These works are not the endgame. These show insight, knowledge, acceptance, influence, and communication skills. I am on a road; I am recovering from delusion. I once believed I lived alone with artful insight. This is not a lonely man's game. I am communicating with you. The past (Art History), and the present (the real-life viewer, who lives here and now), are my true measuring sticks. I am better for accepting the truth; there is a requirement to proper social intercourse, which must be accepted in order to be seen, to be understood, to be believed.
Insight and disease are not mutually exclusive. However, this pandemic, this disease, this Coronavirus, is helping me see more clearly. Insight is upon me. I have slowed to a pace of inevitable knowing. Peculiar it is, the greatest creativity occurs in the most stressful of times. It feels similar to a bicycle crash I once endured. I lost control of my bike; I was speeding down a tarmac road; the road was covered in a glaze of sand left over from winter salt & sanding; during a turn the front wheel slid on the sand. As I spun and churned toward the tarmac, I made decisions on how best to hit the surface of the road; a fraction of a second turned into an extended time; I was able to make a creative decision to save my life. I pushed the bike away so I could roll, rather then remain beneath the soon-to-be horizontal bike to be forced to scrape myself to the bone. I was wearing a bike helmet, which cracked, but otherwise I had nothing on but a T-Shirt and thin nylon pants. I ended bruised, with minor scrapes. I am taking scrapes in this virus outbreak. So far, my loved ones, when infected, have recovered. Me, I may, or may not, have had the Coronavirus. I experienced a period similar in symptoms to Covid-19, but no test to verify.
Yesterday was an exciting time in the studio. I had insights a-many. I believe many past works were confused in purpose. I have a simple objective; I wish to express simple truths; I wish to express being here and now. In response to this realization, my drawings are becoming basic truths; these drawings are more simple than previous ones, more direct, more felt, more readable by their viewers. This time of stressful quandary is rewarding me; I am experiencing good within the distractions a world dominated by disease. Showing up is not enough. Recognition of appropriate spirit in the work is most important. This includes stepping back when proper insight in unavailable. There is an ebb and flow to self-comprehension, self-availability, self-intuition, and self-awareness. Recognizing this through the process of art making is the process of recognizing days of clarity and insight versus days of muddle and muck. Fortunately, though work, by showing up, day after day after day, the days with lack of clarity are few. I believe this to be true, but I also acknowledge there are days when I believe I am doing great things until I come in the next day, then I acknowledge more failure than success. This is the reason I believe in two steps forward followed by one step backward. Backward may be the wrong term, because failures lead to introspection, learning, insight; the stuff that guides to success.
Yesterday's drawing was filled with stepping back to query. I kept asking myself, "Does that make sense?" There are parts of this drawing on the edge of believability, like the circle-like shadowing seen in the right side of the drawing. The shadowing lies behind, and within, forms that produce an area of juxtaposition to the rest of the drawing's forms. It works spiritually. Is that enough? "How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2, state 11), oil on canvas, 60x32 inches {"Life is sweet at the edge of a razor; And down in the front row of an old picture show the old man is asleep as the credits start to roll. And I want to know, the same thing everyone wants to know, how's it going to end?" -Tom Waits} Yesterday a lot happened to "How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2). It broke toward clarity! This surprised me. I was going along, trying this, thinking that, doubting myself, slogging along, then suddenly came a moment when clarity descended like rain from a cloud. It began to make sense. This is normal for me. Accepting this as normalcy is important. It buoys my ability to hang-in there, do the slog. The great thing is this: I now believe in my own consistency; I trust in my ability to find the wherewithal to get to the insight that will release me from doubt and discomfort. Yesterday it happened to "How's It Gonna End".
