 "Stubborn & Egotistical" (2020 No.4, state 1), oil on canvas, 64½x55 inches {"If we've learned anything from the best-selling 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' children's book series, it's that those who see themselves surrounded by idiots are usually idiots themselves." -Jakob Augstein, "Stubborn and Egotistical" (Spiegel Online, 3/25/2013)} This painting, "Stubborn & Egotistical", is a fascinating research project. It is the simplicity of two major forms. This cannot hold. These objects will become more interesting as they take their journey into determinant, painterly objects; they will be cajoled till they exude spirit and consequence.
 Drawing 08·18·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I am alway getting ready. I ready myself for my next work as I ready the painting, "Amidst a Falling World" for transport to the 70th A-ONE Exhibition at Silvermine Gallery. Yesterday's drawing establishes an intense interest in constant compositional movement and thrust. Every mark is a movement. The forms play with, and against, the inherent, intrinsic movement in each touch and mark. A day of reckoning is always upon me. This drawing is but one step in my relentless journey, a journey in search of self-satisfaction and self-fulfillment.
 "Amidst a Falling World" (2020 No.3, state 17), oil on canvas, 66¼x57¼ inches {"Should the whole frame of nature around him break, In ruin and confusion hurled, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world." - Horace (65-8BC), "Odes", book 3, no.4, I.52)}  Drawing 08·11·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 08·11·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The painting, "Amidst a Falling World", will be exhibited at the prestigious 70th Annual A-ONE Exhibition at Silvermine Galleries in New Canaan, CT. The exhibition opens September 5, 2020. Yesterday I got extremely close to completing "Amidst a Falling World". A couple more touches and it will be complete.
My struggle to make sense of my personal vision has been mitigated by my efforts to complete "Amidst a Falling World". I understand better a means to represent personal clarity because I had to clarify "Amidst a Falling World". There is strength in simplicity. Yesterday I worked to make simple clarity available in my drawings. One of my problems is my sheer love of touch; my enjoyment of making marks has the ability to distract me from clarity; I enjoy making marks that represent surfaces, forms, and the representation of light on forms and surfaces. I get carried away, swept away, as I seek image though marks of graphite. Yesterday's drawing No.2 swept me into many more pencil marks than No.1.  Drawing 07·08·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I draw with such extreme facility that I fear my enjoyment of marking distracts me. Yesterday's drawing is clogged with interesting forms and interesting ideas. But, does this drawing procure expression of my emotional and intellectual self? Or is it simply a joyous expression of marks? Is it just a lot of nice marks because I make marks so well and so easily? I make forms easily too. I compose easily. Do I mark without reservation because it is easy for me? Making Art takes composure, reservation! Art requires qualification; I need to contemplate, be mindful in the doing. Do I agree, or not? Do I approve or not? Acting with reservation means acting in the state of doubt. Mindfulness is being in nexus: knowing, doubting, acting, marking, deliberating, deciding.
 Drawing 05·10·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  "Amidst a Falling World" (2020 No.3, state 05), oil on canvas, 66¼x55½ inches {"Should the whole frame of nature around him break, In ruin and confusion hurled, He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack, And stand secure amidst a falling world." - Horace (65-8BC), "Odes", book 3, no.4, I.52)} Chemistry and Physics students are taught of the oppositeness of electrons and positrons — these particles are equal in all ways, size, mass, charge, except their charges are opposite. The positron is the antiparticle, or the antimatter counterpart, of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1 e, a spin of 1/2 (the same as the electron), and has the same mass as an electron. When a positron collides with an electron annihilation is the result; this annihilation produces two or more photons. It is these photons I am trying to create. The photon is a type of elementary particle. It is the quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and photons are the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless; they always move at the speed of light in vacuum. I am trying to move you, the viewers of my art, at the speed of light, with the force of photons. Yesterday I took another step toward this objective. Both the painting, and the drawing, I show today are quickly forceful because they harness the emotional effectiveness of positive versus negative space.
 "Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5, state 10), oil on canvas, 48.5x32.5 inches {"My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull... Images gunfire across my consciousness... I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse." -Christopher Nolan, Irish Writer on his reasons for writing "The Eye of the Clock", in November 8, 1987 "Observer"}  Drawing 11·24·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches There is something magical and emotional about the negative. Forms dominate both the drawing and the painting in today's post, but it is the negative, the areas without form, that sing in emotional stress. The forms punch out of the negative, speak loudly in positive voices. Consequently the forms punch enthusiastically, in and out they go, undeniable they are. This would, and could, not happen without astute realization of negative spaces. I believe yesterday's drawing is one of my most fully realized. It was born in mindfulness. Its exudes delicate interaction between individual forms, forms against one another, forms against ground. Elegant they are, both painting and drawing, both are loudly original, loudly me!
 Drawing 05·21·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches My major artistic struggle right now is staying open to instinctive possibilities. If I touch success I discover grandness of light on forms and between forms. My effort is a struggle for enlightenment. I am working to be fully aware of everything, from the emotional potency of negative space to the emotional potency of forms and light. A piece a paper is an artifice of light, form, and negative space, but it absolutely is not an artifice of my personal awareness. My art measures me. It slams me up against my knowing. I am trying with all I have to stay so open as to fully know success and failure. This is a blunt process. I walk away from each art-making event knowing the depth of my comprehension, as well as the limits of my seeing, my knowing, my feeling. Yesterday's drawing was just one more step along this path, my journey in quest of light and enlightenment.
 Drawing 12·21·2017, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I am making an effort to pare down the complexity of my images. They are often made by forms being added to balance off forms already there. This leads to compositions balanced by complexity of means. Such activity-style is convoluted. I am trying to make images more closely fit my intuitively known emotional/Intellectual self.
I am not explaining this well. An analogy is this: If a device can be built in a myriad of ways, it must certainly be better to build it with fewer parts. The more parts the more chance it will mis-perform, perhaps even do something it was not intended to do. It might break completely; its intended function may be lost. Obviously, a quest for simplicity of means in visual art is best. Simple is more efficient, and the intended communication is more likely to be successful.  Drawing 12·20·2016 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Where am I on this path to right and clear? From the looks of these drawings, I am searching for a landscape to live within. I enjoy individual objects cavorting and interacting with one another. It is a social world, so why not decipher it through the examination of invented persona-like forms playing amongst and with one another? To go a step further, in order to answer my own question, I will show an influence. Certain works of Adolph Gottlieb's remain vividly within me. These illustrate my attraction to multiple forms on the page. (One of Gottlieb's paintings is reproduced below.)  Drawing 12·20·2016 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Adolph Gottlieb, "Virgil", oil on canvas, 1948 |
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February 2021
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