end of days

Last day in the studio this year, and what a year. I finished my friend D A Adams' new novel last night, to my mind his most mature work yet. A line jumped off the page while reading it, and while I know he didn't pen the sentiment I'll give him credit for putting the thought in front of me like a roadmap, "luck is opportunity meeting preparation." There you have it.

One thing I've learned through the years is you have to be prepared when those opportunities present themselves. The word "yes" is one of the most powerful in the universe, but to say yes, you have to be ready. High quality of images of latest work? Yes. Do you have a card? Yes. Do you want to collaborate? Yes. The studio discipline cannot be overstated, but without the ability to get what is in the studio into the hands of those who ask for it, however offhandedly, it is little more than a monastic life for one's own pleasure. It doesn't become art until people see it.

I was able to work on some more studies today and the large painting is dry enough for a second coat of mars black. I'm ambivalent about the studies today; there are moments to them, but I will have to practice to get what I see inside my mind down on canvas. I'm playing with different whites and different blacks, but so far I love mars black the most. I need to move some work to buy the canvases I want built.

Alone in here the train rolls by and the sun warms me through the loading door. The chill is leaving the plank floor and the bricks are ochre earth tones from the light coming in. There's Howlin Wolf on the speakers and a cigar beside me and this year ebbs into another. I moved in to this studio in January 2008, and I sat in the loading doorway and wrote in my sketchbook that I was home. Despite the issues, I love this space and I've never felt more at home or more productive in a working space. I experience the same joy every time I walk through the door.

Within the next few weeks I will build some new painting walls, a horizontal painting surface and do some much-needed cleaning to get ready for the large work. Housekeeping yes, but necessary to be able to stay focused. The winter will set in, but so be it.

the divine unrest

too many old fashion's tonight and my thoughts are distant and yet centered. over many drinks I once asked the painter Mark Zimmermann, "where are the heroic paintings?" An accusation directed at self more than an indictment on the "art/Art world" but no less so I suppose. Where indeed?

I walked into the studio today, the big black painting surface-dry, the smaller ones still wet to the touch. The time makes me think. The necessary pause, the Waiting in a Tom Petty reference makes one..or provides one the opportunity to ponder.

This stroke.

Line, form, drip, intent on surface. What is this? Affirmation, yes. Given. but and yet, humanity, something sacred long passed over. hand. human hand on surface. shamanism. the job of the artist is to bring it back; to go and to bring it back for the tribe (the willing) to experience. We live on the outskirts. you must seek us. this is not new or novel or modern. this is primal. art is primal. pigment. alchemy. life. god. spirituality. truth...if we're lucky.

we must paint. no rational. no over-arching idea, concept; conceptualism makes me want to take up arms and I have held them, fired them and I know, i want to take up arms. AK-47 in a Minnesota basement, but I've told you that story....now, now I bring bombs and those bombs are visual, some would say aesthetic. my work; I come by the sword. I live by the sword.

There is no rest for the artist. The Divine Unrest, as Martha Graham put it. Always anew, always an undiscovered country. We push because to stand still is to die. If there is anything worthwhile in my work, let it be that when people see it they step outside of themselves for a moment in time and perceive in a new way.

Tomorrow will begin with a pediatrician visit and a choreographer sleeping in our home. I will paint. I will lay it down and bring it. I will buy a ticket to NYC and I will stand a breath's distance from de Kooning and perhaps I will drink heroically with formidable painters and smoke a cigar on the water. It begins.

black december

There are a handful of great American cities; world class places unique and irreplaceable as they are authentic. They can be counted on one hand, -maybe two. The Holy City made its way onto my list this week and into my heart as well. Lots to think about over the break.

Now it's back to work. Everything is wet. Put another coat on the study-sized canvases and just sat and contemplated the larger black one tonight; cigar and Donald Byrd and me and the rain and timelessness of it all. Hundreds of years we've been doing this thing called painting, and sometimes (perhaps unfortunately) called Art. There's a loss of self, but there is also the absolute presence of being, -one is never more present than when one is lost in activity. The rain and heat are retarding the drying more than anticipated. The cold air tends to dry it out more quickly, but now that the humidity has gotten in under the wet paint...we wait.

Mother-in-Law in town and so there's opportunity to get in here and not be missed. Me and jazz and stillness of black.

