 Drawing 06·17·2020, graphite on paper, 20x16 inches  "Amidst a Falling World" (2020 No.3, state 13), oil on canvas, 66¼x57¼ 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)} I am at a point of departure. I am stepping, not particularly caring where I go, but resolutely. This is not a time for self-judgement. It is time to allow images to be born out of intuition, deep knowing intermingled with angst. All bets are off; all absolutes are off, dependency upon past masters is off. I am just doing it.
I show today images like nothing I have done before; nothing I have seen before. Have you seen anything like these? These works are allowed to exist because they do not crush past knowledge, they enhance it. They are informed by the past, but they step out from it, not from underneath it. The Bomb Cyclone hit us; We blacked out. Today I show work from two days ago. They are pencil made/blacked in/white left as negative space. Here they are:  Drawing 10·16·2019 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 10·16·2019 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The story here is my search to exude mindful spirit in my art-making. Vincent Van Gogh did it, Egon Schiele did it, Michelangelo did it, Rembrandt did it, Picasso did it, Matisse did it. However, that is a handful of artists, less than a dozen. There are others, but they are not on the tip of my consciousness. Exuding mindful spirit occurs only through intensive, consistently centered practice. Mindful art sings depth of being, intuitive truth, and fully one's own comprehension of reality. This I practiced as I made the drawings I show today. They became reality through my struggle to be present. Looking at them now, I acknowledge they are not perfectly mindful, but they did take a jump in that direction. How do I know? Because they are unlike anything I, or anyone else, has ever made; they are purely mine! The step I took in making these drawings was my step. No one else is capable of taking this step, making this drawings. These drawings are mindfully mine.
 Drawing 10·15·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  "Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5, state 7), oil on canvas, 48.5x31.75 inches {"My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull... Images gunfire across my consciousness... I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse." -Christopher Nolan, Irish Writer on his reasons for writing "The Eye of the Clock", in November 8, 1987 "Observer"} Today's title is Wonky. As adjective, wonky is defined as "having or characterized by an enthusiastic or excessive interest in the specialized details of a particular subject or field." I'm obsessed by my quest to discover the subject of my art.
Yesterday's work is full of specialized details, all searching enthusiastically. I am excessively interested in detailed minutia. Every single part on my art pursues mindful visualization. I am getting better at this. Consequently, each mark takes its time, developing slowly, touch by touch, mark by mark. Yesterday's drawing is full of mindful spirit. I approached it as I do meditation. Marks were allowed to dictate their own time coming; they slowly searched, maturing till truth be told. Truth is dictated by intuitive decision-making, only when correctness is perceived do I move on. If I misstep in my journey, erasure is used. Normally methodology is two steps forward, one step back, two forward, et cetera. Not yesterday! The marks came mindfully slow, but the product came more quickly than usual. Mindfulness was more present than ever before. Thus I achieved more in one studio session than usual. I achieved a very good drawing, and I painted well too — both in the same day.  Drawing 10·05·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches 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?  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.  "Sentence" (2019 No.4, state 3), oil on canvas, 37x61.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} The miracle of intuition is happening as I work on paintings and drawings. Yesterday the painting, Sentence, took a major turn toward the better. I began a drawing that fell from me like water from a faucet, controlled and directed, accomplishing its given task. Nothing got finished yesterday; I am gleeful because the activity of making-art felt right and good.
 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 02·13·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Every so often I stretch, pull out the kinks, ask basic questions. Such is the drawing I show today. It does not strike me as particularly inspired. It does look like a simple application of ideas known, ideas that required themselves to be questioned again. I proceed on an inevitable path. Inevitability is defined by taking step after step with resounding intuitive knowledge.
 "The Doctrine of Liberty" (2019 No.1, state 8), oil on canvas, 66x59.5 inches {"I believe there is a golden thread which alone gives meaning to the political history of the West, from Marathon to Alamein, from Solon to Winston Churchill and after. This I chose to call the doctrine of liberty under the law." -Anthony Sampson, "The Changing Anatomy of Britain", 1982} Yesterday was just another day at work. Paying attention to the transitions occurring to the image in front of me brings visceral response after visceral response. My day by day work is intuitive alteration after intuitive alteration after intuitive alteration. It is repetitive in reaction but not repetitive in action or consequence. "The Doctrine of Liberty" is clearly educating me. Liberty is not without responsibility. Choosing to be responsible is liberty. Liberty is viscerally acting, making real my educated intuitive ideas. Profundity is found by following the call of my intuition till there is no more call. "The Doctrine of Liberty" is becoming a profound work of art, but it is not completely there yet.
 Drawing 01·22·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Am I too complicated? Will it be impossible for me to melt my perception down into a simple image? Do I challenge the viewer, and myself, with complications? Am I creating obstacles that prevent easy comprehension? OR, do I have so much to say that there is no way to say it simply?
This dilemma definitely does not have an easy answer. Yesterday's drawing took hours to find and to complete. It was good exercise. I am better for it. I am stronger. As I look at it now I wonder on its message. Does it say profound ideas that are me? I want to be seen for who I am. I want to reveal my concerns, my joys, my sense of humor, my reality. I fear death and I fear life. Am I making myself clear? |
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March 2025
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