 Drawing 09·28·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches From where does it come? I step up, I begin, it happens. I am giving into me the conduit. I channel the water to the barrier that separates the internal from the external. I work to allow it to spill over the dam. In my earlier living this dam held it back. I have found a means to open the gate through the process of mindful questioning. Without criticism I will continue this process. I know not where I go. I know this: the art I am making is me blurring the distance between that which I know and that which I can make real on paper and canvas.
Yesterday's drawing came in fluidly. It felt real and right, yet I continually questioned if bias, i.e., previous decisions, were tilting my process away from immediate truth telling. The questions remain, the answers will continue. The continuity of mindful questioning will yield truth to be told.
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 Drawing 09·04·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Work is required. That's all I got. My anxiety surrounding the work I am required to do is very present. Yesterday's drawing is a good one, but it also has a lot of open space, a lot of negative space. Do each of those negative spaces sing their propers notes, notes that radiate emotion and intellectual satisfaction? Blank spaces bring fear; they scarily call for resolution, either by mind or mark. Yesterday I chose mind over mark. Successful? I think I will go the other way today. I want to see which way is more satisfactory, open spaces filled by the mind, or mark filled spaces filled by a road map of specks and speckles.
The Irish writer, Christopher Nolan (born 1965, not the well known British screenwriter) said, when speaking of the reasons for writing The Eye of the Clock, "My real motive is to describe how my brain-damaged life is as normal for me as my friends able-bodied life is to them. My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down into my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness and while trying to discipline them I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse. Try then to imagine how frustrating it is to give expression to that avalanche...." Today I begin a new painting, which will be entitled, "Gunfire Across My Consciousness".  Drawing 09·01·2019 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 09·01·2019 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I am surprised. I feel wonderment. Where is this stuff coming from? Am I naïve, or am I a simpleton who is easily fooled, easily surprise? I have done this long enough to distinguish valid from bogus. Perhaps I am bottom-feeding, dredging the sludge of my Atman. This is my hope! Yesterday's drawings are different. They are informative, but are they emotionally and intellectually meaningful? I plug on. atman | ˈätmən | (also Atman) noun Hinduism the spiritual life principle of the universe, especially when regarded as inherent in the real self of the individual.  Drawing 07·26·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Part III: Wall with Objects OR WallpaperPaintings and drawings are flat, two-dimensional surfaces. If an artifice of the third dimension is created there are two choices. In order to deal with the inherent two-dimensionality of canvas or paper an artist can... (1) create a box, or landscape, by using a ground defined by a horizon, or (2) hang forms from a flat wall (the wall being defined by obvious positioning of the forms on the wall). There is third way to deal with two-dimensional canvas or paper: Float flat objects in an amorphous space. This third option, flat on flat, is always unsatisfactory. It is decoration. It is merely wallpaper. It cannot be art! Decoration is nice and pleasant, it may fill a void on a wall, but it cannot speak deeply of the human spirit, complex as the human spirit is, with intellect and emotion. Joan Miró tried doing both; he made paintings with the artifice of the third-dimension, and he made paintings that have flat objects on amorphous backgrounds. Miró's paintings with the third dimensional deceit mostly succeed, Miró's flat on flat paintings mostly fail (they are decorative and may fit well as decorations in a home, nothing more). Below, look at two paintings by Joan Miró. I admit, the second painting, which is flat on flat, exhibits Miró's effort to define the ground by using uneven areas of paint (in this way a viewer, at least, is cognizant the painting is on a flat surface). Henri Matisse did both. He created flat on flat works (e.g., his late paper cuts), but most of his career was spent making drawings and paintings with an exuberant questioning of color and three-dimensional space. I will discuss Matisse's work tomorrow. In yesterday's drawing I experimented with the lack of a horizon line; however there is an obvious horizon and an obvious ground.  Joan Miró, "Harlequin's Carnival", oil on canvas, 66x93cm, 1925  Joan Miró, "Blue III", oil on canvas, 270x355cm, 1961  Drawing 06·21·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Something magical is happening. While in process, as I work, my mind understands. It communicates, disseminates. My art springs directly from core intuition and knowledge, perhaps even emotion is involved. There is caveat, in regard to emotion, because, of the three, it feels most remote. Of the three (intellect, intuition, emotion), emotion is the most difficult for me to visually depict with acuity. This does not surprise me. I am working my way down to the essential me, the instigator of all. Fear and flight, love and hate, passion and desire; emotion is most difficult to depict with lucidity. The more I do this, the more I make-art, the more confident I am; I have the right stuff, the talent, to make it real on canvas and paper. This surprises me. I need longevity to make it fully happen. I know not the path I am on. It is not laid out in front of me. I am required to take one step at a time. The chisel is at work. Each step chips away one more bit of the crap that obscures my truth in being and existence.