We spoke of Turkey the past few days. Walking across the street as they fired up the wood stove and we waited for the fresh coffee so unique and splendid as the call to prayer crackled over the bullhorns atop the mosques. Narrow sidewalks and bustle/anywhere-in-the-world-ness of all big cities but then the strange, other-ness of it all as well. Hagia Sophia; there I was standing in one of my damned art history books and it was even more of everything. Then on the Bosphorus in the Modern and seeing the post-war abstraction re-interpreted through another culture's lens. I remember it changed me, the best compliment I can give a place I guess...depending on the change.

Rain on the tin roof deafening tonight.

This work wants to see the world too. It needs to get out of here, I know that. Travel, make people understand, use the narrative of my life and this place and the sublime absurdity of it all. It's more singular than I realize, all of it. Probably better than I give myself credit for too in my humble or insecure moments.

and I feel as though I was born in the backseat of a car and never stopped moving; i can never stop moving; far from home.

scent

Mars black. Damn.

Walked into the studio last night and the smell of it hit me, -each color is specific to the nose. Looking at this big, black, flat surface...it does something, there's a world inside. Oddly, the dreams continue; I'm pouring and staining in the white and it undulates and bleeds and curls and pools.

authenticity

Day 1:

Started 6 studies with a ground of chromatic black and a hint of prussian blue. Black. All that comes with it too. In oil it is one of the most challenging of pigments to have in play. Given the pre-21st century nature of my studio (unheated, uncooled) there will be challenges.

There's a large canvas I brought out and dusted off and we'll see how the week ahead looks.

A friend said of the previously-posted studies, "they look old, like from the late 40's or 50's." so be it, i own it, let's move on and see what happens. these are for me, eventual canvases too big to sell now anyway. it's about authenticity, doing what is honestly within and doing it service and honor.

off to charleston next week for the night, a belated anniversary celebration. good food, drink, walking, away. looking forward to the warm week ahead and time with the girls as they reach christmas frenzy. life it good.

blacks

My paints and medium were damaged in route and so I'm on hold for now. Not much to say, I'm waiting and I'm ready to lay down paint and held off placing an order for the large canvases until the new year. I was playing with ratios in my journal and am now thinking of a 90" x 66" canvas, essentially expanding 6" in each direction. Also still considering 84" x 72" but I will have to work on some studies to see how it plays out with less vertical thrust.

Either way, it looks like I'm going to be building some new walls in the studio.

Also really amped to play with the blacks and whites. Thinking about the black ground differently than i was before; previously had thought about getting a spray shop to lay that down, now I'm digging the painterliness of working that large by hand and all that comes with it. these pictures are going to take ages to dry! but that's what makes the white do its thing so delightfully as it seeps and stains and expands itself into and on top of the blackness. thinking about Caravaggio of course, those abyssal black spaces that careen into holy oblivion. thinking also about that Goya in the National and the flake white that is so transcendent and living.

(Movable walls?)

reading lots of ee cummings for no reason at all but then again for letting go....

No travels in January, having to wait until Feb and then see what's happening and pick a coast and jet. Auto plane tickets and monthly gallery hopping, studio visiting, painter talking...at times heroic. Got invited by a friend to hang in the studio while they make their record and looking forward to that. So different and then also the same.

en sueños

I dreamt I walked through my studio. There was nothing in it but giant painting walls, and on each was a 5' x 7' black canvas with ghostly abstracted gestures and forms. The works hung two feet off the floor and towered above me.

Readers of this blog (all half dozen of you) know that I am cigar enthusiast. Like everyone who has ever smoked, I'm fascinated with the twirls and undulations of the smoke itself as it floats up into the random currents of the air. I was thinking of this a few weeks ago sitting the rear gardens at dusk.

When one brings the images and forms of dreams into the physical world, there is always something lost in translation, but I have also found that if one allows for this there is something gained that takes those ideas and breathes life into them in a very different way. To me, these initial studies bring to mind x-ray imagery and paranormal associations. They seem more specter-like than smoky.

I love paint. I love what it can do and what it never fails to show me in terms of new possibility. The 50 are in some ways archaeological; they are about reduction and uncovering a historical record within each picture. I spent all morning on a single piece, watching it change a dozen times into decent pictures before obliterating it over and over and over.

