I am re-visiting the entire history of Western Art. I am trying to move it forward. Is that grandiosity speaking, or is it reality? One thing is for sure: Nothing has been done that can't be done better.
Time consuming it is, these demands. My work is calling for it! I am just following its call. The requests must not be ignored. Thus the work makes itself. I am the conduit, channeling visual truth.
That first paragraph is scary. It reads like one would expect from a deluded prophet who believes he has been called upon to follow some mystical, spiritual enlightenment. All I know is this: my knowledge continues to expand. I see the work in front of me more precisely than ever. I can feel its need for a dark mark in one place and a subtle gray mark in another. This is the same for color and for form, as well. Each work's requirements are self-evident. Yesterday I completed the painting "2016 No. 15". I am glad. I want to move on to a new painting. Following my theme for today, the painting "2016 No.15" demanded more precise shadowing on its "floor," so I did it! As good as this is, I know I could continue to squiggle, to reform; the niggle is always there, never goes away. In the larger scheme of things, that would be contra-productive. It is better to begin a new work. Lingering on an older work would have me correcting for the knowledge deficiency that was present when I began that work. Rather than trying to correct the initial shortfall of knowledge, it is better to begin anew. It is better to accept the indigenous limits of a work, and move on with greater understanding to a new work, riding with loftier knowledge right from the get-go! What's it all about? I am certainly NOT stuck in a rut! I am driving along, turning a corner. The turn feels slow, lethargic. It does feel familiar. I am winding up, the tension in my rubber band of a soul is increasingly stretched. I feel taut, stressed, anxious, ready to jump. The coming recoil may not be pretty. My current work does not look pretty. Everything looks unappealingly unattractive. Yet, I am filled with optimism.
Yesterday's drawings are, in a simplistic way, exploratory. What can I do with that which I know? Is this craziness? I am more interested in the unknown than the known? Thus I explore, looking to push out of my comfort and into the revelatory uncomfortable. It would be healthier for me to revel in the simplicity of being, here and now. Would it not be better to be happy with the pleasures available to me? Am I a hero if I risk looking for the dark and dank? Or just a crazy idiot? Time and effort will tell. There is no easy way to make this right. Does time exist at all? Is it not simply the zombie syndrome? We are a bunch of wax and atoms and little bugs that need to work together to find a way to move, despite there being nowhere to go. Symbiosis is the thing. And so, I search among the rubble that is me. Fortunately, I believe I understand better the more I exist, the more I do. So yes, time does exist! At least, time exists in the memory I have created because I am optimistic. I am going somewhere. Yesterday's drawings show progress. They are unique. They have some resemblance to that which I have created before. Still, they are uniquely their own images. My trust in this process increases the more I do. My confidence in process will bring me back to painting. Tomorrow I will return to my most recent painting, "2016 No.4", then I will begin a new painting, "2016, No.5". Hallelujah!
Clarity is not easy to find, but it can be found through work. This I believe. Yesterday's work was better than the day's before. It made more intuitive sense. The operator is finding self-knowledge. Drawings from 9/12/2015, all are pencil on paper, 16X20 inches
You would think this is the way it ought-to-be, all-of-the-time, but it ain't! I am having to grow myself into accepting that there are no pre-conceptions. I just need to show up. Showing up means something happens. No plans. No rigid ideas. It is the simplicity of now. If this is simple, why does it feel nerve-wracking? Well, I am admitting I do not know what I am doing. Not knowing is emotionally difficult. It is thinking on my feet, rather than knowing the course of the river. What is around the bend? I do not know. I do not care. I just show up. I just do. It is a surprise. It is self-teaching at a level far deeper than a book of words. There are no words. From whence it comes has not been tabulated. Drawings from 06/14/2015, all are pencil on paper, 16X20 inches
Abstract and concrete, confusing and clear, alive and well. All of these seem to go together. At least, that is the way it feels today. Intellectually I am aswim. There is an ocean about me, full of life and objects and detritus. My job is not to know all of it, but to wander through it looking for truth, not beauty. Finding beauty is too easy. Beauty is a distraction from the facts of living which require introspection, followed by some kind of answer. My answers come by me poking around, touching this, touching that, asking, "Does that make sense?"
I feel my fortune of ideas is getting the short shrift. I have not been managing my time well! My artistic ideas are getting curt treatment. I have been spending my early mornings in front of the computer, doing what I am doing right now. First I use Photoshop to prepare publication-ready images of the art I created the day before. Then I write my blog. While here I look at my email, do other daily organizing tasks, then eat breakfast. It is late morning by the time I get to the studio. This schedule results in some of my best and brightest energy being used up. That is wrong. Energy is like a reservoir. It is limited in depth and width. I am reversing this poorly chosen manner of living by writing this blog now, at the end of my creative day, rather than at the beginning.
During the last several years I believe it benefitted me to write the blog just prior to my going to the studio. It was a way to assess the previous day's work. It allowed me to question myself and the validity of each day's work just prior to making it again. I do not need this any longer. My manner of making art has changed. There is no need to assess yesterday's work because I invent and create in front of today's work. I no longer need to contemplate that which has happened to prepare myself for that which is happening. I am becoming my obvious self. I no longer feel confused. I just want to stand up and sing. I want to revel in the moment of creating, dwelling in the surprise of the art I am making! Tomorrow morning I will wake up, get my coffee, have my breakfast, then be out the door to the studio within an hour! My best energy will be with me! Insight: My recent work is not about a figurative style being replaced by an abstract style. It is about APPROACH. Yes, that is APPROACH in ALL CAPITALS and in BOLD! I am not about to give up all that I know. I am moving someplace, but it is not about loss or forgetting. It is about discovery and acceptance. The reference to the heart in yesterday's drawing is important. That heart cries out my acceptance of visually known forms. In addition to the heart, the space in yesterday's drawing is not abstract. The drips of Jackson Pollack's work are abstract. Jackson Pollack was vastly limited by his choice of means. He, in the end, performed more as an invalid than as an artist seeking a grand manner of communicating with his viewers. There is little sophistication in Pollack'e oeuvre. Where I go from this moment will be lost and found in the studio, and not in my verbalization of the process. Verbalization is a result of experience and not a precursor of discovery. From the Dictionary: Yesterday was a creepy day. I went into the studio intending to finish the painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014, but found myself wondering about its validity. The positive spin on this is... yesterday was a day of self-evaluation. The painting I am about to finish, and the one that preceded it (Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014), are disciplined spans of time, in which I am going from the artist of "take what I have" to the artist of "consolidate and move on." This appears to be self re-eveluation.
I am about to move on, yet I know I have to finish that which I have wrought. It (Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014) has merit, with or without re-evaluation. The problem I face is my own making. I required practice. I needed to discipline my manner of approach in painting, so I made large, major paintings, a diptych, then a triptych. In the heat of making these works I did not know that these paintings are mere moments in my education. I know now that they are springboards to more expressive work. Of course, the more expressive work has not yet been done, so what am I writing about? Isn't every work one does a bit of education? At this juncture it is nonsensical for me to predict the future of my work. Perhaps prediction is always nonsensical. Making is the only true informant. Thus I must continue painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 until it is done. The new work will come in its own time and it will not be nonsensical if it springs from all I know. Yesterday's drawing is a good one. It is illuminating. I did not labor it. I did not spend time contemplating it. It flashed itself onto paper with little criticism from me. |
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May 2024
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