I am sure you can see. My drawings have changed. There is surface inspection like never before. I am feeling my way through, around, and on the surfaces of the forms, the ground, and the background. I am in an effort to integrate it all. I want to be cognizant of the touch, the feel of all I create on the paper, while simultaneously watching the entire composition form. All is becoming one of many things. This acknowledgement is important. It is self-acknowledgement. I want to be mindful of where I am while being mindful of the overall. I am working toward this goal. It feels authentic. It is becoming my faithful way to produce an image.
The world of my pictures wants to impinge upon the world of my living. Immediacy calls for reverberation. It brings attention. There is intimacy in my request. Yesterday's drawing is a surreal blend of ground and sky. They don't mix well. This is different from the reverb seen in state 4 of the painting 2017 No.14. I know, despite our inability to see it, there is commonality of approach. The drawing and the painting ask for attention using surface junction versus surface disjunction. Vocal disturbance enhances the nuance of a signal's meaning; this is called reverb. I am using its visual equivalent. Of course my analogy is impure. The idea is not. I hope you are looking because you are disturbed by my visual means and intrigued by my visual content.
These reproductions were taken by a Nikon COOLPIX L810 16.1MP Digital Camera, just a simple "point & shoot" camera, not a DSLR. I am surprised. The quality of these reproductions is very good. The death of my old Nikon D80 DSLR (vintage 2006) is a good thing. I will be purchasing a new Nikon DSLR, but the quality of the reproductions you see here is adequate. Adequate enough for me to post a second reproduction of the current state of the painting "2016 No.6". Usually I use a polarization filter to reduce glare from lighting, but this camera does not allow a filter. Still, very good with minimal glare. This proves you learn from a mishap. This proves technology moves rapidly forward, and I need to stay up with it. Today you can see me ascending a learning curve in more ways than simple reproduction. Although I do think the current state of "2016 No.6" is better than the last, viewing it makes me miss my fondness for deep space. Thus the drawings I made two days ago, posted here today. I believe I have a major problem to work through (which is a constant). Today's major problem is me, integrating light, color, energy of surface and touch, with my fondness for deep space: Not easy for me. At one point in Willem de Kooning's career, and also, earlier in my career, our paintings went Black & White, sans color. This may have to happen again. At the end of today's post are reproductions of Black & White oil paintings, de Kooning's from 1948 and mine from 1984. Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) was not well known in 1948 (his colorful "Woman" paintings began later that year. Willem de Kooning's "Woman" paintings marked the beginning of his artistic maturity). I know, my art looks nothing like Egon Schiele's. I have no ambition to make art that looks like Egon Schiele's. However, every once in a while, there are elements within my drawings that remind me of Schiele's work. It is in the touch and feel of the surface. Schiele can leave the paper, outside of his form, blank, without touching it. His forms (as in the drawing shown below) are touched everywhere. He relentlessly, caressingly, feels the form. This gives delight to viewer. Such surface enhancement makes a viewers feel as if he were in the room when the drawing was made. The viewer feels like he sees the same thing Schiele saw. My work is not so real. My work does not reflect an actual person in a room. This is my separation from Schiele.
In yesterday's post I showed a reproduction of a painting by Carroll Dunham. That painting of Dunham's is similar to many of his recent paintings. Dunham's color scheme is repetitive. Dunham's imagery is repetitive, including the use of the backside of a woman with large buttocks (take a look at Dunham's website for more of the same: Carroll Dunham's website). Yesterday a woman with large buttocks showed up in my drawing. This drawing is influenced by Carroll Dunham, but it is obviously quite different than Dunham's work. Most interesting to me is my vastly dissimilar approach to drawing. In everything I do, it is me I am interested. It appears, however, that I am casually interest in Dunham. Comparing Dunham's approach to mine is instructive. I am all about being playful with forms, creating interesting compositions based upon forms in space, and scratching the surfaces of those forms with pencil or paint. Contrasting Dunham's works to mine makes my own approach so apparent to me. In contrast to Dunham, my work is non-repetitive in its use of imagery, form, space, color, and composition. Carroll Dunham does appear to make many more paintings than I. So sticking to one idea that strikes one's fancy may help produce a large volume of work, but is it good work? I will not answer that, but I will say that Dunham appears to have "made it", by which I mean his paintings are bought and possessed by collectors, one after another. That has not happened to me. My work is not about producing a large volume of work. Is this a problem? This question I will not attempt to answer.