My time with that body of work is nearing an end and it remains to be seen if I'll continue it into next year when I thaw out the studio. Whether or not I will realize these ambitious canvases from the studies shown here is yet to be known as well. These are the first drawings; a shorthand of concept and a familiarizing of the hand to the mind's eye. All I know is I'll be buying a few dozen of these post-card canvases next week, a couple of tubes of black and white paint, and we will go from there.

friday flow

while the whole moves, and every part stands still

oil on canvas; 24" x 24"; Rico '11

It's amazingly warm and sunny and the work flowed today. All 50 canvases have paint on them and are in various states of completion. The black studies are drying off to the side, waiting for the next movement to begin.

I peeked in a space today that I happened upon while walking Agnes. It would take an amazing deal for me to leave this space, but eventually I do want to own my studio outright. I have the dream building in sight of the present space, but that requires selling consistently at a much higher price bracket than I do now. Not impossible, but not here yet.

Today is thank a teacher day, and I am indeed thankful to my teacher Mark Raymond Anderson. He was one of the first people I met when we moved here ten and half years ago. He was immediately someone I could bounce ideas and opinions about art off of, and his canonical knowledge of art history is both formidable and like an endless fount of learning. He helped me become the painter I am today more than any other person I know, and though we did not become the friends I had hoped we would, I owe him my respect and gratitude.

I was an adult when I went back and took undergraduate art classes. I squeezed my teachers, -all of them, for knowledge. I made them prepare to come to class, because they knew I would press them if I disagreed. I always viewed the study of art history as a choose my own adventure book; being able to look out over the vast cannon of centuries of art always gave me comfort that I was joining an important Way of craft and perception. I worked my butt off in school, at times from the prideful need to be the best, -ruthlessly if need be. It is true I crushed a peer every now and then, but only if I perceived them as lazy or apathetic. In retrospect perhaps I should have been more gracious, but what is done is done.

for maybe what was disappeared into ourselves

oil on canvas; 24" x 24"; Rico '11

back to the woodshed

There are dozen paintings glistening with fresh paint lying in various states of evolution/birth/creation on the studio floor and the painting wall.  The dream of 3 nights ago haunts my vision; I saw the studio full of gigantic paintings and I walked amongst them feeling the canvas and smelling the paint.  

Sometimes it comes like that.  Not often, and I don't believe in waiting for inspiration anyhow.  But sometimes it happens like that and there it is and you have to; the only sin I believe in is hearing the call and choosing not to answer it.

So I pulled out the last of my post-card-sized canvases this morning and we'll see about bringing those visions into the physical world.  

For now, there's Donald Bird on the speakers and it's cold as I sit and type.  These mornings I always think of Pollock trudging out the barn and firing up the dream.  At his best, there wasn't even a nice glass of whiskey waiting as reward for the day's effort.  Paint is resilient, that's what I've found out working in here for the past 5 years.  It can take what you dish out, no worries.  The worst kind of painting treats materiality with preciousness.  I've no tolerance for it, not in this era.  

It's time to get moving again, the damp cold is seeping through the layers and numbing my fingers.  

Day 269, canvas 50

The studio season is coming to a close, I've got a few more weeks and then it is only the odd warm winter day, -not uncommon here, to work.  The 50 has been a life/work changing experience for me.  As I hoped, I broke out of my comfortable orbit and into space itself. 

Despite my remoteness, no one works in true isolation, and I keep up with a handful of painters on both coasts.  I have seen all of our work evolve significantly this year, and I look forward to sitting in a Chelsea pub some random afternoon and discussing all these changes vehemently with two of them in particular.  

While the 50 is not complete just yet, I put paint on the final virgin canvas this morning.  I expect these last few will offer some clue as to what comes next in my work, but for now I am racing the cold to get these done.  Nonetheless, I feel a certain sense of closure at this moment. 

Miles is on the speakers and I have no desire to be online another second....

one painting, four ways

45

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

This is a perfect Friday! It's a great day to enjoy the company of others and just hang out. It's also a good day to endorse situations or promote ideas or get people to work together on a project. Sports, playful times with children, romance, vacations and social diversions will all be upbeat and fun!!

unfinished business

paint-stained sneakers

My day in Atlanta was beautiful and peaceful and full of connecting with people.  It was good to see friends and to see how people continually are growing and growing up.  Accolades are nice, I won't lie, but after all that it is time to put it out of my mind and work.

I ripped back into it tonight and it didn't come easy but it did come.  I'm winding down as Winter approaches, I can already feel it.  I wish there was a studio in Mexico waiting for me; a place to ride out the cold and paint by the sea.  

