 "How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2, state 9), oil on canvas, 59.5x32 inches {"Life is sweet at the edge of a razor; And down in the front row of an old picture show the old man is asleep as the credits start to roll. And I want to know, the same thing everyone wants to know, how's it going to end?" -Tom Waits}  Drawing 03·07·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches One day comes, I believe I know how to do this. The next days comes, I feel awash with more questions that are without easy answers. Nothing is obviously right or wrong. I wander as if in a desert. I am contemplating. I am alone. There is doubt. I am working. I am brainstorming. I am seeking. I find; I question everything I find. Am I being successful? I do not know. Such is the process of making-art.
Two days ago I believed I had made a breakthrough drawing. I tried to repeat the process. No two days, not two drawings, no two acts are identical. Nothing can be repeated. Each activity stands by itself. The path is evident; the next step lays before me, but the place I am going is not known. I accept this. This process is lively and mysterious. I trust it is worthwhile; I believe it will reward me with more: more knowledge, more ideas, more questions, more results. I will possess a lot of more!  Drawing 01·19·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Never perfect! Always failure! Always a modicum of success! The next is always better. Examining work is good. Examination informs; it helps me see necessary adjustments; it makes clear the difference between proper notes and those out of tune. I learn. There is a lot to like in yesterday's drawing. Learning is endless. I am on a path; a faithful path to better work.
 Drawing 12·15·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The risk is this: Going it alone is lonely. I am following a path that is purely mine; therefore not treaded by anyone else, not ever. I am educating myself to see my way. This means I am alone in my endeavor. No one else sees my way; no one else has ever seen my way. Why would I expect anyone, except myself, to understand my means of communication? Yes, I am doing a good job of communicating to myself. I am revealing important information pertaining to myself. This journey is full of self-satisfaction. Yet, what I fully want and what I get are not quite the same. I want my work to have two levels of communication: (1) Revealing and discovering myself, and (2) Communicating to others so I can dialog about existence and universal human concerns. The risk, therefore, pertains to No.2. I have yet to get the response to my art that assures me I am succeeding at communication to others. This is failure. My success is me growing my self-knowledge; with every work I make I know more about my intuition, driving force, and reason to live.
 Drawing 12·01·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches So, a nit is the egg of a parasitic insect. What does that have to do with art-making? A nit sounds ugly and disgusting. Making art can be involved in ugly and disgusting, but I do NOT think of my art that way. I do, however, believe my many disparate efforts, especially in drawing, are parasitic by nature. After I have produced them (e.g., yesterday's drawing) they cling to my intellect like a parasite. They are there; they have invaded me. Going forward I will be aware of these parasites of ideas whether I want to or not. Yes, some of these nuggets are squished; I do try to discard them if I believe they are useless to me. I am never fully successful at denying their presence — thus the nit-likeness of them! All this is written because I am unsure if yesterday's drawing has a lot of helpful information for me. I define "helpful" as instructive in my movement toward self-realization through art-making.
 Drawing 11·14·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Approach can swing from fully intellectual to fully emotional. The sweet-spot must be somewhere in-between. The sweet-spot is not-too-soft, not-too-hard, but just-right; yes it is something Goldilocks would enjoy!
Yesterday's drawing consumed my entire studio time. That drawing is intricate and it is thoughtful, but it felt dry in-the-making. This drawing was born mostly from my intellect and less from my emotions. Does it fail the viewer because it is not fully human? This is my worry. Living well, making art well, both are not fully intellectual nor fully emotional. Art, if done well, contains a balance of intellect and emotion. So how do I do this in a way that fully represents me? Perhaps, if this drawing were a bit different it would be more emotionally successful. For instance, if the form on the bottom right were larger, would its contrast create emotional stress through a dramatic emotional juxtaposition of forms? Instead it is so well balanced as to be comfortably numb. I do not want to represent this drawing as poor, or inadequate. It is an excellent drawing; but it just does not speak with a striking amount emotional energy. I want more. OK, I know how to put together a nicely balanced composition, one that is intellectually satisfying. Again; I want more! I want to see the stresses of existence in my art; the push and pull between my intellect and my emotions. The quest is truth and representation of the authentic consequence of living. I am getting closer. Writing, as I am today, is a call for my instigating a great effort to move closer to full satisfaction, me delivering a performance that fully and completely represents all I feel and know. (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony come to mind!)  "Burnt Norton" (2018 No.8, state 21), oil on canvas, 63x66 inches {"What might have been is an abstraction; Remaining a perpetual possibility; Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory." -T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"}  "Chaos, Stillness & Prayer" (2018 No.9, state 3), oil on canvas, 54x36 inches {"Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.... an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction." -Saul Bellow, "Writers at Work: Third Series", 1967} Perfection takes time. I must not let perfection distract me from advancement. Improvement comes by avoiding the lure of perfection. Improvement means knowing when I must move to a new endeavor. The lessons learned from my inability to achieve perfection will be used as instruction during my next effort. Betterment is slow and steady work. The endeavor to reach perfection must come with acceptance; perfection will never be achieved. Thus is human reality.
