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. Every day, when I rise from sleep, I realize the amount of work facing me. I must encourage myself to have courage. This is work. No matter how much I wish it were easy, insights do not come easy. Inspired as I am to seek and find, I must do the work. I want to know and see more quickly; there is never enough time and energy in my day. This is a long haul job. The most important insight occurring now, as I work, is the discovery of contrast as an animator of form and composition. The drawings and the painting shown today are from two days ago. The first drawing of January 28th is at the bottom. It carries through ideas insightfully discovered the day before. It is in the second drawing (the portrait head), however, that I played better with contrast. After the drawings, I went to painting. The green around those receding blocks was darkened. This higher contrast causes the painting to pop better than before. The painting is now on its way to completion. Happily, an effective increase in my artistic arsenal is readily seen.
A Note on Reproduction: The last few drawings have been on rough, slightly yellow, paper. In the portrait head you can see the yellow, but in the drawing of the abstract form (#1, bottom of page) all color was removed because a weird optical effect occurred which caused low value colors on its ground — it is reproduced in gray scale. I don't know what it's all about. That's why I make art. Yesterday's drawings are stabs at finding a means to relate to myself and to my viewers. All of us live in the here and now. "Here and Now" means Art History is not so relevant in my search for truth and communications skills. I am wasting my time in the studio if my works do not, in the present, ring true to me and to you. So here's to throwing the muck into the fan to see where it lands true! This will continue. Yes, I know I have a painting to finish. But, also, YES, I know I have paintings that need beginnings. Finding a foundational path for my journey will not happen if I don't think and make stuff.
In 1906 Picasso spent an enormous time on two paintings, Portrait of Gertrude Stein (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York City). Yesterday I read again about this period in Picasso's life. Gertrude Stein said she sat 90 times for her portrait, then Picasso wiped out the face in the portrait and left for summer vacation in Gósol, Spain. In the autumn Picasso returned to Paris with the finished portrait. Also in 1906 Picasso began a series of nearly 1000 studies preparing his way to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (completed in July 1907). Methinks I complain too much! It was the intensity and discipline that Picasso poured into these two paintings in the years 1906 & 1907 that transitioned Picasso from a good artist to a great artist. This, 2014, is my year of intensity and discipline. I have complained about the slowness of my transitioning, as witnessed in two recent paintings. I have been substantially altered by the work and time I have poured into Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 and, earlier this year, into Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014. The focussed, disciplined, and dedicated work of this year, has made me a better painter, and a better artist. It isn't over. I will continue to learn, I will continue to work, but today I am recognizing the profundity of this period in my life and art. Picasso has helped me enormously, not only by his products, which are his paintings and his drawings, but by his example of discipline and belief that the effort of the here and now will bring a proper end.
Notice, please, yesterday's changes in Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014. The man in the left panel is much better. Yesterday was a creepy day. I went into the studio intending to finish the painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014, but found myself wondering about its validity. The positive spin on this is... yesterday was a day of self-evaluation. The painting I am about to finish, and the one that preceded it (Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014), are disciplined spans of time, in which I am going from the artist of "take what I have" to the artist of "consolidate and move on." This appears to be self re-eveluation.
I am about to move on, yet I know I have to finish that which I have wrought. It (Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014) has merit, with or without re-evaluation. The problem I face is my own making. I required practice. I needed to discipline my manner of approach in painting, so I made large, major paintings, a diptych, then a triptych. In the heat of making these works I did not know that these paintings are mere moments in my education. I know now that they are springboards to more expressive work. Of course, the more expressive work has not yet been done, so what am I writing about? Isn't every work one does a bit of education? At this juncture it is nonsensical for me to predict the future of my work. Perhaps prediction is always nonsensical. Making is the only true informant. Thus I must continue painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 until it is done. The new work will come in its own time and it will not be nonsensical if it springs from all I know. Yesterday's drawing is a good one. It is illuminating. I did not labor it. I did not spend time contemplating it. It flashed itself onto paper with little criticism from me. Sitting here, writing this, I am feeling that all the excitement of figuring out the painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 is over. Perhaps that is the message in yesterday's drawing. My muse is there, looking over me. Her role is done. It is I who must arise and do the right thing. I must complete the painting despite my muse having become a mere onlooker. Simply put, I need to do the work to finalize the painting.
Amazing the process! I am never prepared for it. Just when I think I know what I'm doing my activity veers off the straight line. Not that I expect a straight line; it's just that I often feel as if I am on a straight line just before I get hit from the side, thus reminded there are no straight lines. I mean that literally and metaphorically. That which appears straight to the viewer is that which was made in reaction to the stuff already there. To hell with straightness. It is not a concern! The stuff is my concern! Stuff is baggage, and I am wary of baggage. Baggage can be an idea so complete in its retroactive creation that it makes no sense to be here and now. It is my job to accept the baggage that makes sense and throw out the baggage that deceives. Seeking truth and authenticity is the job, only accepting that which is current, the sum of all experience and all knowledge. So layers are made in life, in painting, and in drawing. I am working hard to make the tracks I leave on canvas and paper as authentic as I am, here and now.
With this mind, yesterday's work on Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 took an important turn toward wholeness. It is beginning to make sense. Recently I re-learned the importance of being earnest and referential, at the same time. I did this through my drawings. (In this case I use "earnest" with its second dictionary definition: "a thing intended or regarded as a sign or promise of what is to come.") Yesterday's drawing felt invented in this fashion. As I laid down the strokes they were discoveries, simultaneously looking back and looking forward. Consequently, yesterday's drawing had a life of its own. As I have written before, it is in times like this that I feel more a mere conduit than a rational inventor. I believe that's a good thing. Yesterday's changes to Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 have moved it from category "messy" to category "up and running". It is now, definitely, on the run! Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 has accepted itself, it is its own life; I have become its conduit. In terms of its reproduction, I did pull back a bit on its color saturation, for better and for worse. In today's reproduction the color in the left panel looks more saturated than it actually is, while the color in the right panel is more subdued than reality. The middle ground is the middle panel, which appears just about right. In its current state the middle panel is calling for today's work.
Yesterday's drawing is a study for the girl in right panel. I nearly forgot about this part of me, this underlying sense of the comic. One has to accept the humor of living as a consequence of the definitive fleetingness of our existence. Nothing is really serious. It is only our invention of ego and history that causes our investment in actions as important. So I am very happy to see the resurgence of humor in my drawing. I am surprised! Once again I am reminded that the consistency of practice brings unexpected benefits. This is why art is research. Just when you believe your work has paid off in self-discovery, another layer of fog gets stripped away. You discover, you renew, you remind yourself who you authentically are. The drawings of the last two have this kind of authenticating importance.
The right panel of the painting Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 is looking so very good. In contrast the left panel needs care and alterations. I think it is mainly about the heads of the man and the woman in the left panel — they are just NOT as substantially expressive as those in the right panel. In any case, I celebrate the fact that the last few days of work on Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014 has brought it closer to an accepted solution.
Yesterday's drawing is, indeed, another study along the way to a new painting, the soon to be begun triptych. |
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