Tonight I'll smoke a cigar and think about what worked and what didn't and what went down and wrap my head around how all this laying down of paint can be so flat and dull or so full of living energy.  The trains are coming through this little town and there's jazz on the speakers.  I'm still in a t-shirt so I can't complain yet.   The stillness is a rich full wind for my ragged sails.  I'm amazed how true I have stayed to my course, and now I feel that a long-sought after shore is near.

delivery day

Tomorrow morning I will rise early, as I do most days. I'll bag the three small paintings I just wired and signed, pack the van with one of the Forest and the Sea paintings, and drive to Atlanta. The work will be available at Nandina Home Design, and we will see if at last I am able to get traction in a market I have tried to find a way into for years.

It's strange for work to leave the studio unsold. But it is right that people will see it, -it should not live here like a captive. I feel I am nearly at the end of one journey and immediately beginning another. Time will tell.

My studio in Atlanta was subterranean; a vast, concrete tire warehouse in which I lived illegally for 4 days a week for close to a year. The nights were pitch black, cold and often uneasy. During that period, I broke away from working with metal and began the journey to paint on surface. I always found it symbolic that a block away was a historical marker for the surrender of Atlanta to General Sherman.

...and now I will drink another Sapporo and get ready for the day.

time away

Life comes in; there you have it. Days turn to weeks at the blink of an eye in my life now, so weeks away happen and I feel that tense-empty feeling creep up and take me over. Time away is good, it has the ability to give eyes in a way. Frenetic pitch is good too, it leaves no time for doubt and questions and analysis...action has its own seduction.

I sit on top of a large body of work now. It was an ambitious process, a Dare of magnitude and significance and, in the end (but I'll leave that to others to decide) of some possible importance in the oeuvre of Rico.

In my angry moments (and there are some, yes indeed), I paint to kill Warhol, to kill Jasper Johns, to kill all that nudge-nudge-wink-wink crap that makes great poster art and feeds our cynicism and endless appetites for the so-called new. Burn it. Toss Koons and Hirst on the bonfire and let our vanities grow cold and hungry once again. This is about PAINT. What it can do, what it has yet to discover, unveil, instruct, alter and offer. Paint on surface; no pretty edges to offer up illusion. The Unclean, there for you to digest -if you can, if you have the stuff. I don't do it for me, and I am unabashedly spiritual and shamelessly in search of the Sublime. If these pursuits amount to a career death sentence, so be it.

When I look at the work in the studio now, the words of Motherwell haunt the space..."an art stripped bare," exposed, naked before you like Manet's Olympia. Approach it, -gauntlet thrown-, bring it if you feel you can. I do this shit, I don't play at it. I'm going to break it all open, and that is my word.

fostering creativity

A quick personal note today. Ever since they have been physically able, we have let our daughters dress themselves. I love watching them get ready in the mornings because it is an extension of play and develops their creativity. I've been keeping up with a lot of the fashion week coverage, watching the runway photos and so on, and some of the combinations they come up with rival anything I see in Paris or New York.

When I look at fashion street blogs, I often think to myself, "that person's parents let them dress themselves as a kid". My wife sometimes recoils at the color combinations, but to me it seems they are exploring an endless universe; that is what color is for me. I think it is so important to let children play, and part of that play includes playing with identity and personal style. Soon the social pressures of school will begin to shape what they wear, but hopefully they will have built a great sense of their own style by then and can weather trend and conformity.

They seem naturally gifted with an ability to create dynamic collisions of texture and pattern that I find tremendously exciting. (I mean, sparkly red slippers pretty much go with everything, right?) I know some parents view their children as extension of themselves, or at least comments on themselves, but I've always fostered autonomy in my children. Partially this is because they are twins, I suppose. Partially it is because I believe that a clear sense of personal autonomy and healthy self-love are the only paths to successful relationships later in life.