Burnt Norton is so darn close to completion. I have been tweaking and altering, each change coming with its sense of necessity to the fulfillment of the piece. Simultaneously I have been working on Chaos, Stillness & Prayer. I am going to limit myself to one more session on Burnt Norton.  "Burnt Norton" (2018 No.8, state 6), oil on canvas, 55.5x66 inches {"What might have been is an abstraction; Remaining a perpetual possibility; Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory." -T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"}  Drawing 09·23·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I worry when the going feels slow... Are my good days gone? Have I lost my intensity? Have I lost my energy? Am I too old? It takes initiative to step back and make sense of these feelings. Difficult it is to see the slow development of the painting Burnt Norton as due to personal revelation rather than personal foundering. Yesterday's drawing is insightful; it is me stretching to find robust, personally sensitive compositions. Vincent van Gogh would understand me. He would understand my fears. Vincent was relentlessly experimenting. The drawing reproduced below below was done by Van Gogh in the last year of his life. It is sanely experimental.  Vincent Van Gogh, "Wheatfields", ink on paper, 1890  Drawing 09·13·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Never perfection, always questionable; art is like life, i.e., striving to be better is a noble thing with no end. There should be a better way to see clearly, to see well, to get it right. There is not. Work is the only way. Yesterday's drawing is me trying circular composition. It is like dancing on a stage without any indication there is the possibility to exit. Is this a better way to make a composition? Henri Matisse often did it this way. Matisse must be respected! Notice the Matisse paper cut (below): There is a circular dance of forms against playful, various sized and colored, terra-firma-like blocks as ground. Those blocks solidly secure the stage, thus allowing the circles to dance in contrast to the rectangles they dance upon.  Henri Matisse, "The King's Sadness", gouache on paper cut & pasted, 1952  Drawing 06·07·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches This is an amazing drawing. It is amazing in its queries, its discoveries, and in its value nuance. But those qualities ain't seen here! I tried for well over 20 minutes to reproduce it accurately, as seen in real light in the real world. I failed, miserably! Giving up, I show it in the manner seen here. I show this drawing along with this cautionary tale: Please realize there is a lesson in life here. Life lived cannot be reproduced accurately. We make films, we produce plays, we write novels, we write poems and essays, i.e. we make art. Art is a reflection of the authenticity that is living. Art is an effort to reproduce the authority that is living. Art fails as accurate reproduction of things experience in form, in emotions, in intellect. Therefore, my failure to reproduce this drawing well is (Failure) X (Failure) = Failure-squared!
 "Weoman" (2018 No.3; state 6), oil on canvas, 35x42 inches ("I could not get a rhyme for Roman, And was obliged to call it Weoman." -Marjorie Fleming, "Sonnet")  Drawing 05·26·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches One of my favorite pieces of music is Igor Stravinsky's Circus Polka. In 1941, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus commissioned the famed choreographer George Balanchine to write a ballet for a somewhat unconventional ensemble: fifty human dancers and fifty trained elephants. Given the freedom of selecting a composer for the the pachyderm production, Balanchine immediately turned to Igor Stravinsky. Balanchine later recounted their telephone conversation:
GB: "I wonder if you'd like to do a little ballet with me." IS: "For whom?" GB: "For some elephants." IS: "How old?" GB: "Very young." IS: "All right. If they are very young elephants, I will do it." Artistic decisions are made in many ways. Mostly through intuition; Knowing whether it is possible to accomplish the intention when presented with a media. Knowing the media causally is often the only option, but trusting one's ability to manipulate the given media is most important. Making art is a leap of faith; Faith in one's own ability. Where am I going with my great effort? Slowly I move toward realization of my deepest concerns. Art-Making, after all, is finding one's own voice, one's own manner of seeing, then swinging through the trees with glee as realization of one's intent begins to match one's intuition. |
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June 2019
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