Also, yesterday I prepared a new canvas. It sits waiting on my work wall. I know its size and I know its name. I give it to you now while it sits in state zero (no image need be reproduced): "Doublethink" (2019 No.3), oil on canvas, 58x58 inches {"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty Four" (1949)} Insight comes in many varieties. Sometimes it is self-induced. Often it occurs because I see something in my environment that indicates there is a better way. My environment includes people and books and history and magazines and blogs and reproductions of art and memories of the art I love. The drawing I show today is me reacting to the forms in my painting "The Doctrine of Liberty". This drawing is insightful. It occurred because I was seeking a means to muster maximum strength from the forms in "The Doctrine of Liberty" — particularly the major letter-G-like form in the left half. Yesterday's blog post referred to Pablo Picasso. Picasso once remarked that he had tried so many disparate means to make a painting that generations of artists would use his loose ends. This has happened to me. Yesterday I showed Picasso's painting "Figures at the Seaside". In it the forms are not simply rounded, as some of my larger forms tend to be; the forms in "Figures at the Seaside" have hard, soft, and rounded edges. This painting gave me insight, as do other works by Picasso that deal with abstract forms that resemble the kind of forms I tend to generate. You can see it in the drawing I show you today. Below I attach a couple other works by Picasso that investigate the means to animate three-dimensional forms. "Burnt Norton" (2018 No.8, state 16), oil on canvas, 63x66 inches {"What might have been is an abstraction; Remaining a perpetual possibility; Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory." -T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"} Once upon a time, not too long ago, I disliked the process of finishing a painting. I falsely believed full clarification was tedious, and had questionable merit. I no longer feel that way! I now know I must dedicate myself to properly finishing the construction of Burnt Norton. The enormous thought and energy I have placed into Burton Norton's construction has instigated in me profound responsibly for its final outcome. Emotional and intellectual nuance radiate in every bit of Burnt Norton's composition. I am deeply invested. If I abandon Burnt Norton before I have fully tested my knowledge I would relinquish the possibility of my greatest insights. This is about me clarifying the depths of my knowledge and my emotions. To stop before bewilderment would deprive me of full insight. Without full insight I would proceed to the next painting without knowledge of possibilities.
That said, Burnt Norton may be complete, or it is very close to complete. Dogs do tricks based upon rote memory. Artists must not. They must follow something far deeper than memory. Stephen King writes about this process in his novel Finders Keepers. Stephen King's description of the process followed by a good novelist is similar to one followed by a good artist. "A good novelist does not lead his characters, he follows them. A good novelist does not create events, he watches them happen and then writes down what he sees. A good novelist realizes he is a secretary, not a God." This is becoming my process. I am giving into discovery of images by watching them appear, similar to King's declaration that a good novelist "does not create events, he watches them happen."
The work creeps along, like a snail's path to food. That's how it seems to me. Life gets in the way, the intrinsic velocity of ideas get in the way. The registration on the speedometer of insight is regulated by forces out of my control. Too often I feel I am traveling as fast as I can go at an unacceptably slow pace. Still, I leave some useful tracks along the way. Yesterday's drawing was one of them.
The question of the day: Am I multiple in personalities? OR Am I slowly honing-in, unraveling, clarifying, my one, true personality? I prefer the later as correct. If you go back, to day one of this blog (July 17, 2010), you will believe you see a different personality at work. No, it's me! The message I am learning, as I do this work, day after day, is I am a scrambled personality. It is not easy to perceive the nuances that make up the driving force that makes me who I am. I am stripping away the clouds, the fog that obscures my true passion in living. Yesterday I took a step, stripped away a bit, strongly realized that touch is more important to me than sight. How can this be? I am a visual artist, yet I enjoy touching more than seeing! Let me ask you. Which do you enjoy more? Seeing your lover, or touching you lover?
The two drawings seen here today allowed me to feel all around the imagined forms I created on two-dimensional pieces of paper. During the making of these drawings the imagination of touch was very strong, enjoyed. Acknowledging this feels like profound insight. Being as convoluted as I am, the idea of insight could be delusional. A friend of mine recently completed his M.F.A. degree in Graphic Design. Most important to today's discussion is the information he imparted in his thesis, "Negative Space" (2016, Vermont College of Fine Arts, R.Schellens, author). I have always been conscious of the problems of negative space, so much so that I have often reduced those problems by clogging my works with forms and marks. Mr. Schellens' adamant opposition to this view is elegantly illustrated in the many works he reproduces in his thesis.
Yesterday, suddenly, drawing No.1 appeared. It startled me! In it, there is none of my standard definition of ground. This drawing avoids my oft used line to define the space that is the vertical background from the space that is the horizontal ground. This insight, coming as it is with negation, tells me that Richard Schellens deserves kudos for it! I also thank Mr. Schellens for his positive review of my painting "2016 No.11". It has been altered from the state he praised (reproduced in yesterday's post). This painting is now complete. I have now moved onto "2016 No.12", with lessons learned, and fight in me to get those lessons correctly acknowledged within this newest painting. |
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May 2024
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