 Drawing 06·15·2022, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The trend appearing in my work is me grabbing onto meaningful forms residing in meaningful space. I go into into that invented place in order to find meaning and personal truth. This makes sense to my deeper self. It is me recognizing my personal, idiosyncratic wholeness. Yesterday's drawing is a step toward acceptance. In this drawing I see truth in forms and truth in their spatial residence; these entities, and their space and place, reflect personal recognition of reality.
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 "Silence, Exile, and Cunning" (2022 No.1, state 5), oil on canvas, 45½x57 inches, {"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning." - James Joyce (1882-1941), "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916)} Real is what real does when personal reality is accepted. I am in the process of accepting the animus of myself. Philip Guston said to me, "You really enjoy inventing a world full of little abstract forms and figures." Guston said this with glee (as he viewed one of my student paintings, see below). In other words, Guston recognized my most basic motivation before I had accepted it. For years after Guston’s comment I continued to squirm, search, look and wonder. Now I return, now I accept the truth of my mentor’s observation. Philip Guston’s recognition of me finding joy through invention of forms and figures is worthy of my acceptance. I denied a truth seen by this mentor like a child who chooses to deny the wisdom of his parent. Guston knew me better than myself. Now I am seeing my acceptance become real in the painting, "Silence, Exile, and Cunning”!  "Objects & Me", oil on masonite, 1978  "Silence, Exile, and Cunning" (2022 No.1, state 3), oil on canvas, 45½x57 inches, {"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning." - James Joyce (1882-1941), "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916)} Right now this painting, "Silence, Exile, and Cunning", is nothing special. It requires some sauce, special sauce. That will happen today. This painting lacks my dreamscape. I dream of playful building blocks. places seen within my mind's eye, forms deeply related to my personal panorama of visual excellence, things I want to see that do not exist.
 Drawing 01·23·2022, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches For today's post, I considered many titles: “Dirt Does Not Save the Soul” and “Too Much Want” and “Less is More” and “Thick in the Head.” I settled for the one you see at the top of this post.
I can not help myself. I love to make marks. I love to draw. I love creating new forms. I love forms which emote memories of things past. But, when I look at my work, I see complicated. Simple is better. Simplification is necessary. I want to hit the viewer with great first impressions, ones that last. I want simple messages to myself, ones I immediately understand. I am the primary viewer. The drawing I show today should have been pared. There is an extra form. I am referring to that little one, the one that resides above the major form. I’d say this extra form is like a limbless torso, with a sombrero. Rather than erase, repair, I will make another drawing. The next one will be simpler. By the Way, looking at the painting, "Gonna Speak to the Crowd,” one more step is required. I thought I was done with it. No. A simple tweak is required. The painting, "Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up”, requires several more steps. Stay tuned. Check back in a couple days. Lastly, I am trying to simplify my sentences as well. Yeah, language is the same as drawings and paintings; less is more understandable.  Drawing 12·11·2021 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 12·11·2021 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches These drawings are research efforts. They desperately seek universal emotive impact. I seek emotional visual statements, statements not confused by dominant forms. Substantive negative space is required to give positive forms potency by juxtaposition.
 Drawing 11·28·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Try to look at this drawing as non-representative. I make a plea for abstractive, non-reality because this drawing has an improbable distraction, the body-two legs-neck-head confusion of its major form. I won't make a drawing like this again! I don't like figurative distraction. So... if you can escape the distraction, of something vaguely figurative, you will see a fine drawing, a drawing that deals with compositional movement, space, and form.
 Drawing 08·10·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches It is not the forms we see that inform; it is the absence between the form, the negative space between the residence of forms, that makes information. I know this. I am working to feel this. I am working to make my knowing into real visual information. This is one more tick to be ticked on my list of quests. There is (i) centering. Now there is (ii) negative space as potent information. If you doubt my reasoning, take a good look at works by Egon Schiele.    "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. |
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June 2022
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