 Drawing 01·14·2022, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I fail to do everything I am capable of doing when optimism gets in my way. This drawing, from yesterday, begun in an optimistic high, fails to do all I am capable of doing. I want more spatial depth. This drawing's major, slithering form fails to be all it might have been. I am back at it today, albeit less optimistic. I hope my lack of optimism is a good for my Art.
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 Drawing 12·29·2021 No.1 (state 2), pencil on paper, 20x16 inches This revisit, to a drawing from 12/29/2021, is auspicious. This drawing has become full of flavor and wonder. I am living in a New World. This is a symphony; rich, complex, with many instruments available to sound a tune - counterpoint, contrast, form, and pattern are here. I am vigorous, sinewy, and have power.
 Drawing 12·16·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 12·16·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I want my Art to simultaneously contain purity and emotive complexity. Are they mutually exclusive? I believe Mark Rothko, and Ellsworth Kelly, have proved otherwise. And... they are not the only ones.
Negative space is paramount as emotive structure. Positive forms share responsibility; forms must be profoundly, attentively complex, while positioned sparsely within negative space. Yesterday's drawings continue my research into this dilemma, purity versus emotive complexity.  "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" (2021 No.5, state 17), oil on canvas, 64x57⅜ inches, {"I'm gonna spare the defeated — I'm gonna speak to the crowd. I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd. I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered. I'm gonna tame the proud." - Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues" (2001)}  Drawing 12·07·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 12·07·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches This is what I do. This is my habit. I investigate. I research. I go here, I go there. Am I truly on the path to self-expression? I wish I knew. Today is one of those days I sit in doubt. Perhaps doubt is upon me because of the long distance I have travelled, yet I am still not there. I continue to be dissatisfied with my art. It can be more. I want more self-expression. I will continue my search, my research. I need to live a very long life.
Yesterday I made two drawings, both researching positive form versus negative space. Yesterday the painting, "Gonna Speak to the Crowd", took another step in the long road it is traveling. This painting is getting better, better all the time.  "Gonna Speak to the Crowd" (2021 No.5, state 16), oil on canvas, 64x57⅜ inches, {"I'm gonna spare the defeated — I'm gonna speak to the crowd. I'm gonna spare the defeated, boys, I'm going to speak to the crowd. I am goin' to teach peace to the conquered. I'm gonna tame the proud." - Bob Dylan, "Lonesome Day Blues" (2001)}  Drawing 12·04·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches There are may ways to impact viewers. For a painter, means are few. There is form, composition, and color. Use of these elements is a wide open sea. Looking out upon a wide sea tells little about direction. In other words, a correct direction is not easy to know. Yesterday I did make headway. Judge for yourself. I am very interest in the impactful use of negative space. One of greatest masters of negative space is Andrew Wyeth (see below).  Andrew Wyeth, Untitled Lanscape, date unknown  Drawing 10·23·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Comparisons in Art are difficult; Art's range of content runs the gamut of human emotions. Today I give you a comparison of my drawing from yesterday to a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988). This is not an easy comparison. To me, it is apt; it represents my struggle to be true to myself. I am drawn to Basquiat's extreme, forceful content, but... I am me and he is he. The one simple and obvious connection I make with this Basquiat painting is its organization. Basquiat slams you into its center panel; he grabs the the viewer with color contrast, as well as formal centering because of content that are complex and patterned shapes. Basquiat painting is a lesson in classical compositional organization. There is no getting around the effectiveness that is centering the viewer's attention through any means possible, which include large forms, strong color, obvious shapes, interesting patterns, and high value contrast.  Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Untitled", oil on wood slats  "Find a Man" (2021 No.8, state 3), oil on canvas, 55¼x59½ inches, {"When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to find an author, and we find a man." -Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), "Pensées", 29 (1670)} I am taking on the difficult because I can. That huge cloud-like, ocher dominated form, must be handled carefully. A form so compositionally dominate must make total, readable sense. Scale is important here. The round form, on which the dominate ocher form impinges, is critical to the structural integrity of the composition. Centering must be a game well played. I have presented myself with a robust challenge to intellect and emotion. I believe I can handle it. I go, head to head.
 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.  Drawing 08·24·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Aristotle wrote, "Style to be good must be clear.... Clearness is secured by using the words that are current and ordinary." In Song of Myself, Walt Whitman states, "He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher." And here I am. I have learned from my teacher (Philip Guston). I have now removed all his idiosyncratic ideas from my works. I did not destroy him, as Whitman suggests I do, but I have moved away from him, I have created my own style. Clearness is an issue with me. I am working toward strong personal engagement with my viewers. Aristotle's idea is important to me, i.e., use of ordinary language is necessary to clarity. For me, the visual artist, ordinary language is visual art's most basic principles and elements. The most basic language of art is non-representative; it is color, form, composition, surface, value, et cetera. Basic visual art language also contains imagery because it has form and it contains the artifice of light. The viewer may call this "Representative Imagery," but I do not want to dilute meaning in art by representing something perceived in the real world. I have destroyed one idea of Philip Guston's. Guston's late work, it allegiance to simple, Representative Imagery, is the distraction I have destroyed. It must be destroyed because it hinders perception of the actual expressive quality that resides in the basic language of visual art. Yesterday's drawing exhibits an exploration of surface, surface as a flow of light and space. As I made this drawing I thought of Mark Rothko's work. Rothko's clarity was his reduction; his painting are reduced to expressive play on surface and light.  Mark Rothko, Blue & Gray" oil on canvas, 1962  Drawing 08·08·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Yesterday's drawing took on an atmospheric feel, away from domination by a central form. There is no glare of white here. Someone pulled the shades over the windows. This is a snippet of residence within a darkened room.
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