Category: Research

Two More Steps Along the Way

9/5/2020

Drawing 09·04·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 09·04·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing No.1: too complicated? Drawing No.2: too simple? Yes, no, maybe? Each is a step along the way, doubling as art, science, research, judgements, and questions; each remain a step, not a destination.

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Back in the Saddle

8/19/2020

Drawing 08·16·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Preparing just one painting for exhibition takes an enormous amount of time; this distracts from my preferred endeavors. Of course I should promote my work! Yesterday I had time to finish a drawing; so nice! I completed a drawing begun on August 16. Today, however, I must begin to prepare the PechaKucha requested by Silvermine Galley for their 70th Annual A-ONE Exhibition, opening September 5. "Pecha Kucha" is Japanese for "chit chat". I am tasked with making a 20 slide presentation of my life and work, also with a look into my studio workspace. A PechaKucha runs quickly: 20 images, each with a 20 second VoiceOver. I will post a link here when the PechaKucha is complete.

The drawing I show today is research into my interest in movement. I wish to engage the viewer in multiple ways, but here I concentrate on relentless compositional dynamism. This internal image energy is being added to my fascinations with form, light, and three-dimensional space.

Correcting Mindful Mistakes

7/25/2020

Drawing 07·24·2020, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 07·16·2020 No.1 (state 2), pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

I returned to the first drawing made on 7/16/2020. I altered it. My present process encapsulates sitting, staring, contemplating my past work. I mindfully revisit. I ask. I question. I wonder upon betterment. Yesterday's results from this revisit/rethink process are these drawings, shown today. The one at the top of this page, yesterday's original one, looks back while moving forward (it resembles other recent drawings). The lower drawing is an enhancement of the drawing I first made more than a week ago. I am learning from myself. I am critically examining my drawings, also looking back at work done early in my career; I am looking for successes and failures. This is research. (FYI: If you are interested in my examination of my past work, go to CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ.

Now is the Research

7/24/2020

Drawing 07·23·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 07·23·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 07·23·2020 No.3, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 07·23·2020 No.4, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 07·23·2020 No.5, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Now comes the confusion of the search. I will not promise you all good things, but I will promise an exciting search for the true and the authentic. Yesterday I made five drawings! Some better than others, some make more sense to me today than they did yesterday. Yeah, these drawings illustrate my mantra, "Two steps forward for every one backward!"

One, Two, Three is Research

10/21/2019

Drawing 10·20·2019 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 10·20·2019 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Drawing 10·20·2019 No.3, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

Linear research is not. These are important drawings. They step into muck or moor or mice; they are distillation. They are frozen in time. They are star stuff. They contain the origin of essence. My steps are becoming more mine, more mindful, more mincemeat. These struggle to be free. These are truth and consequences. Popeye said it, "I yam what I yam."

Soul-Filled Bounty of My Mind's Expanse

9/5/2019

Drawing 09·04·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches

Work is required. That's all I got. My anxiety surrounding the work I am required to do is very present. Yesterday's drawing is a good one, but it also has a lot of open space, a lot of negative space. Do each of those negative spaces sing their propers notes, notes that radiate emotion and intellectual satisfaction? Blank spaces bring fear; they scarily call for resolution, either by mind or mark. Yesterday I chose mind over mark. Successful? I think I will go the other way today. I want to see which way is more satisfactory, open spaces filled by the mind, or mark filled spaces filled by a road map of specks and speckles.

The Irish writer, Christopher Nolan (born 1965, not the well known British screenwriter) said, when speaking of the reasons for writing The Eye of the Clock, "My real motive is to describe how my brain-damaged life is as normal for me as my friends able-bodied life is to them. My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down into my lap. Images gunfire across my consciousness and while trying to discipline them I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse. Try then to imagine how frustrating it is to give expression to that avalanche...." Today I begin a new painting, which will be entitled, "Gunfire Across My Consciousness".

Invitation

5/3/2019

Drawing 05·02·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

The other thing I have been busy doing (in lieu of making art) is sending invitations. I am hand-writing envelopes, stuffing them with announcement postcards; one card summarizes the Spring/Summer exhibits, the other announces the Bromfield Gallery exhibit (opening June 10). I have shown you the Spring/Summer exhibition summery Postcard (see Blog Post of 3/13/2019), but not the Bromfield Gallery announcement postcard (see it, below).

Yesterday's drawing is interesting. I wanted to juxtapose the animation of negative space (at top) versus strong three-dimensional forms (below). Did I pull it off?