I'm fighting a cold and lost this week of studio work, and I'm traveling next week so I long to get back in there and get some closure. Things look promising for the new year and I look forward to where the work takes me.

empire state of mind

empire state of mind

oil on canvas, 24" x 24"

Rico, 2011

two if by sea

of four o'clocks yet to come, oil on canvas, 24" x 24", Rico 9/18/11

Two shots tonight. Titles are something I generally go in and think about later. I've found that if I choose my titles randomly from good sources they tend to hit the mark. Honestly I get most of my titles from poetry, because poetry is the closest verbal language gets to visual language. There are times I have some specific idea, but I've found that dictating what people are supposed to think about a work only limits the work itself. Were I to title my paintings with half the political messages and opinions I sometimes want to, I would have no audience.

as yet untitled, oil on canvas, 24" x 24" , Rico 9/16/11

Tonight I had to come in and look. It's early; I may yet paint, I may not. There are times I have see the work again to know what it is. It a difficult thing to look at something you've been working on for weeks or months with fresh eyes, but that is exactly what you have to do.

I desperately need a proper vacation. I had to cancel my rock'n roll adventure with the CRB, and so went my best chance for a getaway for the year. As I'm typing this, there are ten canvases behind me wanting to come out of the last box. The vacation will have to wait.

remain in light

Picture and lighting woes tonight, but no matter.  The studio time is becoming more concentrated as my wife's rehearsal season begins.  I'm in here fewer nights a week, but the time is imbued with urgency and focus.  My need for proper lighting is becoming acute as I break into the final case of canvases.  The night is still and windless and there is a quiet that is oddly comforting.  This work suffers in photo translation, but these blog posts are, and have always meant to be shorthand.

I'm waiting for the last half dozen or so to dry, there is little else I can do.  I'll begin the final ten in the coming evenings, and then it is time to continue with the journey.  My former professor hooked me up with with Prussian blue on Sunday morning; a life-saving act that facilitated one of the best of the series so far.  Things are shifting, yet there is a cohesion to this body of work that is notable, -especially given the number of paintings.  It  truly feels as though I have found my voice.

My Proust Interview

1.     What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Fear and ignorance.

2.     Where would you like to live?

In a Palladian.

3.     What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Doing what I love, surrounded by those I love.

4.     Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?

The Count of Monte Cristo, Siddhartha, Ellen Ripley

5.     The quality you most admire in a man?

Integrity

6.     The quality you most admire in a woman?

Discretion

7.     Your favorite virtue?

Temperance.

8.     Your favorite occupation?

My own.

9.     Who would you have liked to be?

            Picasso, but only for a while.

10. Your most marked characteristic?

Tenacity.

11. What do you most value in your friends?

Their hearts and their intellects.

12. What is your principle defect?

Pride.

13. What to your mind would be the greatest of misfortunes?

The death of my children.

14. What would you like to be?

More of who I am.

15. In what country would you like to live?

Spain.

16. What is your favorite color?

Every color.  I love possibility.

17. What is your favorite flower?

Black eyed Susan

18. What is your favorite bird?

The phoenix.

19. Who are your favorite poets?

O’hara, Lorca, Sexton

20. Who are your favorite painters?

JMW Turner, Mark Rothko, Matisse, Miquel Barcelo, Velazquez, Caravaggio

21. What is it you most dislike?

Belligerent ignorance.

22. What natural gift would you most like to possess?

Charm.

23. How would you like to die?

Gracefully.

24. What is your present state of mind?

Peacefully determined.

25. What is your motto?

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and chaotic in your work.”  

a rare dedication

september 11, 2011 (for JAM); oil on canvas; 24" x 24"; Rico 2011

About two years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow painter while visiting NYC.  During that time I've watched his work make a quantum leap, seen him get some important residencies, and some measure of success come his way.  I have little doubt of his future success.  He's one of the people I look most forward to seeing again when I go up next month, and I hope we can take our acquaintance to friendship in time.  Last year, I also learned that he was a first-responder ten years ago today.  As I learned his story, his work took on new resonance, and my own perceptions and opinions of the events of that day shifted.  There will be a lot of chatter today; the news media is having a field day and I don't want to add to the noise.  But it is good to remember the examples of humanity in the face of monstrosity, and to put faces and names with many unsung individuals who had courage and compassion then, and who live with love instead of bitterness and ideology now.   James, this one's for you.

the woodshed

Leave it to an old musician friend to lay down a story that motivates me and pushes me into positivity.  I started this year off consciously locking myself in the studio to work without concern for shows.  I set a goal, and I will hit it.  At times I feel an incredible sense of isolation and longing for my own kind, so to speak.  But I've come here and I've done the work despite +100 degree temperatures, fiscal challenges and the pressures of familial responsibilities.  I love what I do.  I was at the cigar bar earlier this week to restock my humidor and one of the guys asked if I was staying for a drink.  I said no, I had to go to work.  He said, "sorry man," and I just laughed.  I told him work was the studio and aside from loving what I do, I could smoke cigars on the job.  What a life.

