Category: Painting

At Last the Inflection Point

6/1/2019

"How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2, state 16), oil on canvas, 60x33 inches {"And I want to know the same thing everyone wants to know, how it going to end? Drag your wagon and your plow over the bones of the dead out among the roses and the weeds. You can never go back, and the answer is no, and wishing for it only makes it bleed." -Tom Waits, song lyric}

How's It Gonna End has ended! Today you see its 16th state. This wondrous solution occurred as much in my mind as on canvas. The last two months of my studio life has been more about preparing works for exhibition than making work. All the while I was doing other stuff the painting How's It Gonna End sat there on the work-wall. I saw it every day. Somedays I looked hard, other days I did not pay attention. Slowly I deciphered its need. It wanted to be resolved through simplicity. The day came when I needed to do it. The true solution came from my working the canvas itself. I eliminated some of it, then I exaggerated what was already there. Bingo! Done!

The inflection point came when I knew all is prepared for my exhibitions. I relaxed. The solution to How's It Gonna End came quickly and easily. Suddenly I feel in control of my artistic life again. More good things will come soon... after I deliver my works to Bromfield Gallery on Monday June 3.

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My Olive Trees

5/18/2019

Drawing 05·17·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

I continue to struggle to keep thinking, to keep making art in the midst of manufacturing. I am making stretchers and wood panels, putting my paintings upon them. For my drawings I am cutting matts, placing them in frames. Within the discomfort of my current situation I made this drawing. It is a good one. It triumphs over my struggle. Right now I feel this is my plight. Perhaps this is always. I believe, if I just keep doing it, I will triumph. I stick-in there, keep thinking, keep doing; I have not found a problem I cannot solve. My ideas pull me forward. The first limitation is the quantity of my ideas. The second is the amount of time I have to research, to solve these ideas on paper and canvas. I have many ideas, more than I have time to follow. Ideas just keep spilling out of me. I worry about time. It is the limitation of time I worry most about. In his poem, On Living, the Turkish poet, Nâzım Hikmet, wrote, "You must take living seriously that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees — and not for your children, either, but because although you fear death you don't believe it, because living, I mean, weighs heavier." My paintings, my drawings, are my olive trees; I plant them because my ideas weigh heavy. I must nurture them, make them real. I do not relish looking forward because, although I fear death, I do not take my time to believe in it because living overwhelms me, is heavy upon me. Yes, I take my moments one at a time.

On Living   --Nâzım Hikmet (1902-1963)

I
Living is no laughing matter:
   you must live with great seriousness
       like a squirrel, for example--
   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
       I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
   you must take it seriously,
   so much so and to such a degree
   that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
   or else in a laboratory
   in your white coat and safety glasses,
   you can die for people--
   even for people whose faces you've never seen,
   even though you know living
   is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
   that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
   and not for your children, either,
   but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
   because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II
Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get up
           from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
           about going a little too soon,
we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
or still wait anxiously
       for the latest newscast. . .
Let's say we're at the front--
   for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
   we might fall on our face, dead.
We'll know this with a curious anger,
but we'll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let's say we're in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We'll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind--
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

III
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
   and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet--
      I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
      in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
   if you're going to say "I lived". . .

From Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, published by Persea Books.
Copyright © 1994 by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Used with the permission of Persea Books. All rights reserved.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

5/16/2019

Drawing 05·14·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Tonight at 5:30pm I give a Gallery Talk at AVA Gallery. Yesterday and today I have been preparing. I have assembled a slide show of works; this was extremely instructive. I have been given a gift of speaking about myself for an hour! The slide show illustrates my artistic development, from pre-student days until today.

I made the drawing you see here during the last couple of days. I continue to be distracted by preparation for my exhibits. It is intruding on my artistic investigations. I have been drawing, but not painting. I relish contemplation of my current ideas and my current art. In writing today I am trying to convince myself there are merits to looking back. Looking back is preparation for being now. The process of becoming an artist is not a straight line, nor is it filled with assurance and confidence. It is questioning everything created. Along the way there is insight, exhilaration, and depression.

I very much forward to being an everyday artist again. I delight in the simplicity of going to the studio, working through my many ideas. This will not occur again until mid-June of this year.

Distraction is Annoying

5/13/2019

Drawing 05·10·2019 (state 2), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

This blog informs my art because it is here I view my work with fresh eyes the morning after it is made. My blog is a personal, mental disruptor. Everyday I leave the studio feeling I have done good work, thinking it the best I was able to do on that day. The next morning I come here. I upload photos of the images I made the previous day. I am always surprised. They are right, or I missed something. I know when they must be altered, fixed. Today I show you the drawing began on 05·10·2019 but now revised; this is its second state — my subtle alterations have made it much better.

The distractions that are preparing for an exhibit are annoying. The stream of consciousness that is art making is disrupted. This is not all bad. Insight is often found through the disruption of normal behavior. Last year, after I returned from my major exhibit in Brooklyn, I made great, insightful paintings. I fully expect this will happen again after I am done with this exhibition season. Actually, those insights are happening NOW. Seeing my work on the white walls of a gallery is enormously informative. Also, I have been unable to work on the painting, "How's It Gonna End", because I had to put my energy into framing and touching-up older paintings. This distraction has forced me to see necessary changes "How's It Gonna End" is requesting. Order is occurring because of chaos.

