Category: Progress

Look, Find, Make

9/28/2023

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"2023 No.9" (state 04), oil on canvas, 51½x38½ inches

"2023 No.10" (state 04), oil on canvas, 52½x38¾ inches

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Yesterday & Today Toward Tomorrow

1/21/2023

Drawing 01·20·2023, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

Stealing My Heart

1/20/2023

"Compunction" (2022 No.12, state 06), oil on canvas, 57⅛x66½ inches

"Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up" (2021 No.10, state 6), oil on canvas, 56x62¼ inches, {"And it is that word 'hummy', my darlings, that marks the first place in 'The House at Pooh Corner' at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up." - Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), in "The New Yorker", 20 October 1928, reviewed by Dorothy Parker as "Constant Reader"}

I thought I made some progress, now I see it is not enough. Woe is me. Far to go before I sleep.

I am the Wave, not the Surfer

6/26/2020

Drawing 06·25·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

I am a wave. I am a progressive. I surprise myself. I create stuff never seen before. I will continue, one day at a time, one step at a time, on a path to a place unknown. I am surprised; I am surprised everyday.

I heard Dave Chappelle say our current President is not the wave, he is surfing the wave. Waves go in and out. Idiots can surf, but they are unable to be the wave itself. Political progressives are waves. They are splashing onto our cultural beaches. Progressives erode our culture's ingrained, holdover ideas. Norms must be overhauled for our culture to be the best it can be. Progressives see a better way. It is unfortunate our current President has a bully pulpit; he calls to his slow-minded admirers, who want nothing to change. Progressives will replace the old with better. Progressives are creative, as creative as the wind that drives them. The wind moves our culture in the right direction. Unfortunately, we are forced to watch our President, an angry surfer, who speaks as if there is no Global Warming, as if nothing is changing. This guy likes the old ride, he likes his old Cadillac, not a new Tesla. His craziness is his old, dreary ideas; ideas that were set in the early days of our Republic. Old ideas need to change in order to recognize who we are right now. Our old man President learned to surf a long time ago. It is unfortunate his mind is not open to our needs. Changes are required in order to make us a better Republic.

Escape from Confinement

10/11/2019

Drawing 10·10·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

"Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5, state 5), oil on canvas, 48.5x31 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"}

This activity of living, and of making art, is done well if understood as escape. There are many brambles and bushes and impediments in one's path to enlightenment. Escaping is cutting away the cage that surrounds oneself. This cage exists because one's experience is predicated on a world full of righteous ideas; ideas that must not be trusted; ideas that have not been tested; ideas that have been accepted by minds both good and bad. Self-discovery is separation of the trustworthy from the bogus.

I burst into the making of yesterday's drawing desperate for escape. I began it as no other beginning. That beginning is buried in the rubble that is now this drawing. This is what is left after an intense struggle to be free of my past. Did I succeed? Somewhat, yes! Completely, no! It is a good drawing. It is a step in a direction that makes sense to me. Incomplete the journey must remain. My painting challenged my norms as well. I am moving, although the progress is slow and uneven. I reward myself with the idea that I have made progress.

One Thing is Constant

10/16/2017

"2017 No.13" (state 9), oil on canvas, 56x65 inches

Drawing 10·15·2017, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

The introspection immersed within my approach is constant. I worry about this. If approach has consistency, does it also contain habit and bias? There is an old saying, "If a hammer is the only thing one has, the entire world looks like a nail." If my habitual mind is all I have, do I approach everything with the same bias? I do believe there is revelation in both the painting and the drawing I show today. Process and progress are complicated problems. As much as I am making the effort to discover myself I making an effort to discover a process devoid of bias.

It Works for Me!

6/1/2017

Drawing 05·31·2017, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

I have long feared complexity as possible harbinger of confusion. Yesterday's drawing did not tap into this fear. I felt control and clarity. Looking at this drawing, as reproduced here, I believe I did succeed in layering the complex, yet creating simplicity of comprehension. This drawing is about balance: balance of forms, balance of compositional movements, and balance of value and contrast. It works for me!

Honing

4/17/2017

"2017 No.7" (state 5), oil on canvas, 56.5x57.5 inches

I will make few comments today. Yesterday's work fits exactly the definition of today's title (from Wikipedia - see quote at bottom). The drawings are elegant. I find them unusual, but satisfying. I never know where I am going, but I do know this concatenation of refinement feels right.

Honing is an abrasive machining process that produces a precision surface on a metal workpiece by scrubbing an abrasive stone against it along a controlled path. Honing is primarily used to improve the geometric form of a surface, but may also improve the surface texture.
-Wikipedia

Soft and Hard

3/29/2017

A friend of mine commented on the painting 2017 No.6, saying there were lots of hard edges, that he would like to see a soft, pillow-like shape in it. This made me aware that my work lacks another possible type of contrast: soft versus hard. My work is filled with contrast, but it lacks soft forms. Without using soft forms I am restricting myself from an additional expressive possibility. Soft forms should be one more arm in my arsenal. Yesterday's drawings began with an intention to test this additional contrasting agent. I think I failed. That major form on the left in drawing No.1 was intended to be a soft form. Soft success or no, I do think these drawings are good ones.

Before you leave me today, please take a look at the painting I reproduce below, Anselm Kiefer's The Fertile Crescent. This painting, which is stark in color, filed with the artifice of three-dimensional depth and natural white light, stirs me. It reassures me that my conviction is correct: Alluding to the third-dimension, on a flat two-dimensional surface, is emotionally powerful and expressive.

Anselm Kiefer, "The Fertile Crescent", 2009, Acrylic, oil, shellac, sand on canvas, 130x374 inches, Hall Collection. ©Anselm Kiefer

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