I am back. The return to the studio, and art-making, comes with clarity and confusion. It is as if my absence from art-making has allowed energy to be stored. Energy is charged up and able to flow easily, but I question my insightfulness. This goes for yesterday's drawing. It is me, with great emotional energy, falling back to my most basic subject. I fell into this routine because I forgot where I was, like losing the bookmark. I need to read back a few pages to understand the story that was being told before I left town.
This drawing took a few hours. The forms and elements are well felt. That was a nice experience. I am giving into my tactile search of form and space. This obsession causes me to dwell on Vincent van Gogh and his work. Van Gogh's search, and mine, have similarities. Once again, to illustrate our similar tactile engagements, I show two paintings by van Gogh after my work from yesterday.
I'm watching and wondering. This is a lonely business. This feels particularly true when I delve into the realm of knowledge which springs from my abstract internals, rather than from the stuff that sits on my dinner table. Some objects in Painting-07·28·2013 are unknown objects. They animate the space. This is visually exciting. It is not the concrete matter of the real world which excites me visually, it is the play of abstract objects in an artificial and artful space. This includes the surface of the objects, and the space which these objects inhabit. Like Vincent van Gogh, I want to touch everything, and leave my mark on everything. You can see me search the surfaces in yesterday's drawing and in yesterday's painting. Since I referenced van Gogh I will show you one of his paintings after mine.
I'm all about nuance. Sometimes I believe this is a plague affecting my mind, sometimes I believe it is an asset. Whatever I believe, it is here to stay. I must live with it and I must make art with it. I give you a few quotes which have great meaning to me and thus to my art... True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. Look up⇡ Look down⇣ They are both pretty good! Yesterday's second drawing (#2) is research. I was watching a British TV show and saw a painting with a tree causing an undulating shadow across uneven ground. It reminded me of the David Hockney painting, "Beach Umbrella" (shown at bottom of today's post).
In his autobiography Leo Tolstoy tells the story of a walk in a forest. Tolstoy came upon a clearing and saw a lizard sitting upon a rock sunning itself. He began speaking to the lizard, “Your heart is beating.” he said. “The sun is shining; you are happy.” And after a pause, he added, “But I am not.”
At least today's reproduction of this painting is better, more faithful to reality, than yesterday's. I am not questioning my sanity. I am asking these questions: "Why do I do what I do?" and "Why am I so intense?" It's like, "Why not simply smell the roses?" Leo Tolstoy's dilemma has always been mine. What art does for me is bring me into the moment—no future and no past exist when I am painting or drawing. This is not always true, but it happens a lot. Aparently this is the goal of spiritual quests, such as meditation and yoga. On the web there is page that refers to this story of Leo Tolstoy and the lizard. It is a page about yoga, and here is one paragraph from that page: "To be a lizard on a rock sunning is to be a meditator. Drop the past, drop the future. What does it mean? It means drop thinking because all thoughts either belong to the past or to the future. There is no thought here-now. Thinking has no present tense about it – either it is dead or unborn. It is always unreal – either part of memory or part of imagination. It is never real. The real is never a thought: the real is an experience. The real is an existential experience." -Osho Online Library, Real – Tolstoy – Lizard? Today, let me give you another quote from Leo Tolstoy, which helps clarify the reason I make art. "Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge. -Leo Tolstoy I am on a quest for knowing and knowledge. There are days when I don't know who I am or where I am. Yesterday was one of those days. So, I just did. Now this is about art, and not about my personal life, or my ability to reason. Things are OK in those categories. But art as metaphor for life implies I continue in my quest to know. Sometimes I wish I had continued to be a scientist, as that was an activity where I observed elements exterior to myself, rather than interior to myself. Seems easier somehow. The ocean is in front of me, not within me; it's easier to observe that way. This life as artist is very confusing. I am trying to take my time; not to hurry. Sometimes I think it was fortunate that Vincent van Gogh was unable to sell his art. It forced him to be his most important critic and his own audience. Yes, difficult and stressful, but it did lead to profound self-reflection. Consequently van Gogh's art speaks clearly, loudly, and personally, which, in terms of art, is the stuff of greatness!
I wish emotional, intellectual, and physical energy were constant, but they are not. Yesterday's fantastical drawing is me relaxing. I doubt its substantiality, but maybe it is better than I believe it is. Being tired is not always painful. In fact, it may be informative. Making this drawing was kind of fun. Perhaps there is more to me than I know. I believe, as I come out of my local (in time) funk, new sprouts (in terms of possible directions) will be an outcome.
Yesterday was Father's Day. My son, who is an educated musician who enjoys music composed for motion pictures, spoke to me about Hans Zimmer. Zimmer says he looks to the painter Gerhard Richter for inspiration (go to on-line Q&A with Zimmer). Perhaps I should look to Gerhard Richter as well. His playfulness, in terms of vastly different styles, from figurative to abstract, illustrate the possibilities of one artist exhibiting multiple interests. Here are two of his works. Yesterday I spent most of the day preparing work to be delivered to AVA Gallery for their 20th Annual Summer Exhibition. So, the studio creative time was minimal. I did produce one drawing, but it is nothing exceptional and it, perhaps, exhibits the quandary resulting from a deliverance day. Nice piece of fruit, but what's the meaning in it?
Today is the one-hundredth anniversary of The Rite of Spring, a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s dance company. The original choreography was by Vaslay Nijinsky. The ballet was first performed on May 29, 1913. The unusual and astonishingly new nature of the music caused a sensation resulting in a near-riot from its Parisian audience. At the bottom of today's post is a drawing of Igor Stravinsky by Pablo Picasso. I have listened to the music of Igor Stravinsky more than the music of all other composers combined. Stravinsky has long been my favorite. I will never forget my introduction to him and his music. I was studying Oceanography at Oregon State University when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra came to Corvallis, Oregon for one night to play in the school's gym. They played Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. There were jeers and sneers from the audience. After the performance I went to the local English style pub (where Orchestra members had congregated and mingled with the locals). The locals spoke of how "even the Orchestra found the music silly." This was over 60 years after Stravinsky premiered The Firebird, which had preceded The Rite of Spring by 3 years.
N.B. Pablo Picasso is the artist I look to most for advice and inspiration. It is fitting that I show Stravinsky's portrait drawing by Picasso, thereby placing both of these role models of mine on the same page! Picasso and Stravinsky were always open to experimentation and research, which are two of my aspirations as well. |
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May 2024
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