Clytemnestra I

study for Clytemnestra, 72" x 48"

Publish Postoil on canvas, Rico '12

the machine

I went back into the large painting on Saturday, with not unsuccessful results. I'm developing greater control over the flow and getting a better handle on the desired viscosity of the paint. After many studies and two attempts at taking it larger I will likely use acrylic paint as a ground with some raw pigment added to get into deeper blacks. I can then put down a layer of alkyd followed by a thin layer of black in oil. What gets interesting is the response of the white to the wet surface and with the added bleeding effect of more mineral spirits. But the ground, -the surface, needs a cold, flat uniformity.

I bought a large masonry trowel and this was used to good effect. Scale and proportion; it all comes down to being able to make relative marks by utilizing the proper relationship to the scale of the studies. That's when it works. For what I want to do, I may have to make my own monster palette knives. So far I have not seen anything large enough.

It feels like things are going so slowly with constant interruption to studio hours. But soon the spring will come, my wife's show will go up, and time will once again be an ally. Until then...

the fire

Locked out of the studio for the past week and a half has me self-destructing, and underscores that fact that I paint as much to survive and be human as anything else. Visited Charleston and got the painful reminder of the Art World I choose not to live in, albeit in micro chasm. The problem with what the internet has done to people's notion of proximity is this: everywhere now thinks it is the shit. Don't get me started on Greenville...where? exactly.

There is something magical and self-expanding to getting on a plane, bus, boat, car and going someplace that scares the bejesus out of you...preferably alone and knowing no one there. Those experiences let you find your core, the sum total of your own wretched self-ness and the excavation of "I". If you're not in it, you're not part of it, and in the end it is easy to complain, criticize and dismiss from a safe distance. that's why there is so much vitriol on newspaper blogs in the comments section.

I was fortunate enough to sit in on an improv workshop with my wife on Sunday and I was struck by something our friend Greg, the workshop leader, said afterwards. he said he wasn't interested in making decent theatre. he would rather it be horrible or brilliant than decent. the highest compliment I can give art is when it makes me want to make art. that's the real stuff. everything else is vanity and bullshit, no matter the price tag.

I don't care about anything but making significant work. i have realized that may take the rest of my life and it may come with numerous heavy prices in addition to those already paid, but it really doesn't matter. so much undone right now in the studio waiting for a thaw. rejections and dismissals aside, i answer to me and me alone in the studio. at least i know what i'm looking at and how to see. fits and starts come, always there are interruptions -well deserved and well-meaning, but interruptions nonetheless. i'm riding a razor blade in those perfect moments of focus when time falls away.

watching theatre students struggle with the unknown aspect of art was revealing. i forget why it's scary to pedestrians sometimes. possibly because I like the scary. I like the unknown, the potential for abject failure, the risk of soul and fortune. it makes me feel alive to watch/conjure this living thing called a painting...like flame, like fire one must tend it but it always wants to escape and consume or die out completely. the moments in the fire are the greatest moments of living.

the winter

i was recently denied another juried exhibition. par for the course to some degree. i thought i had selected every factor carefully, but in the end i did not make the cut. correction: my work did not make the cut.

i am feeling horribly adrift at the moment. my wife's job is tenuous as academia continues to turn away (and cut) the Arts. we dodged the bullet last year, but we both fear that the budgetary and cultural gun is still fully-loaded. the pressures of this and kids force me to reconsider my life's trajectory almost constantly. i've been hammering away at this art thing for two decades with only limited success and no representation. there comes a point where the resources (financially, emotionally, and spiritually) become too thin. sustainability is in question.

location is undeniably a factor, but since my location is not likely to change in the immediate future I must accept this factor as a significant impediment to any success. my work is not appreciated in this region, and that seems unlikely to change.

i'm also at odds with what i see when i look at the galleries/art world in that it seems another wave of conceptualism is in full force. i call it "idea art" and the term is derisive. complex ideas manifested into soulless, sterile art school art. with the death of Don Cornelis yesterday I'm thinking a lot about soul, and that is something i feel my work has always had.

i believe in outdated notions like the Sublime, the life force within art and the role of the artist as shaman/spiritual guide. social commentary is always a part of my work, but it is never at the forefront or obvious. i was punk once, when i was a teenager and having lived through that movement i don't see the merit in re-living it. the NYC of the Mud Club era no longer exists. it is a city that will, in my lifetime, have no poor people in it.

all this can come across as sour grapes and it isn't so. the conflict (and anger and frustration and hopelessness) are internal. they are issues within, not without. i will always paint, but increasingly i find that i no longer have the energy to attempt disseminating it to an audience that could care less. i don't even know where to begin any more.

my travels are on hold as my finances stabilize and we as a family look ahead to the next round of budget cuts by the College.