The story my friend hipped me to is about Charlie Parker, Bird.  Seems he locked himself away for two years in a woodshed in the Ozarks and perfected his chops, then, when he knew the work was ready went to New York and changed jazz forever.

I've worked without distraction for years now.  In a sense I've been on a private artist's retreat for close to five years, just doing the work and not worrying about scenes or the pressures of people asking for more.  But in these years I've also pushed myself continuously.  Somewhere along the way, I found my licks.  Now it is time to take it to the City and find someone and make them understand so that they in turn can make others understand.

Somewhere in the last few weeks I had that moment where I looked at the work on the painting wall and I just knew.  It's there.  I think you just know it, and I'm not sure how to tell you I know.  Every painting in here is not brilliant.  But consistently they are damn good, and a few are something truly without comparison.

The 50 was always an open-ended project.  In truth, I never saw it ending, even with canvas number 50.  I always knew at about number 40 I would need to re-stock, re-load and push on through.  But I never anticipated where the work has gone.  Now I know the work is ready.  Now it is time to bring it.

Day 202, Canvas 40

Frustrating night tonight. I got here later than usual and despite the wonderful pre-Fall air, I couldn't find my groove. It happens. I try to work through it, sit, look, see, go back in. Sometimes it isn't there and that's just all there is. I still worked, I laid some good paint.

No pics tonight, nothing looks anywhere close to what I attempted to document. Tonight I wish I were near civilization with its distractions.

I'm tired and Doubt is attempting to give me a lecture, so it's time to call this night and let fresh eyes come in here tomorrow.

anatomy of a painting: a glimpse into process

We'll subtitle this one "six months in the life". This is pretty much how I've been working this year. I don't think there is a single, fully-realized canvas from this body of work that took less than 2 months. I am in a good place overall, though today was awkward for some reason. Perhaps I'm not used to painting in daylight! In case you do not understand from the title of this post, all the photos below are the same painting as it went through its evolution. Enjoy.

March 29th

April 22nd

April 25th

May 5th

May 6th

May 7th

May 21st

May 23rd

May 28th

August 13th

August 30th

monday vibe

Day 189, Canvas 35

A few hundred dollars worth of paint arrived today as anticipated. At the day job, I completed a major portion of a massive project and for the first time in the past two months I feel some momentary sense of closure there. I read an artist's blog post about how painters, unlike most other professionals, sometimes (ok, often) find themselves in the midst of their work feeling like they have never done it before. Replenishing supplies is like that for me; it is almost like having to re-learn everything again. The first few paintings out of a fresh tube of paint are never as good as the ones you're squeezing the life and remnants out of. I have no idea why.

There's three paintings on the wall tonight, and they are shimmering like bodies of water inviting me to shed my clothes and jump in the country lake somewhere in Kansas where everything began to feel new and free so very, very long ago. They are nothing yet, this process involves massive amounts of what becomes underpainting. And yet, true to the current rules of engagement in these walls, they are lovely and it will be hard to paint them out. In the end, that's what will hopefully make them good.

So 15 canvases left; it feels strange. I had no time line. I have lived the process and that is the success of them to an extent. I've come somewhere, and I still have places to take it too.

all my pretty ones

Some days you get up and begin to walk in a direction and realize you do not want to be going wherever it is you find yourself going. You go home and change clothes and get in your pick-up truck and the dog comes along and you go sweep and clean and carry garbage to the county dump. The isolation doesn't bother you today; you wish it were more pronounced, farther away from all the senseless noise of pre-pre-pre-election three-ring circus media tricks and its players.

and later, you're back in this warehouse with brick walls and high rafters and plank floors and hundreds of paintings and these are all things you thought and felt and furthermore were compelled to express in some lasting form, and you wonder about them all -living their lives in this dark building and constantly squeezing over to make room for the daily additions. do they long to be out in the world?

You believe it matters, -because, as you tell your children you're that sort of bear; and perhaps it doesn't, but in the end that really doesn' t change anything either and you will find yourself here again tired after some random day of what most people perceive as respectable work. You'll work then, and it will matter again.

You contemplate that annual juried exhibition, or outdoor fair even though you work does not belong in some tent like a Bedouin. That's not who it's for, even if you have no idea who it's for most days. You only wish you knew. You only wish that audience could come forward somehow.

