I have been away from the studio. I was attending serious business. I visited museums. I had a dream in which I dialogued with Picasso. I contemplated. I retreated from Making-Art. I contemplated Making-Art. My many recent exhibitions left me confused. "What am I doing?" and "Why am I doing it?"

The art-making I seek requires skill and talent. Today's contemporary art scene often appears devoid of skill. That said, there is a talent there, one that causes public and private interest and engagement. We live in a world where celebratory personalities head countries and engage many followers. Upon inspection, some of these leaders are devoid of the required skill and knowledge to do their jobs well. However, there is talent there, a talent that causes public discourse and public interest. That is the definition of Artist. This illustrates my personal quandary. My confusion is comprehensible. I received a lot of positive feedback from artists, some gallery and museum directors expressed appreciation of my art. I did not get a lot of sales. I take lack of sales as lack of engagement. My viewers did not choose to put my art on their walls. Desire speaks of engagement. I want espousal; I want my viewers to want my art. If they do not want it they must not need it. I have failed if my viewers don't need my art, if they don't need to buy it, or own it. I feel I did not fully engage my viewers. This saddens me. I want more. I want my relationship with my viewers to be consummated!

My skill is extremely high. I can do anything on paper (or canvas) that I can imagine. Perhaps I have restricted my imagination to knowledge already acquired. I must engage my skill with greater abandon, with ambition to disclose more deeply than that which I intellectually comprehend. I am not who I think I am; I am more. The only way to know oneself is to uncover oneself. I must walk naked into the world. People love to look at naked people. They are unable to NOT look. Is this the gap I have been unable to fill between my viewers and I?  I need to take off all of my clothes.

Referring to popular culture, this is what I see, We have a president of the United States who is more reality TV star than successful statesman or successful business person. This man obtained his lofty position by appearing to be upfront and personal (despite the many questions surrounding his truthfulness). He has engaged our entire population despite his lack of skill for his current office. That is his talent. It is talent that may serve me well as artist. I want to engage. I want people to pay attention to my art. There are NO limits to what I can do because I have the necessary skill to do it. My failure to fully engage my viewers is my lack of a certain kind of talent. One can see the talent I am missing in our current president, also it is present in reality TV stars, in pop music artists, and in show business celebrities. The artist Andy Warhol was more a successful celebrity than a skillful artist. This explains a talent I must nurture in order to fully engage my viewers. My extreme artistic skill is squandered if I do not have the talent to engage my viewers. 

I dreamed I was with Picasso in his studio. Picasso threw me out. Picasso silently waved goodbye to me. I reluctantly gave in; I said goodbye. I walked away from one of my great educators. I do not need mentors any longer. I must rely solely on myself. It is no longer about what I know; it is about what I do not know, what I need to discover.

Yesterday's drawing is much different from the one in this blog's previous post. There is a two-week gap in time between these two drawings. I have begun to take steps without knowing where I am stepping. I step in confidence without knowing where the next step will lead. That is a good thing.

Even to me, yesterday's drawing sings a radical message. It conserves Western's Art's intrigue with perspective, yet creates a room-like environment inhabited by a form of many forms. It has little comfortable references to reality. This is pure three-dimensional abstraction, simultaneously conservative and radical. Viewing discomfort abounds! Is it good art? It is what it is: a test, a proving ground, research, and profoundly articulate. This drawing is filled with finesse of touch and of pencil marks. It exudes elegance in form-creation and in composition. Yet, it is disturbingly different; it is different than anything I have imagined prior to its existence. My role is not to judge, but to make, then move on to create some more.

The miracle of intuition is happening as I work on paintings and drawings. Yesterday the painting, Sentence, took a major turn toward the better. I began a drawing that fell from me like water from a faucet, controlled and directed, accomplishing its given task. Nothing got finished yesterday; I am gleeful because the activity of making-art felt right and good.

I surprised myself. Insight happened! My art was made as spontaneous spontaneity. It was glorious revelation in real time. I knew my knowledge without knowing I knew. Yesterday's drawing and painting came uninhibitedly, naturally, openly. Instinctively I created images. I acted as I breathe; my activity was as involuntary as my heart beats. Art was made as natural tendency. My intuition was instantly known, accepted as true, there was no barrier between knowing and acting. I did this as soon as I put paint or pencil to canvas or paper.

I feel extraordinarily creative. Yesterday's drawing surprised me with its insight and invention. There is opening deep within me. I am grandly inquisitive. The answers spilling from me are possibilities, one innovative answer after another. I do not fear challenge or risk. I am in the goodness of being human, of living.

There is an end to everything. This applies to a painting as well. One can make paintings as walls. One can make paintings as landscapes. One can make paintings that inhabit a room. In ALL cases, there is a ground. The ground is the viewer's agency to find his bearing. An early influence upon my art was Yves Tanguy (1900-1955). Before I began today's post, I thought to myself, "Hey, Tanguy made images without horizons!" NOT true! Yves Tanguy ended his career making surrealistic LANDSCAPES! Tanguy began his artistic career, like all of us, making figurative paintings (see below). In ALL cases, despite my early morning intellectualized doubt, there is a definitive ground in Tanguy's paintings, always! There are horizon lines even when Tanguy creates an amorous background fog; there it is, in every work, a back-ground! And so it goes!

Another early influence on my art was Arshile Gorky (1904-1948). The same grounding occurs in Gorky's works (see below).

These has to be a defined rear-end to a painting, which I shall henceforth call, "the ground". Without the ground the viewer is left with insecurity of place. It is the relationship to security that makes a painting free, open, and emotive, thus allowing unrestrained creativity. Without security there is only loss; loss means absence, absence means a lie, a lie means dishonesty. The last thing I want my art to be is dishonest!

I began yesterday's drawing looking to test the "no horizon" idea. I cannot do it! A ground allows the artist to create havoc or security or insecurity or whatever. Life and art have irrefutable definitions. One of them is this: we exist in a place and in time; i.e., we exist on something that can be called our ground. Art mimics life. That is impossible to deny!

The painting "Doublethink" is living up to its name. Its process is me thinking twice. It is straightforward problem solving (though an outsider may believe it being solved in a roundabout way). I am pushing up against current knowledge; In order to solve this I must make new knowledge. This is exhilaration! It's a wonderful life!

Mysterious are the travels that reveal. Always new, always old; both! I drag ideas from the past, I disclose ideas in the present. Yesterday's drawing summarizes, questions, solidifies, and declares. It is a restrained revelation. I do not know its entire meaning. This is me in the act of self-discovery. I am making my oeuvre. This drawing feels important, like reading a poem that makes total sense because it elegantly discloses archetypal ideas. This is visually prototypical, peculiar to me.

Yesterday felt almost normal. I was in the studio; I made art! I had more ideas than I could make real. Thus came a new painting, "Sentence". "Sentence" is named after the splendid poem by Tadeusz Dąbrowski, published in this week's The New Yorker magazine (July 22, 2019 Issue).

Yesterday's drawing was new and different and excellent too!

My work does not come easy; never feels immediately right and good. I'm always troubled; always wondering about the means to better success. Best is my being there, doing this, living the questioned life.