 Drawing 01·22·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Am I too complicated? Will it be impossible for me to melt my perception down into a simple image? Do I challenge the viewer, and myself, with complications? Am I creating obstacles that prevent easy comprehension? OR, do I have so much to say that there is no way to say it simply?
This dilemma definitely does not have an easy answer. Yesterday's drawing took hours to find and to complete. It was good exercise. I am better for it. I am stronger. As I look at it now I wonder on its message. Does it say profound ideas that are me? I want to be seen for who I am. I want to reveal my concerns, my joys, my sense of humor, my reality. I fear death and I fear life. Am I making myself clear?
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 "Seriously?" (2018 No.10, state 5), oil on canvas, 49.8x61.5 inches {"All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously." - Hermann Hesse, "Reflections", ed. Volker Michels, 1974}  Drawing 11·28·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Reality is fluid. Corrections are always possible, but not always efficacious. The painting Seriously? has many corrections to come, as does Chaos, Stillness & Prayer (the painting whose beginning immediately preceded Seriously?).
I find yesterday's drawing very good. One measure of excellence is perception while in action — this one, during its making, made me feel full of knowledge. I believe that's a good thing. I always fear self-delusion. Vincent Van Gogh feared self-delusion too; look where that got Vincent!  Drawing 10·07·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches This art-making is not getting easier! The more I know the more complex and difficult it gets. There are no easy solutions. Each solution is exciting in its process and eventual success. It is success of the process that keeps me going. It is fear of its time intensiveness that makes me nerve-wracked. I am getting older. Life is here, but I need a few lifetimes to get this done.
 "The Intervening Tick" (2018 No.6, state 4), oil on canvas, 49x33 inches {"Is that where wise men want us to live; in that intervening tick, the tiny slot that occurs after you have spent hours searching downtown for that new club and just before you give up and head back home?" - Billy Collins, "The Present", from "New Ohio Review" 2017}  Drawing 07·14·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches In yesterday's blog-post I expressed fear over the upper sky-like portion of my recent drawings. In those drawings the "sky" was untouched. i.e., White Paper! There is no "White Sky" in the drawing I show today. Today's drawing makes me anxious; It makes me want to move on to my next painting. Two paintings are on my work-wall, both in the process of problem solving. Yesterday The Intervening Tick took a great leap toward realization (see its state 4, above). Chocorua is almost done (it requires a little bit of brightening & a little expansion on its upper edge). When either of them, The Intervening Tick or Chocorua, move off my work-wall, I will begin 2018 No.7 (not yet titled).
 "2017 No.6" (state 8), oil on canvas, 66x60 inches I hate it when things do not work the way they normally work. I fear I will be unable to find a worthwhile solution to a painting or drawing. Then there is my fear that it will continue to snow and Spring will never come. All of these conundrums of living have some merit, except the last. In the last ten days we have had two major snowstorms. They were difficult, and taxing, because of the required cleaning up for us to get in and to get out. But today it is sunny and warm. The snow is melting. It is the sixth day of Spring and it is doing what it is supposed to do. This brings me to the painting 2017 No.6. I thought it was very close to being done. It is, but it is going to require more time to complete than I had anticipated. This bothers me because I want to move on. Yesterday I worked on the patterned "flooring." It is asking me to refine its pattern and its outline. The right border of the patterned area is not right. Now a complaint: To clean up the recent snowfalls I used a snow blower, one that is small and has a series of blades that throw the snow slightly to the side. It must be pushed into the snow since it has no self-propelled wheels. To remove the snow from the walkway I pushed and pushed it, over and over again, repetitively, using my right leg as the motivator. Now I have an injured right leg. Not injured in terms of normal, day to day, activity, but in terms of my favorite exercise, running. This makes me know I am mortal, fragile, physically aging. Yuck! My body is not reliably coming back to normal. Spring is being reliable. Spring will come no matter what, but my leg may need Physical Therapy to fix. The wonder of today came when I walked into the studio. Yesterday's drawings are excellent. My leg hurts, but the drawings are good. There is light showing through the cracks in the darkness! Me thinks I have complained too much!      Impossible to know it all, but I want to know it all. This is my passion. I am a problem solver. I am a problem. I do not understand everything I want to understand. More confusing than that: I don't know what I do not know. I just know there is a chasm in front of me and it is very dark and lonely down there. I want to light the darkness. I need to light the darkness. Yesterday I visually yelled at this chasm with three drawings. The addictive part of art-making is its give-back. With every completed work I feel I have lit the darkness a bit more; I understand more than before.
Today I will begin a new painting.  "2016 No.4 (Painting-03·15·2016 state 6), oil on canvas, 57X50 inches When I awoke this morning I believed I would be writing about the occasional transitional failure. I thought yesterday's work had failed. Writing this blog, posting these images, has saved me from despair. These works are OK! They are transitional, yes. But, they are authentic in their enlightenment. I know more than I did the day before! I problem-solved. I made real the spatial ideas I wrote about in yesterday's blog post. I have a need to drive the artifice of space laterally, back and forth, in and out. Yesterday I tested this need. Today images crackle with the plunge into space that I so desire. Instead of the melancholy feeling of deficiency, I now feel better for the effort, and the results, I show here.  Drawing-04·10·2016, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches   I worry that I am a product of modern Science Fiction or that I have seen too many photos of landscapes on places like Mars. Yesterday's first drawing reminded me of this fear. Dare I say this? (Because I may influence your seeing.) Is that a landing pod parked in the middle of a landscape on Mars? Recently I saw the movie "The Martian" (starring Matt Damon). But I also grew up in Southern California. I know desert landscapes well. Perhaps I made "Drawing No.2" to alleviate my fear of depicting extraterrestrial scace-scapes. More important, I began a new painting. This one began with my joy of inventing surfaces and forms. On this relatively small canvas I scratched and carved out forms with an acrylic marker. I consciously tried not to create a composition reminiscent of a landscape. It is more like a wall. We shall see where it goes from here.  "2016 No.3" (Painting-03·05·2016, state 1), acrylic marker on canvas, 52X48 inches)  Drawing-02·28·2016, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches There is more to me than meets the eye. My current work falls short. I am exploding with ambition and possibilities. Ideas are flowing, percolating. Unconfined they are. They are murky, not clearly on paper or canvas. That is the problem. Translating them into visual reality is the problem. I do not want to be trite. I do not wish to endlessly regurgitate. The past is a friend only if used to understand the present. The past must not be a dead weight, holding me back. Knowledge is dangerous if it impedes creativity. The problem is education. Education instructs on past successes, past failures, that which was. This is now. Education, knowledge, past history are well known and understood. I believe I have been using my education improperly. It has become simple usury. The interest rate is too high to allow me to create new knowledge. My educational interest demands too much. It has distracted me, consumed me. I have been working too hard to pay it off. My past decisions have become a drag. Now is now, then is then, but now is most important. It is time to utilize the past to be a better citizen of the here and now.
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February 2019
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