I am recovering from the intensity and indulgence of Thanksgiving Dinner, family and friends. Nice! Yesterday I spent some time in the studio, not a lot, but enough to try using a piece of old printmaking paper to support my drawing. It is rougher in texture than my usual paper, also a bit yellow (today's reproduction accurately depicts the paper's subtle yellow surface). The pencil went on differently too, scrapping across the paper's robust texture. It also erased differently, leaving more traces of strokes gone wrong. I returned to an old image. This became an activity filled with déjà vu. (At moments like this I always think of Yogi Berra, who said, "It's déjà vu all over again.") Yes, yesterday was a relaxing day, a gentle return from a big meal and social activity.
Drawings-03·12·2015 Nos. 1 & 2, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches Today's drawings were about surface subtlety. I use the past tense because I am looking back several hours at the process that stimulated today's drawings. Today I experimented. I tested. Tests come with questions. One answer: I know that I do not wish to make three-dimensional surfaces the primary impetus of my art. Composition was important in today's drawings. That felt good. Surfaces are important because they add nuance to the composition, but composition is the mother of expression.
...row, row, row... refers to my having very little to say in recent blog posts. The images are coming, but not the words. I would like to think my images are supplanting words. That the images speak for themselves. That I have no great passion to verbally explain my thought process because the visual work is explaining itself.
Daily readers know I have been struggling with an accurate reproduction of Asparagus. Today's image is closer than usual, albeit imperfect. The bug (fly?) did move since my previous post. Yesterday's drawing was sustained and methodical. Every once in while I return to feeling my way through ALL the surface of a created form. Yesterday's drawing had that kind of contemplative process. I was swept away from recognizable thought, which felt good during the process. One other superficial idea came to me. I am beginning to title my paintings — this makes for quicker identification, and allows conversation without confusion, which is inherent when titles are numeric and date driven. However, I do not wish the interpretations of my paintings to be driven by titles. I named my most recently completed painting with a four work title. Now I believe it is distractingly verbose. One word titles are better for my intentions, i.e. let the viewer construe the interpretation. This said, I have reduced my most recently completed painting's title to Heresy. This shortened title appears below the painting's reproduction on my website, MEHRBACH.com, but not in this blog. This blog, after all, is a diary of my thought process. I will not go back in this blog's post to change its title. I think one of best titles of all time is Guernica, Picasso's great anti-war painting. Being one word, it can be referred to easily; the title, Guernica, immediately brings with it the mental image of the painting with little encumbrance of verbal distraction. Untitled Drawings-01·30·2015 Nos. 1, 2, 3, pencil on paper, 11X14 inches Yesterday was a day of intense work in the studio. Looking back, it is difficult to believe I got all of this work done in one session. As usual, the drawings came first, then the painting.
The painting is relatively small (for me), but its symmetry, attention to surface, and minor versus major form, fascinates me. It is a head-on painting, with simplicity of color, and simplicity of composition. This, like the size of painting, is rather unusual for me. No more comments from me today, except me noting that the formal qualities explored in yesterday's studio session are remarkable. This process is not easy, not at all, and... I wish it were easy! Wishing gets nothing, doing does. The more I do this the greater the force of my insight: I must move away from figuration. Figuration, for me, had become a dead end. I want to express using painterly purity: color, form, composition, surface energy, and light. If I remained fettered to the figure I would have concerned myself with thoughts of physiognomy and anatomy. This diversion had removed me from the direct and the simple, and the possibility of true expression. Authentication of my primary impetus, to find meaning through making art, had become impossible. It is no wonder that it took me so much time, and energy, to complete the last two paintings you can see on my website, MEHRBACH.com, i.e. the triptych and diptych (Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 and Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014). My time and energy were me seeking true expression. I was a true detective, but I missed vital clues. The struggle to get it right was the major clue, and I missed it! This dumbfounded miss, this failure, had told its own story. I ignored the clue, and went on and on and on. Is this a problem now? Was this a failure from which I learned nothing? No, no, no! I am a better man for it! Today I begin a new painting. Watch me crow!!!
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April 2024
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