 Drawing 01·13·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches What am I doing? I am looking carefully at the space between the lines, the negative space. I am filling the page with carefully considered forms, forms created by pencil lines. These lines, inherently, leave gaps between one another. These gaps are emotional spaces, ones that create light and darkness, good and evil. My current research is investigation into the emotional satisfaction, personal self-expression, that I may obtain from the space between the lines.
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 Drawing 10·20·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 10·20·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The Rock of Gibraltar is not the only thing built to last. I am building substantial stuff right now. I am building art to last. These drawings are deep commitments to truth and the way of sun. They are what they are supposed to be, committed to the heaviness, and to the light, that is everlastingly within us all. Solid as a rock, mindful as in the ephemeral moments they witnessed in their transitory experience of becoming real. I can now declare this journey is mindfully an honest one.
 Drawing 09·22·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 09·22·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 09·22·2020 No.3, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Everything is on the line, everything is concerned with the impact of form & line & shadow & smudge & composition & light. Everything is more clear to me. These drawings are more and many; they are better to me. These drawings are beginnings, true steps in the right direction. They are closer to being myself.
The last drawing is incomplete.  Drawing 08·16·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Preparing just one painting for exhibition takes an enormous amount of time; this distracts from my preferred endeavors. Of course I should promote my work! Yesterday I had time to finish a drawing; so nice! I completed a drawing begun on August 16. Today, however, I must begin to prepare the PechaKucha requested by Silvermine Galley for their 70th Annual A-ONE Exhibition, opening September 5. "Pecha Kucha" is Japanese for "chit chat". I am tasked with making a 20 slide presentation of my life and work, also with a look into my studio workspace. A PechaKucha runs quickly: 20 images, each with a 20 second VoiceOver. I will post a link here when the PechaKucha is complete.
The drawing I show today is research into my interest in movement. I wish to engage the viewer in multiple ways, but here I concentrate on relentless compositional dynamism. This internal image energy is being added to my fascinations with form, light, and three-dimensional space.  "Amidst a Falling World" (2020 No.3, state 17), 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)}  Drawing 08·11·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 08·11·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The painting, "Amidst a Falling World", will be exhibited at the prestigious 70th Annual A-ONE Exhibition at Silvermine Galleries in New Canaan, CT. The exhibition opens September 5, 2020. Yesterday I got extremely close to completing "Amidst a Falling World". A couple more touches and it will be complete.
My struggle to make sense of my personal vision has been mitigated by my efforts to complete "Amidst a Falling World". I understand better a means to represent personal clarity because I had to clarify "Amidst a Falling World". There is strength in simplicity. Yesterday I worked to make simple clarity available in my drawings. One of my problems is my sheer love of touch; my enjoyment of making marks has the ability to distract me from clarity; I enjoy making marks that represent surfaces, forms, and the representation of light on forms and surfaces. I get carried away, swept away, as I seek image though marks of graphite. Yesterday's drawing No.2 swept me into many more pencil marks than No.1.  Drawing 05·17·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Great art is achieved more from continuity of effort than from talent. I have experienced many talented artists, but only a few achieve great art. Achievement of greatness happens because the route to success is long in thought, long in trial and error, long in failure, sporadic with the exhilaration of success. The drawing shown today is too complex for me. Better were the drawings that were shown in yesterday's blog post. There is high exhibition of talent in the drawing I show today, but it does not stimulate viewer engagement; it requires too much from the viewer, just as it required too much for me to make it real. It does exhibit great talent in drawing; space, form, light, compositional integrity, they are all present. This drawing fails because it lacks immediacy of purpose, which means it lacks immediacy of viewer involvement. I will require a lot of time, energy, and great effort to make real the great art I envision. I am committed to the long run.
 Drawing 05·03·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  "Amidst a Falling World" (2020 No.3, state 02), 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)} The title of today's blogpost refers to acceptance; I accept the means to my full express is two-dimensional; I am talking about the reality of my substrates. I make art standing in front of flat pieces of paper and flat rectangles of canvas; I draw upon them, both figuratively and literally. I accept composition as a 2D problem; yes, I enjoy alluding to the in/out artifice of 3D space; I no longer delude myself; I cannot accomplish the emotional power I seek, or full engagement of myself, if I do not first engage through two-dimensional expression.
I feel very good about yesterday's work. It is not an end, but it is a step. I am calling out, I am saying, "I know..., this is reality; here is truth in media. Look! I am expressing myself clearly; Why did it take me so long?" My answer, "Because I thought there was a means to expression through defeating the two-dimensional aspect of paper and canvas." I was wrong. I should make sculpture if I wish solely to investigate via the third dimension. I did once. That was not my bag. I enjoy too much the full sweep of hand and arm, the marking of paper and canvas. I enjoy too much the artifice of light on a 2D surface, and the use of color to do so. I enjoy too much these two-dimensional problems.  Drawing 04·05·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Yesterday's drawing combines many of my interests, from round to flat to three-dimensional artifice to compositional carry-through to light and energy to contrast in value and form. The 3D deception is robust. Formally, this is a success, but is it an emotional success? I worry it feels more an intellectual achievement than a grand display of all things me, i.e., emotions and intellect. Not to worry; this is merely a step along to way to all-inclusiveness.
 "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 25), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 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"}  "Clever Liars" (2020 No.1, state 03), oil on canvas, 56½x45¼ inches {"Clever liars give details, but the cleverest don't!" - anonymous} "Something Else Entirely" has a very minor but important change. I challenge you to find it. Hint: I am becoming aware that I see coronae everywhere. The sense of light in "Something Else Entirely" is new to my work. In the back of my mind is the play of light that always inhabits the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud's paintings are filled with coronae, many times more obvious than in "Something Else Entirely". Thiebaud work is light-filled; he uses contrasting and complementary color coronae to exaggerate light. This artifice is most easily seen along the edges of his shadows (see below). I don't know where my work is going. The painting "Clever Liars" took on change as well. I do know my instincts are more powerful than my intellect, so I will follow my instincts, step by step.  Wayne Thiebaud, "Four Cupcakes, oil on canvas, 1971  Drawing 02·26·2020 (state 2), pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Unnamed (2020 No.2, state 1), oil on canvas, 52x55½ inches {Reference quote to be added after painting named.} The world feels queasy and uneasy. The drawing began on 2/26/2020 came to conclusion, but everything else in my life (and living) is up in the air, being questioned, is in search of resolutions. The darkness that is "Drawing 02·26·2020 (state 2)" is solidly frank; it speaks in a world in which light is sought, darkness abounds, but clarity can been seen — the forms within are definitive, edges are comprehended, the space in which its forms reside is known. This drawing is solace for the poor of spirit. Our spirits shall be redeemed.
The new painting, begun yesterday, remains unnamed. Today it will receive a name, one that reflects the state of my mind as I begin this new search for truth, clarity, and self-knowledge. |
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January 2021
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