Category: Mentor

Philip Roth's Note to Myself

1/7/2019

"Seriously?" (2018 No.11, state 13), oil on canvas, 49.8x62.5 inches {"All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously." - Hermann Hesse, "Reflections", ed. Volker Michels, 1974}

I just keep going along, self-doubting myself into returning to seek meaning in myself. Doubt creates problems to resolve. However, recently things have changed for me. I am respecting my instincts. I follow them. By acting upon instincts I am better at discovering self-truth. The painting, "Seriously?", exhibits more truth now (in state 13) than it did in state 12. Philip Roth's attitude, that work causes self-revelation, has helped me enormously. It is important to find camaraderie in people who have come before; people who have used creativity to find personal reality. I am assured working, experiencing, does unravel truth. Effort is leading me onward, but it is comforting to have a predecessor, a mentor, to tell me this can be done. Again, thank you Philip Roth!

Monumental Compositions

5/11/2018

"Cave" (2018 No.1; state 5), oil on canvas, 68x53 inches {"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Bernice Bobs her Hair" (1920)}

Drawing 05·10·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

I was looking at my principal mentor's art. I realized he, like I, sought a monumental response to his images. He was Philip Guston. Yesterday's work strongly brought on this monumentality. It is the same strength I like in Anselm Kiefer's work. And so it goes; and in so it comes....

Philip Guston, "Back View", oil on canvas, 1977

Working Forward & Looking Both Ways

11/19/2017

Drawing 11·18·2017, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

This drawing looks forward, looks back. There is a dangling whip there, so it must look back to my mentor, Philip Guston. It looks forward because it is only something I would do. I do not know anyone so completely involved, so entranced, by simultaneous in and out and across composition.

Philip Roth's Note to Myself

Monumental Compositions

Working Forward & Looking Both Ways

Two Works by Philip Guston

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