. I am working on all of this. I am tying, I am floating trial images. I am being tried. I am working hard on being true, despite my trials and tribulations. Here are three drawings, made yesterday; three trials. The jury is out.
 Drawing 01·06·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Yesterday's studio session began with this drawing. I completed it. Then I had to go throw my garbage away at the town dump. On the way, I turned on the car's radio. A virulent, and violent, onslaught on the capital building had begun. Our republic's center was being attacked by supporters of a very sick man. His followers were doing the ask of this very sick man. This was familiar to him, and to all of us, but its intensity surprised the rational minds in our society. This very sick man has continually asked his cult-like followers to do his dirty work, the work required for him to acquire power and money. Yesterday's turmoil was a quick burn, but it mirrored this very sick man's entire life. This was abnormal, this mongrel horde pushing our democratically elected leaders out of our society's designated safe place to manage our country, in peace and in war.
Yesterday morning, I entered my studio feeling very positive, in control of my personal ambitions and struggles. That felt right and good. Then midday turmoil distracted me, lasting into the night, as our country struggled to get back to the rational task of governance. Today I feel good again. It appears more people today see clearly, and correctly, then yesterday. My drawing, here, shows insight into the play of space I wish to make fully embrace with my intellect and my emotions. I will return to the studio today. Today I will struggle more, I will work toward my ambition of complete self-expression. |
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September 2021
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