Getting Ready & Doing My Thing

5/6/2019

Drawing 05·05·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

I am framing again — this time for my Bromfield Gallery exhibit (opening is June 7). I am keeping my hand in making art — drawing. The painting "How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2) is on my work wall in state 15; it is begging me for a major change, one that should make the composition fully expressive and fully sound. That will happen soon.

Pluggin'

4/19/2019

Drawing 04·17·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Currently my studio time is 90% "getting ready" and 10% making original art. I much prefer doing the latter, but the former is necessary. Exhibiting new art is very important to me; I want to interact with viewers. The batch of drawings and paintings for the AVA Gallery exhibit are almost ready. I am framing drawings now, and I continue touch-up paintings on canvas that are now stretched on wooden stretcher bars OR mounted on wood panels.

The drawing I show today was executed two days ago. It is a good one. It will mostly likely be shown at Bromfield Gallery in Boston. I will not be delivering work to Bromfield till June 3 (by that time many new drawings will have been made; this one may not make the cut).

Going Away & Coming Back

4/15/2019

Drawing 04·14·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

It took me two days to make this drawing because I did not have the time to do it in one sitting. This time management is caused by the necessity that I frame works for my upcoming exhibition at AVA Gallery. If you follow the link to AVA you would see the announcement on AVA's homepage.

Going away from a partially finished drawing, then returning to finish it, is both beneficial and detrimental. Beneficial because it forces introspection upon return to the half finished drawing (I see it afresh; I see it more clearly; I immediately recognize its successes and failures). The detrimental part is me losing track of the original question I asked. In this case, in the drawing I show today, I wanted to inspect the possibilities of vigor in an insistently classically flat composition, one designed to be seen flat in the viewer's face. I often think of the great success Pablo Picasso had using this method in his painting Guernica, which has a central flat, in the viewer's face, triangle, surrounded by two side panels.

Pablo Picasso, "Guernica", oil on canvas, 1937

For the Better - Revision Coming

4/5/2019

Drawing 04·04·2019 (state 1), pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

As good as yesterday's drawing is, I believe it can be better. There is a thrust of darkness that begins in the upper middle and moves diagonally to the lower portion of this drawing. The clarity of this thrust gets a bit vague in the lower portion of the the drawing. I believe, if I enhance this movement it will enhance the drawing. The proof will come in the doing. I will post its final state tomorrow.

FYI: I have been busy framing works for the first of my Spring/Summer exhibitions. I deliver works to AVA Gallery (Lebanon, NH) on April 26 (opening on May 10). I will neglect my new paintings till the older paintings are framed, cleaned-up, varnished, ready to go to AVA. I will continue to make drawings. Making Art is ingrained in me, rewarding to me as necessary to problem solving life and living. Art to me is an indicator of Life; I cannot stop doing it. I believe my recent drawings are excellent, perhaps the best I have ever done. This reward of quality keeps me involved, day by day, relentlessly.

Developing in the Dark

4/1/2019

"How's It Gonna End" (2019 No.2, state 15), oil on canvas, 60x33 inches {"Life is sweet at the edge of a razor; And down in the front row of an old picture show the old man is asleep as the credits start to roll. And I want to know, the same thing everyone wants to know, how's it going to end?" -Tom Waits}

Drawing 03·31·2019 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

Drawing 03·31·2019 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

When film was film I would take photos with it, develop it; first the negatives (in the dark of a developing tank), then the positives (in a dark room). I have aged. Film has left us, replaced by digital imaging, but I make analog images with pencil and oil paints. My recent passion in image-making is introspection regarding the power of the positive and the negative. George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak Corporation, said, "Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness." This is me developing; unlike film, this is digital. This is the age of digitation. Now we use the digital World Wide Web. At one point I would have written this in my journal, but that was before blogging was possible.

All three images I show today are jumps in personal expressive progress. I am optimistic. I will solve my angst, my problems; I will find a way to express myself well. I do not want to live in darkness. Here I am!

Positively Negative

3/29/2019

Drawing 03·28·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

Yesterday's studio session was a lot of me sitting and observing. Surprised I was at my having ignored the potency of negative space. I sometimes feel awash is quandary. Why did I so actively attack the positive forms as animators of my images? Why did I not look ardently at negative space as animator? I picked up a few books; I looked at images of works from de Kooning to Guston to Matisse. All of these artists, like me, tend to clog their canvases with marks, making negative space look like an afterthought. Their drawings, however, are different. Negative space is more important. (See drawings by these artists, below.)

Today, I offer you a drawing of mine (made yesterday). In it I use negative space effectively. Learning never ceases. Learning sometimes leaves me with a feeling of loss; Sometimes it hurts! Why did it take me so long, some many drawings, so many paintings, to realize the great emotional and intellectual value of negative space?