Unusual and usual. Whatever! The 1, 2, 3 of getting it done is not dictated by an obviously rational order of things. Yet it gets done. There is the immediate and the distant, that which is obvious now and that which will become obvious after extended time and effort. Within the little I know, I know that the work I am doing now is more authentically mine than the work I was doing a month ago. I am becoming myself through work and time. Part of this becoming myself is not clearly work but more clearly acceptance. It is me giving up the fight to come up to the standards set by the masters. It is me accepting my own innate standards, which are surprisingly new and different than anything I know through education and observation. I am, to my surprise, something that has never existed before.
Visual exploration and experimentation are taking over. Verbal explanation, at this point, is pointless. Drawings-02·22·2015 Nos. 1, 2, & 3, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches
So... I feel like titles are now appropriate, but, as always, I don't want them to interfere with the viewer's emotional and intellectual response to the painting. So... "Asparagus" seems appropriate for this new painting. I think that is a sprig of asparagus the main character is holding.
Reproducing a painting at this stage has its difficulties. The grays of the acrylic marker are more accurate than in yesterday's reproduction, but the colors don't play as well as they do in the real painting. In reproduction there is so much white to consider. As colors fill the canvas the interaction of one color against the other colors will become more accurate. Drawings-02·14·2015 Nos. 1, 2, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches There is no such thing as new and different, just new and closer to true. Yesterday felt authentic. The images I produced felt authentic. A new painting was begun. Its first stage is drawn in acrylic marker (the marker's color is called "iron curtain"). Iron Curtain is a low value grey, so the reproduction values are contrast enhanced for better viewing.
Yes, this one appears done, finished! This painting is an amazing gateway of visual possibilities. Opportunities abound. I am deeply feeling a need to examine undeveloped ideas. My drawings also exhibit this crack, where the light of insight is pouring in. Another surprise: I am thinking that all my works are now asking for titles. This indicates there is a commencement of ideas which declares my restrictions of a few months ago as alien. Untitled Drawings-02·11·2015 Nos. 1, 2, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches
Untitled Drawings-02·07·2015 Nos. 1, 2, 3, pencil on paper, 14X11 inches How did I get to this need I have to make art, or make anything? There is definitely some kind of flame within me that calls me to fabricate, fashion, build, and assemble. At one time I believed it was my need to leave behind a legacy. I believed making art was evidence that I was here. These things I made would be here when I am no longer here. They would be traces of myself, which would continue to exist after I am gone. Now it does not seem so simple. There is much happening in my daily life, emotional and physical. I need to speak of these happenings in order to digest them, understand them, live with them. The weird part of this is the feeling that I am slowly inching toward the stuff I was born to make. The imagines are becoming more me, less derivative. I am not sure who wrote it, but I once read that every important voice has one great idea that drives ALL their work. Picasso has manipulation of form, Matisse had manipulation of color, Einstein had manipulation of space/time, et cetera. The problem is finding the means to express the great idea. I have not fully found my means, my voice. I am bolstered by the feeling that I am getting closer. My daily work is paying off.
Untitled Drawings-01·27·2015, Nos. 1, 2, 3, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches Please look at everything! Yesterday was a wondrous and eventful day in the studio. The middle section of my studio-time was give to the portrait drawing shown below. It was a revelation in the making — it was controlled expression! I sustained sensitivity and feeling throughout its creation. In the past I had not been able to maintain expressive energy throughout the making of a drawing as complex as this one. If anything sums up yesterday's insight it is this: the use of contrast to animate forms. This is most apparent in the portrait drawing. It followed me into the painting. However, after finishing Drawing #4, my remaining time in the studio was limited. This insight did not have enough time to be fully expressed in the painting.
What can I tell you? It happens! There are days when I go through the motions of art-making while feeling distracted by emotional issues outside of my personal concerns. Yesterday was one of those days. Conceivably, or surprisingly, this confusion is illustrated in yesterday's unusual drawing. The man in the left panel is obviously interested in the confusion in the right panel. The right panel contains, perhaps, a head on feet covered by something like white, opaque, plastic wrap — also a blade-like object penetrates it though its top. If this drawing speaks deeply about my emotional life, in my day that was yesterday, then there is a "golly!" and a "gadzooks!" in this revelation. Could it be that I speak intuitively even when I feel awash in concerns outside myself?
Can you see where these are going? I can not! Back and forth, and all around, they go from figurative to abstract. Consistent is their interest in form and composition. The one obvious is my struggle for authentic expression. Most gratifying is their high quality. It is my search for a simple means to accurate expression that forces upon me the letting go of the falderal. These drawings are moving me toward the point, to the reason, for making drawings. This seems odd to convey, but looking back, I believe most of my artistic career, and perhaps most of my career as living being, has been dedicated to activity as education, not activity as self-expression. There is a hump in one's path. It is the impediment to becoming an expressive entity. That hump is education. I don't mean education as simple information gathering. Good education is trial and error, a colloquy of learning. If successful, one's education gives one the means to decipher the particles in the cloud through which we walk in our daily existence. Most of these particles are required for simple sustenance, but it is those of the metaphysical that are really interesting to me. Mere sustenance can muddle, and even obscure, that which is truly important to understanding oneself. It is my job, as artist, to move through the cloud, to inspect the individual particles that are the cloud, to grab and place in my arsenal those particle that sing truly the language of myself. The rest of the particles are there as support, like the sunshine. Without sunshine we could not exist, but sunshine does not express the metaphysical angst that is the reason for waking up every day and screaming, "We exist for a reason!"
One of the changes that appears today is the manner of reproduction. I began by taking the photos of my work in RAW Format, rather than JPEG Format. This increases the amount of accessable data, but also increases the amount of work I needed to do to prepare the images for publication. But technical problems of reproduction is not the reason I write this blog, so let me get to the important stuff. Most remarkable to me about yesterday's work is the portrait drawing, Untitled Drawing #6 (see below, then CLICK on the drawing to ENLARGE for better viewing). Thus my title. This drawing is emotionally more subtle than any figurative work I have done in the last month or so. Looking at art-making through the lens of abstraction has increased my visual-emotional acuity. I believe it to be one of the best figurative drawings I have ever made. It is filled with emotional subtlety and also with subtlety of light, form, and composition. This is proof I have expanded my emotional range as well as my formal range. My work is simply better in every way.
All drawings are pencil on 14X11 inch paper. |
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May 2024
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