 "Your Decisions Matter" (2020 No.2, state 3), oil on canvas, 52x55½ inches {"It's essential that you believe as if your decisions matter... reality isn't important; what's important is your belief..." - Ted Chiang, "Exhalation", 2019} Fantasy and reality become the same in a painting. Such it is with the painting, "Your Decisions Matter". In this painting I see reality. I can feel reality; I also see fantasy. Big blockbuster TV series do much the same, like Game of Thrones. It ain't real; that depicted never happened, but it mimics, rhymes with stuff we know exists. That is the way my art is going. This painting, aptly entitled "Your Decisions Matter", is proof. I had to work many years to get clarity. All my work, the hundreds of paintings, the thousands of drawings, led to this. I know better who I am. I know better the means to express myself. This is reality. I feel safe. I can now come out.
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 "Clever Liars" (2020 No.1, state 01), oil on canvas, 56¼x45¼ inches {"Clever liars give details, but the cleverest don't!" -anonymous}  Drawing 02·22·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches I have often referred to the feigning of the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface as artifice. Here is it again, in a new painting, and in a new drawing; both are products of yesterday's studio session. The painting is aptly entitled "Clever Liars"; its third-dimension is a lie. My quotation is an old one, one with no known author. The idea is "details" diminish the cleverness of a lie. Too many details in a lie diminish its acceptance in marriages, business, and politics, not so in art. The more detail in a drawing, or a painting, the more the viewer accepts the artifice. If you don't believe me, or if you don't see this in the work I post today, view the 2014 watercolor painting by Anselm Kiefer, below; you can feel your eye fall into Kiefer's painting, scoping back until the eye hits the artifice that appears to be a sunset. This use of the third dimension is very important to me. I find an image which engages the viewer because it insists upon being seen with a third-dimension, a grandly accepted lie; the lie of depth on a flat plane, forces the viewer to think actuality, i.e., the viewer has an additional incentive to believe the image before them mimics reality. They fall into the artwork as people fall into a con job. I have been told the greatest cons are those the "mark" believe they have determined to benefit themselves; the mark determines they will benefit by causing a loss to the con-artist; the "stooge" thinks the "grifter" does not understand how he, the "confidence man," will lose when the "sucker" goes ahead and takes the bait. FYI: A confidence trick is also known as a con game, a con, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko (or bunco), a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, or a bamboozle. The intended victims are known as marks, suckers, stooges, mugus, rubes, or gulls (from the word gullible). When accomplices are employed, they are known as shills.  Anselm Kiefer, "The Evening of All Days, the Day of All Evenings", watercolor on paper, 2014  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 19), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} "Something Else Entirely" has been very difficult for me. I feel I have encountered my evil within. This painting is in state 19, and it is NOT complete! Seeing my evil within is seeing the habits that have distracted me from reality. As I make this painting I am unearthing my faults, encountering my bad habits, seeing the manner in which I fall into erroneous steps while in process. Putting it more positively, because of this painting I have grown more truthful; I have thrown faults into the trash bin; I have accepted a more lucid view of reality. The painting, "Something Else Entirely", is much better now than it was before I worked on it yesterday. Also, I am much better. Honest reflexion upon my failures is the best means to comprehend truth and reality.
 "Doublethink" (2019 No.3, state 8), oil on canvas, 68x58 inches {"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty Four" (1949)}  Drawing 08·29·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Swimming in the open ocean is for the self-determined. It is risk-taking. Without risk-taking my art would be repetitive, I'd be bored, and I would have no chance of self-realization. Strange instigates change, instigates reality. Reality is deceptive. It confuses the ability to see truth. As example, there is a reality defined by the likes and dislikes of commercial art gallery dealers. They like art they know, not art that challenges them. This is not just from me. Jean-Michel Basquiat (from the little book, Basquiat-isms) said, "Most identifiable things are what [commercial art dealers] like. I did some portraits last year and they really hated those. But the artists like them." This was exactly my experience with my three recent exhibitions. This does not make me feel better or worse. I feel a need to question all my past art, a need to create chaos in order to seek true ground. This happened yesterday. If yesterday's images disturb you, then good for you and good for me.