It's that kind of moment. You could step off into the familiar vortex of depression and its rash actions and poor judgements. You know the lay of the land, after all. But not today. The air is beginning to tease at Fall. you could stay here or you could go waste the afternoon in a movie theatre all alone and with no regrets. there's paint coming in the mail; one of of those delightful people in a big, brown or white or yellow truck will bring your lifeline in a stack of cardboard boxes. they are unaware of the power of the contents. it would be useless to explain, and they are always rushing about like the end of the world anyway.

and on the floor, there's some paintings you don't yet understand. They have languished for months and each day they seem different to you. you want to overpaint them, but not yet...not yet.

the space between

A slower night tonight. I need more paint and medium. It seems strange to think I've been in this body of work for almost 7 months now; there is an entire sub-series of red paintings that I have to walk quickly past to avoid the temptation of overpainting them. I am staying the course, I will go as far forward as I can before I start going back. It's a strange thing; not knowing what will survive from all these stacks of paintings.

These two are coming slowly, I maintain the rules: don't get attached, keep putting on the paint. Sometimes the knife sings as I whip it across the surface and off of the edge. There's that clear ring of stiff steel, absolutely unmistakable. Got back into the big painting I thought failed before. It has new life and may yet become.

studio soundtrack August 18

Found this little gem of a recording only today, Miles Davis' soundtrack for Louis Malle's "Elevator to the Gallows." If you haven't seen the film, you simply must do so as soon as possible, and go for the Criterion Collection edition. I'm a huge Miles fan, and I remember being distantly aware of how great the music was in this film, but for some reason never made the connection. This will be the go-to soundtrack for working for some time.

Week one of kindergarten is pretty rough. I'm thankful that it only happens once!

stay

Today my girls started kindergarten. It has been an emotionally taxing day to say the least. They did well eventually, though the drop-off/departure was pretty rough. They are anxious and scared, sad that life has changed. But we saw them on the playground when they couldn't see us and they were fine. However long the transition takes, we'll be there every step.

There was no hesitation to come to the studio tonight, and I jumped deep into it. The work is coming faster, I have a handle on what this is; even though I am still unsure what makes it significant. It seems that this work brings in a great deal of my vernacular, and somehow turns my phrases and lines into songs. These works are deeply realized canvases, and I am in the studio having this moment of acknowledgement and understanding that I have just entered the Conversation on a whole new level.

What a confluence of highs and lows this day is.

I am going to enter my first outdoor art festival in the next few weeks. Based on the juror, I really don't think I have a chance, but in the end who can say why or when people connect to work? I am experiencing a new sensation of openness to life, and feeling that at any moment I will be given an opportunity to say "yes" to something that will forever alter my life as I know it. Unlike my 5-year-olds, this prospect thrills me; I am not afraid any more.

the medium is the message

The journey in the studio this year has been toward flow. For me, at this moment, the medium is the message; I never want people seeing my work to forget that they are looking at paint on surface. It is the ability of the human mind to transform message into meaning (or meaningfulness) that most interests me. All painting is illusion to a greater or lesser degree. It seems, -to me, to be distinction between passive and active illusion. One attempts photo-realism through an intense set of processes, but these are designed to fool the eye. The viewer believes what (s)he sees because it is rooted in the familiar if not always the comfortable. With abstraction -and in this way I have never understood the aversion so many people have to it- one is compelled to engage the mind and imagination and to play. It is simplistic to suggest this is merely about "experience" or "feeling" because these are vague and generalist terms for a very specific action; engagement. The job of the artist, then, is to engage. The audience must also bring engagement.

I don't set out to make difficult work. Again, at this moment I am exploring material concerns, or the plastic, but I eschew the notion of painting about painting. At best, this idea is disingenuous. At worst it is academic and pretentious. No, what is going on at this moment is a level of comfort and trust in my materials; that (obviously in a consciously directed process) the behavior of paint and its relationship to surface and light will foster a willingness on the part of the viewer to engage the work. There are certainly thematic currents which run through my oeuvre, and I do not deny them. But I feel that pre-knowledge of these themes and ideas are unnecessary to attribute meaningfulness to the work at hand.

I feel a quickness right now in the studio. A certain sense of mastery but also a constant nagging of imperfection. The "divine dissatisfaction".

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"

-Martha Graham