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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:  Drawing 10·16·2019 No.1, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 10·16·2019 No.2, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches 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.
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 Drawing 04·02·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I have been making a strong effort to think simple. I am well aware an obvious relationship between negative and positive space must be the capturing effect that is the ultimate driving force of the first glance. The first glance should capture viewers, rein them in. As complex as yesterday's drawing became, it is simple in its composition. I hope you see that. There is dark on the left, bright on the right, strong vertical movements play against strong forms on the left and the right. This is a masterful drawing. I felt mastery in my process.
 "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!  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?  Willem de Kooning, "Untitled", charcoal on paper, 1966  Philip Guston, "Web", India Ink on Paper, 1975  Henri Matisse, "Lydia with Her Hair in a Net", pencil on paper, 1939   Here are a couple of drawings. Each with a lot of negative space, each with a few positive forms, and both with a feel of the third dimension. Such is life.
 Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 (state 17), oil on canvases, 60X120 inches (each canvas = 60X60 inches) Possible Subtitles▸ Left panel: "Before or After", Right panel: "After or Before" As I get closer to the completion of the painting Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 I question my ability to be self-relevant. What a crock! No need! Yesterday I proceeded through my studio time with a drawing, then the painting, then a drawing. All the while I was asking myself about self-relevancy and the means to get there. In the painting I see figures that could be more expressively self-aware and self-relevant. I am probably wrong about this, but I do wish to make myself, and the viewer, experience the people in my art more powerfully than they experience the people in our world. I believe my people are becoming this, but not as fast as I would like. Leaning is described as a curve, like a graph. I agree with this idea. It is basically upward, but not consistently. Art's process is so complex that all problems can not be solved at once. The painting Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 did solve a few of my problems, like how to animate the structure of time with still images, and how to use positive and negative space to more advantage. However, I do find the figures in Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 more tame, and not as expressive, as those in yesterday's drawings. I am not going to take this as a failure, but as something inherent to the process. Even though I feel urgency, my art cannot immediately become all I imagine it must be. It is on a upward curve, but like the process of scientific discovery it is... two steps forward, one back, two step forward, one back, and on and on...  Untitled Drawing-05·22·2014, pencil on paper, 14X11 inches  Untitled Drawing-05·22·2014 #2, pencil on paper, 14X11 inches |
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At MEHRBACH.com you may view many of my paintings and drawings, past and present, and see details about my life and work. Archives
November 2019
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