 Drawing 06·22·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches In life there is struggle to see clearly. The murkiness of people, things, and emotions obscure easy access. Muck, rubbish, and dirt get in the way of truth-telling; clarity is found by consistently pushing the falderal out of one's way. Such is my journey. Reason is not enough. This is slow because the rubbish is much. Yesterday's drawing dealt with this dichotomy. There is left and right; there is heaven and earth. There is darkness and light. The left is shadowed, invokes a search for nuance. The right is easier on the eyes; it invokes simplicity and strength. The monument on the right is clear. The monument on the left struggles to be seen. Both monuments are pyramids, one tall and lean, one fat yet sturdy in its dark surroundings. Obvious, there is play between murkiness & limpidity.
 Drawing 02·08·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches One of my most remarkable self-discoveries is an emotive image does not require realistic light. There is no need for faithful reference because it is the power of the image and the power of the forms that strike the viewer as real. Reality, accurate to the world we walk in, is unnecessary. The reality of the image is all that is in front of the viewer and therefore it is accepted as reality. Nobody does this better than Anselm Kiefer. His near-abstract images glow with light. They are lightly colored, mostly grey and white, yet their realities are emotionally potent. I learn as I make.  Anselm Kiefer, "Aurora", mixed media on burlap, 110×150 inches 2017  Anselm Kiefer, "Bohemia by the Sea", mixed media on burlap, 75 inches×18.5 feet, 1996  Anselm Kiefer, "The Bad Mothers", mixed media on canvas, 2011  Drawing 11·09·2017, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches The revelation of personal religious zeal is the heaven that is found within the momentary realization that the mark made is earthly correct. As I accept this premise my art becomes more me and more real. More real is surprising since its abstraction from the experiential data allows it to resemble the world I have experienced without mimicking that world. Here I am today showing you one more drawing on my road toward acceptance. This is what I do.
Today's drawing is self-real, yet also plays falsely within its own stated reality. Do you see the mark approximately one-third from the left and one-third from the top? It is simply a mark amongst a plethora of forms. The forms pretend to be three-diemsional, but the mark is just a mark, a splotch on the page. It is a required mark. Without it the back and forth force of this composition would be relentless, and questionable. It would lack grounding. This mark grounds it. It allows the forms to play with energy against the mark's static, solid touch to paper.   Confusion is here. Yesterday's drawings show it. I am sorting out image priorities. References to actual forms seen in our visual reality may be there, maybe not.
   Drawings from 1/6/2016, pencil on paper, 20X16 inches Yes, it is me, the dog! I am back and doing what dogs do. Like a habit unbroken, I will follow my master. The problem is... I am still learning about that which my master demands. I have written this before: Perhaps painting will sort this out more efficiently than drawing. My reasoning? I find that the longer term give and take of the process of painting, and its larger format, causes me to pay more attention to the thoroughly authentic. This is in contrast to the transient ideas I sometimes entertain in my drawing.
Yesterday's images were all over the place, but they are united in their acceptance of my internal reality. I live in place far away from the hubbub of humanity. This allows me to dwell, to contemplate, then make an effort to unravel my confusion. Confusion is born of past experiences misunderstood, or never fully understood. I have taken upon myself the job of exploring this vast, untidy, mystifying ocean of bewilderment and wonderment.  Drawing-12·01·2015, pencil on paper, 20X16 inches Walt Whitman wrote it better than I (see Whitman's poem at end of today's Blog Post). I am the flinging spider, looking for things to hold onto. Moving from one hold to another, always... "Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them; Till the bridge [I form be a] ductile anchor hold; Till the gossamer thread [I] fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul." Spider Fling, by Walt Whitman |
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March 2020
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