Does it bother you? There is an open (negative) space in the upper left of this drawing. Compositionally, it works! Is that enough? Spatially it may be difficult to read. I am unsure. This drawing is thick with pencil marks. I followed it to this conclusion, but methinks it asks as many questions as it answers.
Negative space continues as a major concern. In this regard, I often think of Vincent Van Gogh. His drawings, and his paintings, exhibit deep concern for every portion of the surface. I too am concerned with surface minutia. In yesterday's drawing I tried to animate the negative space through shape contrast and play. I believe it works! Today, as contrary research, I will touch every smidgen of the surface with a mark. 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: 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.
Today's second image is state 2 of Drawing 09·08·2019. Titanium white acrylic paint was used to remove the form that dominated the upper portion of this drawing. I eliminated the meaningless. An error in my ways became apparent, it distracted from the important stuff. I reworked the drawing, I found openness, better use of negative space. White, blankness, absence of form; negative nothingness is absolutely required in order to give significance to positive form.
I have been doing too much. I have been making too many marks and too many forms. Allowing discovery without judgment, brings judgment. This authorizes the unavoidable, this emancipates drawing that represents reality. I had relied too much on models. Reliance on models is weakness that engenders error in judgement. My models are the work of artists I admire, also my own work that I believe successful. I had been obscuring my present by relying on ideas from my past, ideas I had seen and understood. My practice of working in the now, allowing my images to spill onto the page, rather than to be manufactured on the page, is correct. My work must represent my knowing and seeing in the moment I am living. This is the goal of mindful art. This is the goal of mindful mediation: (i) Recognize Emotions, (ii) Accept, (iii) Investigate, (iv) Non-Identify/Detach. The consequence is reality. Yesterday's drawing is me practicing the unavoidable. "Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5), oil on canvas, 47x30.5 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"} Making art is making the unexpected. You never know what you are going to get. Oy vey, that sounds like Forrest Gump: "My momma always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'" Yesterday's efforts surprised me. I fell into them as one falls into the scramble to get upright after being hit by a large ocean wave. It is the work to get upright, to breathe comfortably. Security is the issue. This is my struggle to get out of danger. I will always feel insecure. I will always be making an effort to make it better.
Now to a little technical information: I began yesterday's drawing to study the spatial perception I created in the painting, Gunfire Across My Consciousness. It is about the space under the form moving from the lower right as it moves diagonally up and over the central form. It creates a bridge with one abutment being the central form. I am fascinated by the negative three-dimensional space it creates, like perceiving the gap between a bridge and the surface of the water below it. 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". I failed yesterday if simplicity be my goal. It is not! I want the intellectual and emotional satisfaction of complex images and the direct and immediate engagement of simplicity. Ellsworth Kelly achieved great visual impact using simple images. Kelly's work satisfies emotionally and intellectually. His is a great achievement. As much as I envy Kelly's direct route to completely fulfilling art, I am not Ellsworth Kelly; I am myself. My path continues to be discovered, step by currently unknown next step. Yesterday's drawing was such a step. It taught me; I reflect upon it. I want the negative space in my art to be as effective as Ellsworth Kelly was able to achieve in his art. I have many artistic ambitions. I worry I have too many objectives. I aspire to make art that functions well through many means: value, form, negative space, three-dimensional space, two-dimensional space, composition, and much more. I worry this may lead to confusion. A good work of art must show it itself through initial simplicity. A simple entry entices the viewer to become engaged, to pay attention, to look deeper, to see more. Complication is enriching only if the viewer hangs in there to absorb it. I think yesterday's drawing achieves this fullness; simplicity first, then satisfyingly complicated. This drawing is the last I will frame for my one-person Bromfield Gallery exhibition, opening June 5. Enjoy here! But please, see it in person at Bromfield Gallery. It is better than its reproduction.
My major artistic struggle right now is staying open to instinctive possibilities. If I touch success I discover grandness of light on forms and between forms. My effort is a struggle for enlightenment. I am working to be fully aware of everything, from the emotional potency of negative space to the emotional potency of forms and light. A piece a paper is an artifice of light, form, and negative space, but it absolutely is not an artifice of my personal awareness. My art measures me. It slams me up against my knowing. I am trying with all I have to stay so open as to fully know success and failure. This is a blunt process. I walk away from each art-making event knowing the depth of my comprehension, as well as the limits of my seeing, my knowing, my feeling. Yesterday's drawing was just one more step along this path, my journey in quest of light and enlightenment.
The other thing I have been busy doing (in lieu of making art) is sending invitations. I am hand-writing envelopes, stuffing them with announcement postcards; one card summarizes the Spring/Summer exhibits, the other announces the Bromfield Gallery exhibit (opening June 10). I have shown you the Spring/Summer exhibition summery Postcard (see Blog Post of 3/13/2019), but not the Bromfield Gallery announcement postcard (see it, below). Yesterday's drawing is interesting. I wanted to juxtapose the animation of negative space (at top) versus strong three-dimensional forms (below). Did I pull it off? Bromfield Gallery Announcement Postcard
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May 2024
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