Bromfield Gallery Announcement Postcard
(Front & Back)

Rotrouenge

2/1/2019

Drawing 01·31·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches

"Chaos, Stillness & Prayer" (2018 No.9, state 8), oil on canvas, 54x36 inches {"Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm.... an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction." -Saul Bellow, "Writers at Work: Third Series", 1967}

I will not relent. This is poetry. As poet I continually revisit, alter the script yet conserve the basic idea; My process is consistent enhancement of meaning. That is my job. This work of mine will not become genre, nor will it become extinct. Like Rotrouenge, it is lyrical and has repeated elements that may be called refrains. However, I believe in contrast; the repetition of marks and/or forms is contrasted against the entirety. I also believe my work is mostly similar to Rotrouenge because "...the original genre may have lost its distinct identity."

Yesterday I revisited the painting "Chaos, Stillness & Prayer" (2018 No.9). Today I show state 8. It is now essentially complete, yet requires a once-over to affirm its completion.

Yesterday's drawing continues my research into hard versus rounded forms.

Rotrouenge (from Wikipedia)

In the Middle Ages, the rotrouenge (Old French) or retroencha (Old Occitan) was a recognised type of lyric poetry, although no existing source defines the genre clearly. There are four conserved troubadour poems, all with refrains and three by Guiraut Riquier with music, that are labelled retronchas in the chansonniers. Six rotrouenges survive, but only one with music, and four of them are attributed to one trouvère, Gontier de Soignies.

Medieval Occitan treatises state that the retroencha always has a refrain, but modern scholars have found no other distinguishing characteristic. Pioneering work in singling out and identifying the rotroencha was made by Alfred Jeanroy. In the twentieth century, the German scholars Friedrich Gennrich and Hans Spanke developed two distinct theories about the textual and melodic form of the rotrouenge, implicitly suggesting in the process that some of the few specimens of lyric labelled as such in the manuscripts are in fact mis-labelled and do not represent the rotrouenge. The French scholar Jean Frappier noted that "we are not absolutely sure that we have any authentic specimens of the rotrouenge", indicating that by the time the term came into use in the late twelfth century it was no more than an archaism ("an attractive old term" in the words of Hendrik van der Werf) and that the original genre may have lost its distinct identity.

Graphical Earthquakes

9/13/2017

There are ups and downs in everything, positives and negatives. Without quaking there would be no revelation. Revealing the light, letting it shine through the cracks, outwardly and so bright as to allow recognition, means cracks are necessary. For me, new is not "something completely different," but something better revealed. I wish my self-discoveries were so novel as to be similar to the discovery of an absolutely unknown species of dinosaur or insect. That is an inhuman want. Impossible is self-discovery that is startlingly novel. Neoteric is possible. Strange, unprecedented, and singularly unique, is not possible. Yesterday's drawings call upon my past. They are research by revisit. They are questions whose prior answers were not rigidly successful. I return. This is a seismic search. Yesterday's drawings are me compressing a springboard for energetic release. Yesterday's drawings are not unique, nor perfect in their success. I am back at it again today!

Like a Diary

4/14/2017

"2017 No.7" (state 4), oil on canvas, 56.5x57.5 inches

I have said it before. Picasso said it. Making art is like writing a diary. Every day thoughts flood my mind. These thoughts are original and new. These thoughts are me living. These thoughts are me reacting to the day before today. These thoughts are questions I am asking about all I have done and all I have experienced.

Yesterday's drawings feel more like a diary entry than usual. These drawings are exploring latent ideas springing into my mind in contrast to the work I see before me. I am reacting to the painting I did the day before and to the drawings from the day before. I am questioning. I am answering. I am researching. The weird thing is the enduringness of this activity. Weird because somewhere, in the back of my mind, I think I can figure this out and make one fully realized image on canvas or paper. That is not going to happen. No way is there an ending to this activity.

<<Previous

Two More Steps Along the Way

Back in the Saddle

Correcting Mindful Mistakes

Now is the Research

One, Two, Three is Research

Soul-Filled Bounty of My Mind's Expanse

Invitation

Bromfield Gallery Announcement Postcard
(Front & Back)

Rotrouenge

Graphical Earthquakes

Like a Diary

Archives

Categories

Bromfield Gallery Announcement Postcard(Front & Back)

Archives

Categories

Bromfield Gallery Announcement Postcard
(Front & Back)