 "Reclamation" (2022 No.11, state 02), oil on canvas. 51x56⅛ inches I am getting better. I better recognize that which says me when I see it. This is mindfulness in action. It is my mind that interests me. I bare what says me and I make better.
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 "Crevice" (2022 No.7, state 7), oil on canvas, 41⅜x57½ inches The painting “Crevice” continues on its long path toward becoming mine. I wish I could get there more quickly. Insights reveal slowly, come one by one; I creep on my path to acceptance.
It ain't easy being dedicated to oneself. Arrogant fools yell and scream and complain because they are content with their feelings. Arrogance, in my experience, walks hand in hand with ignorance. Intelligence is never content with ideas and values. Intelligence craves openness, is always introspective. Intelligence understands true morality, welcomes multitudes of ideas; ideas quickly accepted are suspect.  "Crevice" (2022 No.7, state 01), oil on canvas, 40½x57½ inches Thus it begins. I have accepted an idea true to me. This is about symbolic representation as important to energizing my deepest self. I accept it, my images may mystify some viewers, but no matter how perplexing, puzzling, convoluted, mystifying, and unaccountable it may look to some, this is core me. I must do it. The new painting, "Crevice", is such consequential image.
 Drawing 04·22·2022, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches I know I can do this. I can find a way to bring deeper meaning into my work. I no longer wish to make purely non-representational designs. I am about an internal dialogue with myself. I want this dialogue to be present during my creation of each work of Art. in·ter·nal·i·za·tion | inˌtərnələˈzāSH(ə)n, inˌtərnəˌlīˈzāSH(ə)n
noun Psychology: the process of making attitudes or behavior part of one's nature by learning or unconscious assimilation. • the acquisition of knowledge of the rules of a language.  "Uphill the Hero" (2022 No.4, state 6), oil on canvas, 60x56⅝ inches I have revisited myself. I have reminded myself. The reason I paint is to tell stories, stories of myself. I love telling stories filled with my perceptions, my feeling, my emotions, my intellectual questions, my intellectual answers. With this painting I have come home, a home respecting my most basic love. This is the reason I make Art. I make Art to tell about my here and Now and those stories that give me wonder and my love for living.
 "Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up" (2021 No.10, state 13), oil on canvas, 56x62¼ inches, {"And it is that word 'hummy', my darlings, that marks the first place in 'The House at Pooh Corner' at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up." - Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), in "The New Yorker", 20 October 1928, reviewed by Dorothy Parker as "Constant Reader"} Recently I have been hanging in there, pushing two paintings toward solid finishes. This enormity, my great desire to complete, may surprise you; it surprises me. There is great meaning in these paintings. I am obsessed. I cannot let them go the way a man cannot let go of a woman he loves. I find beauty in these; not simply the beauty as defined by the dictionary: “a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.” The beauty I see also reflects my deepest knowing, both emotional and intellectual knowing. The very process of completing these paintings is me exercising trueness to myself.
 "Find a Man" (2021 No.8, state 8), oil on canvas, 56x59½ inches, {"When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to find an author, and we find a man." -Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), "Pensées", 29 (1670)} Struggling is not new to me. In fact, it is preferred. If I am not struggling I am not reviewing the edges of my consciousness, edges of my intellect, edges of my emotions. This painting, "Find a Man", is testing all of the above. This is me finding my roots, and the extensiveness of my personal landscape.
Am I there yet? No! That is an accepted impossible. "Find a Man" is on my journey; a journey to better understanding. The superlative, best, will never be obtained. As long as I work I will always become better, but I will never become best.  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.  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." |
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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
November 2022
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