 Drawing 09·07·2021, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I am surprising myself. It is fun to abstract visual truth found in my walk-around reality. I do not know if viewers comprehend the twists and turns advanced upon my visual references, the ones that appear in my artwork. Do I care? This is my imagery. I am sending visual messages out into the world. Each viewer will interpret these images differently. Each will comprehend my images based on their own walk-around reality.
Yesterday I enjoyed making the drawing I show today. In its making I performed like a practiced acrobat: muscle memory, intellectual memory, and emotional memory performed as one. During its making I knew right from wrong, a righteous mark from a fallacious one.
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 Drawing 08·28·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 08·29·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I am coining a new phrase, Referential Representation. My art-making is most satisfying to myself when my images refer emotionally, and intellectually, to my innermost ideas and feelings. I recognize I feel most successful when I represent my deepest psyche with my images. This full acceptance occurs when my images exhibit references to known forms in my real visual world. These forms are the basic connection we all share, they are our visual reality; as such, they are our visual references to all we know and feel. I believe all abstract art is referential to nature. Nature is in every existing visual form, forms seen in the cosmos, forms seen in our normal-sized everyday living, forms revealed by electron microscopes. forms created by the imaginations of artists, people living today, and those who in the past. I am a compendium of all I have seen.
The drawings I show you today are successful because they are Referential Representation. This is what I feel and this is what believe.  "Honorable Terms" (2021 No.7, state 5), oil on canvas, 52x57⅞ inches, {"The roots of reason are imbedded in feelings — feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion. It is feeling that directs the strategy of argument. It is our feelings, then, with which we must come to honorable terms." - James E. Miller, Jr., "Word, Self, Reality: The Rhetoric of Imagination" (1972)} If you have been paying attention, day by day, I am taking a walk with the painting, "Honorable Terms". It is a walk toward centering. I am mindfully working to find center in every way possible: intellectually, spiritually, emotional, compositionally. This is honorable work, this is great work, thus this painting's title is apropos.
In front of me now is a paperweight with this quote from Oliver Wendall Holmes: "Every calling is great when greatly pursued."  "The Opposite of Indifference" (2021 No.4, state 02), oil on canvas, 48x53½ inches, {"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead. His or her neighbor are of no consequence. Their hidden or visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an Abstraction." - Elie Wiesel, "US News & World Report" (27 October 1986)} Yesterday and today are days filled with positive possibilities. Positive and possible are in my air, they sit in me like peanut butter on crackers, full of potential energy. My art is ready to be energized into something profoundly resonant. Resonance is the sound innate to its vehicle. I am the vehicle. Resonance is always possible, In everyone and everything; it just needs to be sparked by a thrust of focused energy. Then, truth is realized in spirit and actuality.
The simplicity of yesterday's work, on the painting, "The Opposite of Indifference", is deceptive in its simplicity. That work, show here, it is the beginning of a clear sound, true in its resonance.  "The Opposite of Indifference" (2021 No.4, state 01), oil on canvas, 50x50 inches, {"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead. His or her neighbor are of no consequence. Their hidden or visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the Other to an Abstraction." - Elie Wiesel, "US News & World Report" (27 October 1986)} Things are getting complicated for me. I want to reduce all I feel into abstract qualities. I want to accurately imbue my art with my emotions and intellect. Elie Wiesel warned against reducing people to abstraction, but he also said "The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference." I am not indifferent. This painting is begun because I am at war with indifference.
 Drawing 11·20·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The days go by. I work. I see more. I do more. My insights, my memory, my intellect, my connection to my emotional life, all are getting better, stronger, more lucid. This does not mean one masterwork after another are being produced. Everything I make is better than anything I created a year ago, even a month ago. Consistency is a hallmark of mastery.
Yesterday's drawing is excellent. It has fallen back into a complexity that makes me uneasy. When I get to the studio I will place it next to some of the works that make me most comfortable. Comfortable and high quality are not the same. This is me working to get myself all together now.  Drawing 11·19·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 11·18·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Staying alive and active is paramount. Things are a-poppin'! Invention as simultaneous to being is adamant. Steadfastly I draw in order to exude that which I feel in the moments of feeling and knowing. This is my effort to make the act of production a melding of intellect and emotions. The production is the physical appearance of things called art, drawings and paintings. I have unrelenting determination to make images that construct authentic representation of my innermost knowing and feeling. These art works are me seeking unswerving mindfulness. Yes, I am seeking self-expression at its highest level. I am resolved to make truth while in the act of making-art. This is practice in mindfulness, which, like art, can never reach its ultimate conclusion, its ultimate expression of pure truth and knowledge.
The drawings I show today occurred over two days. I celebrate these as two good steps forward.  Drawing 07·09·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 07·09·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I do not feel good about the drawings. Something is amiss. They do not fit me well; they feel like ill-fitting clothes; too tight here, too loose there. These are not images I wish to project when out and about. These drawings do not illustrate me!
What do I want? I want to simplify my simple self. I need to make clear my feelings and intellect. These drawing muddy the waters that are my living blood. I want to be deep arctic seawater on a clear blue-skied day: crystalline blue, full of life, cool, pleasant enough to be inviting, straight forward enough to be understandable in intellect and in emotion.  Drawing 06·28·2020 (final state, state 2), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches This drawing is a result of a marathon. Perhaps a marathon is a poor description of its journey; marathons take a little over two hours; this drawing took over 6 hours. My first question relates to its complexity: Is it too complex for the viewer to be immediately engaged? My second question: If the viewer is immediately engaged, will the viewer be entranced enough to hang in for this drawing's visual voyage?
The ultimate question regarding my art comes down to this: Are visual voyage marathons an effective means of communication? Or, do viewers prefer simple, direct, right to the point; i.e., give me a visual hit, give me a visual expression of emotion, give me a visual expression of intellect, but make it simple, go right to the point?  "Amidst a Falling World" (2020 No.3, state 07), oil on canvas, 66¼x55½ 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 05·31·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches It can get very confusing. Knowledge is a strong, but power can distort possibilities. If power be fully followed, the consequences may not fall comfortably; the result may be incorrectly conceived. Failure occurs because power was allowed to precede knowledge; power has the ability to push aside a level-headed approach, thus diminishing the ability to secure a well measured result. Great art is balanced by perspicuity. With this I look at yesterday's work. I am insecure with it. The painting feels unfinished, not forceful enough; the drawing is a risk in value contrast and form contrast. Do they work well? Are they successful in engaging thought and feeling? I must think about this; both these works make me nervous. Or, is my nervousness merely a sign of the times I am living within?
Note on reproduction: Today's reproduction fails to accurately represent yesterday's actual drawing. The more a work of art relies upon subtlety to convey its ideas and emotions, the more the reproduction of it fails to impress. |
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September 2021
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