 Drawing 07·25·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches There is an end to everything. This applies to a painting as well. One can make paintings as walls. One can make paintings as landscapes. One can make paintings that inhabit a room. In ALL cases, there is a ground. The ground is the viewer's agency to find his bearing. An early influence upon my art was Yves Tanguy (1900-1955). Before I began today's post, I thought to myself, "Hey, Tanguy made images without horizons!" NOT true! Yves Tanguy ended his career making surrealistic LANDSCAPES! Tanguy began his artistic career, like all of us, making figurative paintings (see below). In ALL cases, despite my early morning intellectualized doubt, there is a definitive ground in Tanguy's paintings, always! There are horizon lines even when Tanguy creates an amorous background fog; there it is, in every work, a back-ground! And so it goes! Another early influence on my art was Arshile Gorky (1904-1948). The same grounding occurs in Gorky's works (see below). These has to be a defined rear-end to a painting, which I shall henceforth call, "the ground". Without the ground the viewer is left with insecurity of place. It is the relationship to security that makes a painting free, open, and emotive, thus allowing unrestrained creativity. Without security there is only loss; loss means absence, absence means a lie, a lie means dishonesty. The last thing I want my art to be is dishonest! I began yesterday's drawing looking to test the "no horizon" idea. I cannot do it! A ground allows the artist to create havoc or security or insecurity or whatever. Life and art have irrefutable definitions. One of them is this: we exist in a place and in time; i.e., we exist on something that can be called our ground. Art mimics life. That is impossible to deny!  Yves Tanguy, "Indefied Divisibility", oil on canvas, 1942  Yves Tanguy, "The Traveling Performers", oil on canvas, 1926  Arshile Gorky, "Dark Green Painting", oil on canvas, 1948  Drawing 07·12·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches One of my constant regrets in living is my inability to react quickly to a stupid or divisive comment made to me. I must mull. Nothing comes quick and easy. I strike at my drawings and paintings with quickness, criss-crossing in search of forms, space, and composition, but I admit to sometimes missing a bigger idea during my activity. Yesterday I was fine with my drawing... for about 10 minutes. Look at it! After the 10 minutes of mull, I became conscious of the blank white-ness of the ground in upper half of the drawing. I had neglected the ground in the upper-half while in search for the stuff in the lower-half! The forms do play well in the upper-half, but I am uncomfortable for the lack of attitude behind those forms. The comment I made about not reacting to another person's stupid comment is apropos; I think this drawing would be better if I scratched out the ground in its upper-half. Vincent van Gogh learned this. Van Gogh learned slowly too; it took him two years to get from the blank sky in his 1886 drawing (see below) to an animated sky in his 1888 drawing. Van Gogh's solution to a blank upper-half ground is informative in regard to my concern about the white upper-half of yesterday's drawing. Van Gogh continued to learn to his final days — his last paintings and drawings are magnificent!    "The Intervening Tick" (2018 No.6, state 1), 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 07·03·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches A photograph was published in my local newspaper; it shows a father and his very young daughter (perhaps 4 years old) on an ocean beach. The forms of the father and daughter occupy approximately just 10% of the photo, dead-center. They are hugging, mugging for the camera, the ocean's horizon is absolutely horizontal and absolutely centered, cutting across and behind them. This photo was the inspiration for my new painting, The Intervening Tick. This photo struck me hard: the figures dominated my attention despite their relative smallness. I thought I would give this idea a try. Yesterday's drawing was a study for the painting. Like the painting, there are definitive forms on a ground and background.
 Drawing 05·24·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The distractions in life that help make things work, but don't make me feel emotional satiated, are too many. As examples, there is the slowness of my internet connection and the holes in the side of my truck that need fixing in order for it to pass state inspection. I am dealing with those kinds of mundane things at the same time I am trying to make emotionally satisfying art, Yesterday was more the former, less of the latter. I did make one substantial drawing; I made it fast, it came easily. This drawing sums a few of my recent explorations. It makes sense to me in its play with 3D space, value contrast, form, and ground. More in this manner are coming....
 Drawing 11·14·2017, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I am a man with an appetite. Are we not all? I will gobble my way to sanity. Yeah, there will be boggles along the way. I am, however, getting there. Yesterday's drawing is clogged with information. Today I will try another route. I will establish ground, then move toward resolution.
 "2017 No.13" (state 14), oil on canvas, 62x69 inches  Drawing 11·12·2017, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The unrelenting questions are becoming less annoying and more practical. Questions get answered, but not always for the best. I see this in the left edge of state 14 of the painting 2017 No. 14. Its increased width on the left side is good, but the unevenness of its left black border disturbs me. That border is not a complete failure. It did prove the forms on the left of this painting require more room to move. Other questions were asked yesterday. The snake-like object encircling the large form on the right had its value lightened. It reads better. Success comes as process, from questions asked to answers given, one by one. This repeats till it all makes sense. The remains of process eventually become all that remains.
There are questions and answers in yesterday's drawing too. I was examining the ground as a three-dimensional plane lit with a major specular highlight. Nice!  Drawing 11·09·2017, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The revelation of personal religious zeal is the heaven that is found within the momentary realization that the mark made is earthly correct. As I accept this premise my art becomes more me and more real. More real is surprising since its abstraction from the experiential data allows it to resemble the world I have experienced without mimicking that world. Here I am today showing you one more drawing on my road toward acceptance. This is what I do.
Today's drawing is self-real, yet also plays falsely within its own stated reality. Do you see the mark approximately one-third from the left and one-third from the top? It is simply a mark amongst a plethora of forms. The forms pretend to be three-diemsional, but the mark is just a mark, a splotch on the page. It is a required mark. Without it the back and forth force of this composition would be relentless, and questionable. It would lack grounding. This mark grounds it. It allows the forms to play with energy against the mark's static, solid touch to paper.  "2017 No.13" (state 10), oil on canvas, 56x65 inches  Drawing 10·18·2017, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Out of somewhere comes a border to the painting 2017 No.13. Yesterday I made an effort to find ground. I found a border after I found ground. Seeking is finding. Discovery occurs because of the search. Here it is... here it comes... ready or not!
 Drawing 09·14·2017, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I often worry I am too much into detail. I agressively search to find, thus I am overwhelmed by the activity of seeking nuance. Do I enjoy it? I do. Yesterday's drawing is full of finesse. It surprises me with its clarity of forms, its clarity in shadows cast (both by the forms on ground and on the surfaces of the forms themselves). Spatial play is animated by light. The forms are positioned by their surface values as well as by the shadows they cast on the ground. (We all know the white paper is actually as flat as flat can be.) Am I a dunderhead because I wonder too much? No, this is the intricacy demanded by sophisticated problem solving.
  Who's there? Not who you think! These are abstract images, yes, but they are also non-representational. The visualization is emotionally referenced, but not unkind or aggressive, just exploratory. That said, the spatial play, insisted upon in these drawings, is robust. One can follow the floor via shadows and marks. The outgrowth of forms above the plane is scary. The unease within these drawings is, to me, like hovering over a chasm while walking on a rope bridge. I am surprised by my personal discomfort. Is this a good thing? I don't know. When a viewer engages with Picasso's Guernica, or one of the more emotive self-portraits by Van Gogh or Rembrandt, is feeling safe important? Revelatory they are. Representational works are more direct than the drawings I show you today. Representation in Guernica, or in a self-portrait, is obvious. Do not take the images represented in my drawings as obvious!
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At MEHRBACH.com you may view many of my paintings and drawings, past and present, and see details about my life and work. Archives
October 2019
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