Everyone who has ever done art-making knows there is no straight line path. It is one step backward for (perhaps) each step and a half forward. Getting to know is hard work. I wish it were easier. Saying this brings me to yesterday's drawings. They have two new "looks". By using a couple of forms impinging on one another, No.1 spills the viewer into the drawing's artifice of three-dimensions. The forms cast shadows, which also helps this 3D-ness. Larger forms in the foreground force the third-dimension upon the viewer. In drawing No.2 the movement is up, not so much in. The small form at the bottom, rounded with shadows emphasizing its roundness, helps the three-dimensional look of the entire drawing, introducing (as it does) the 3D-effect at the bottom of the page, which is then carried by the viewer into entire page.
There is something right about yesterday's drawings. Today I will futher explore this direction. I have become tired of the overall, fill-the-page, approach. Pages emotionally require openess. Clearly, there must be contrast, open space in contrast to the forms. This contrast is necessary to emotionally drive the substance of the overall image. We walk around with our intellects and our emotional selves, intertwined, both needing satisfaction. For me, this explains the game I play in making art. I want to be fully satisfied, satiated. At the end of the day I want to be spent, no left over garbage. No tool unused. Such is the satisfaction of a good day. The painting, "2016 No.15", feels spent. Give me a few days of looking before I am sure. Being "spent" means it says as much as I can say, right now. How do my worries about complexity, visual confusion, intellectual satisfaction, and emotional fulfillment, play a role in my declaring "2016 No.15" finished? This is a giant topic. I do not feel able to answer in one blog post. For a quick response to my question, Pablo Picasso's exceptional masterpiece, "Guernica", answers well. My being satisfied with a work of art is indisputably seen in "Guernica" (reproduced after my work). It is filled with forms, knocks you around emotionally and structurally, but keeps you balanced by a supremely centered triangle and by vertical, panel-like groupings on both sides of the image. In other words, when emotions are hot, passionately vomiting sentiment without solid structure leads to perplexing communication (think of an argument with your significant other). Picasso throws heat at us while keeping us centered. We are able to hang in there because of the balance, the intellectual calm of the composition balances the emotional outrage of the imagery. I made great effort to reproduce yesterday's drawing well. I failed to get the subtle contrast play of the main form against the slowly changing light of the curtain-like background. This is a pencil drawing. The delicate grays of the pencil are lost. Confusion is here. Yesterday's drawings show it. I am sorting out image priorities. References to actual forms seen in our visual reality may be there, maybe not.
Drawings from 11/29/2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches I have surprised myself with new images, and also the joy of laying down graphite on a textured surface. The paper is the same paper used in yesterday's drawing. The images are vastly different. From where come these images? One possible connection: Yesterday a photo was sent to me by a friend (in an email I opened before going to the studio). The photo shows a strange room in Silicon Valley with people walking amongst floating spheres. The spheres are white with black circles on them (the ceiling, floor, and wall are red with black circles). Unlike my drawings, the spheres do not inhabit the people (people are walking among the spheres). Influence? Perhaps. Most important is my product. These drawings are different than anything I have produced in recent memory. They started differently, were processed differently, and ended differently. I am exhilarated by their inventiveness.
A note about today's reproductions: Both drawing are on the same textured paper. The paper's surface color on the first drawing is closer to its actual color. I did not white balance my camera prior to photographing the second drawing, nor did I change the lighting. Drawings from 10/24/2015, all 20X16 inches, pencil on paper I am writing about two upgrades. The first is in my art. The pictorial content of my art has recently expanded in variety ― there is a more brazenly accepted use of imagery. The second is an upgrade in my commercial website (you are currently reading my educational, not-for-profit, web blog, i.e. a .org site). Yesterday MEHRBACH.com added e-commerce! Items available are limited, but will soon expand to offer everything my art has produced, if available for sale. This will include original paintings, original drawings, and high-quality Giclée Prints of every image on the website (plus reproductions of my work you may have seen in galleries, museums, or private collections ― I own copyrights to all of it).