Yesterday's drawing is exceptional. It is both playful and serious, light and dark; new forms occupy a classical composition. It is what the world needs now.  Drawing 03·06·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches You know it when you see it! I knew it when I was doing it! This drawing is a jump in expression of knowledge and emotions. It fits me like a correctly sized glove. It is a hallmark of great things to come. Am I gushing too much? Methinks "No!"
 Drawing 01·13·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Here and there I have done drawings that speak more loudly to me than others. In plastic sleeves they are placed upon my work wall. I look at them, day after day, over and over; slowly, v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, I comprehend the reason the few speak more potently than others. I like yesterday's drawing very much. Yesterday's drawing does speak potently to me. Yet I cannot judge it well so quickly. I have placed it upon my work wall, in a plastic sleeve next to the other drawings I have found lastingly potent. It will take some time, slow contemplative time, before I know if it is powerful enough to be placed in my pantheon of most influential drawings. Yesterday's drawing is excellent; I know now it is excellent, but does it have lasting emotional and intellectual qualities. I seek tunes that forever sing deeply upon return upon return upon return. This one calls deeply to me right now. Yep, it is emotive. Yes, it is powerful in intellect and in strength of feeling. Will it remain one of my most meaningful works? Slowly, over time and many looks, I shall know.
 Drawing 11·14·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Approach can swing from fully intellectual to fully emotional. The sweet-spot must be somewhere in-between. The sweet-spot is not-too-soft, not-too-hard, but just-right; yes it is something Goldilocks would enjoy!
Yesterday's drawing consumed my entire studio time. That drawing is intricate and it is thoughtful, but it felt dry in-the-making. This drawing was born mostly from my intellect and less from my emotions. Does it fail the viewer because it is not fully human? This is my worry. Living well, making art well, both are not fully intellectual nor fully emotional. Art, if done well, contains a balance of intellect and emotion. So how do I do this in a way that fully represents me? Perhaps, if this drawing were a bit different it would be more emotionally successful. For instance, if the form on the bottom right were larger, would its contrast create emotional stress through a dramatic emotional juxtaposition of forms? Instead it is so well balanced as to be comfortably numb. I do not want to represent this drawing as poor, or inadequate. It is an excellent drawing; but it just does not speak with a striking amount emotional energy. I want more. OK, I know how to put together a nicely balanced composition, one that is intellectually satisfying. Again; I want more! I want to see the stresses of existence in my art; the push and pull between my intellect and my emotions. The quest is truth and representation of the authentic consequence of living. I am getting closer. Writing, as I am today, is a call for my instigating a great effort to move closer to full satisfaction, me delivering a performance that fully and completely represents all I feel and know. (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony come to mind!)  Drawing 11·06·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Making sense is the slow and steady knock, knock, knocking on the door of knowing. The door opens a crack, then a wider crack, and finally an opening wide enough to walk into. I can feel this happening; in both my paintings and in my drawings. Do I actually understand something more profound than I can say in words? Definitely?
 "Burnt Norton" (2018 No.8, state 21), 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"}  "Chaos, Stillness & Prayer" (2018 No.9, state 3), oil on canvas, 54x36 inches {"Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.... an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction." -Saul Bellow, "Writers at Work: Third Series", 1967} Perfection takes time. I must not let perfection distract me from advancement. Improvement comes by avoiding the lure of perfection. Improvement means knowing when I must move to a new endeavor. The lessons learned from my inability to achieve perfection will be used as instruction during my next effort. Betterment is slow and steady work. The endeavor to reach perfection must come with acceptance; perfection will never be achieved. Thus is human reality.
Burnt Norton is so darn close to completion. I have been tweaking and altering, each change coming with its sense of necessity to the fulfillment of the piece. Simultaneously I have been working on Chaos, Stillness & Prayer. I am going to limit myself to one more session on Burnt Norton. |
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October 2019
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