Today's drawings are exceptional. Their images are both representational and abstract, while staying true to my love of three-dimensions being depicted on a two-dimensional surface. These drawings accept my interests. They do not fight my interests. They are introspective, mindful, and revelatory. I am going as fast as I can. Often I wish my ability to decipher myself was a process more lucid and transparent. This process is one of unscrambling rather than encoding. It is all present, yet must be discovered. It is similar to the study of cosmology. The whole shebang is already present. It is my job to ascertain the best way to illustrate it. This idea of illustration brings me to the question of abstract versus concrete. Goodness knows artists have used both to express themselves deeply and well. Perhaps, I am thinking, there is a means to greater expression, one that utilizes both the abstract and the concrete. I admit, the terms abstract and concrete are a bit weird, and not as descriptive as required. Better I think than words is the confusion present in my new painting, The Leap. I named it after that object leaping over the barrier at the bottom of the painting, but the title is more than simple description of one illustrative form in the painting. What I can tell you is this: the concoction of this painting is more disclosure of personal origination than discovery of previously unknown concept.
...row, row, row... refers to my having very little to say in recent blog posts. The images are coming, but not the words. I would like to think my images are supplanting words. That the images speak for themselves. That I have no great passion to verbally explain my thought process because the visual work is explaining itself.
Daily readers know I have been struggling with an accurate reproduction of Asparagus. Today's image is closer than usual, albeit imperfect. The bug (fly?) did move since my previous post. Yesterday's drawing was sustained and methodical. Every once in while I return to feeling my way through ALL the surface of a created form. Yesterday's drawing had that kind of contemplative process. I was swept away from recognizable thought, which felt good during the process. One other superficial idea came to me. I am beginning to title my paintings — this makes for quicker identification, and allows conversation without confusion, which is inherent when titles are numeric and date driven. However, I do not wish the interpretations of my paintings to be driven by titles. I named my most recently completed painting with a four work title. Now I believe it is distractingly verbose. One word titles are better for my intentions, i.e. let the viewer construe the interpretation. This said, I have reduced my most recently completed painting's title to Heresy. This shortened title appears below the painting's reproduction on my website, MEHRBACH.com, but not in this blog. This blog, after all, is a diary of my thought process. I will not go back in this blog's post to change its title. I think one of best titles of all time is Guernica, Picasso's great anti-war painting. Being one word, it can be referred to easily; the title, Guernica, immediately brings with it the mental image of the painting with little encumbrance of verbal distraction. I have made things more difficult for myself. I feel nervous and in a hurry, yet unable to rush. The nuances are insistent. My painting is calling for extreme attention to details. For instance, the blocks near the center of painting lack adequate contrast (light versus dark). Today's reproduction of painting Untitled Painting-01·06·2015, and all my reproductions, are imperfect. The more I attend to nuance the further the reproductions remove themselves from reality. Here is another "for instance": the background's rhythmic undulation of flatly drawn, mountain like peaks, moves from Pure Cadmium Orange on the left to Pure Cadmium Red Medium on the right, yet you can not see this in today's reproduction. I tried to get it right, but the complexity of the all the nuances present in this painting forced me to compromise to get this reproduction as close to authenticity as it now appears. There is no full success in reproducing art works on the web or on paper! I am struggling to be open and free, but time is limited and insights are unlimited. What to do? I choose to struggle on. Untitled Drawings-01·25·2015, Nos. 1, 2, 3, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches
What can I tell you? It happens! There are days when I go through the motions of art-making while feeling distracted by emotional issues outside of my personal concerns. Yesterday was one of those days. Conceivably, or surprisingly, this confusion is illustrated in yesterday's unusual drawing. The man in the left panel is obviously interested in the confusion in the right panel. The right panel contains, perhaps, a head on feet covered by something like white, opaque, plastic wrap — also a blade-like object penetrates it though its top. If this drawing speaks deeply about my emotional life, in my day that was yesterday, then there is a "golly!" and a "gadzooks!" in this revelation. Could it be that I speak intuitively even when I feel awash in concerns outside myself?
Insight: My recent work is not about a figurative style being replaced by an abstract style. It is about APPROACH. Yes, that is APPROACH in ALL CAPITALS and in BOLD! I am not about to give up all that I know. I am moving someplace, but it is not about loss or forgetting. It is about discovery and acceptance. The reference to the heart in yesterday's drawing is important. That heart cries out my acceptance of visually known forms. In addition to the heart, the space in yesterday's drawing is not abstract. The drips of Jackson Pollack's work are abstract. Jackson Pollack was vastly limited by his choice of means. He, in the end, performed more as an invalid than as an artist seeking a grand manner of communicating with his viewers. There is little sophistication in Pollack'e oeuvre. Where I go from this moment will be lost and found in the studio, and not in my verbalization of the process. Verbalization is a result of experience and not a precursor of discovery. From the Dictionary: |
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April 2024
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