The 50: epilogue

eastern studio wall, April 2012

The 50 are now a broken set.  I love having collectors visit the studio.  There is nothing like watching people who love art look at art and carefully consider what they want to acquire.  Unlike openings, a studio visit is a low-key soft sell.  It is absolutely magical to watch people walk around my space and make observations and ask questions.  

I feel so positive right now, and good things are flowing.  I look forward to getting back to work tomorrow night and getting back on schedule after a crazy couple of weeks.  I'm flying up to NYC next month for an opening and I'm looking forward to seeing lots of folks and spending all day at MoMA.  

On the personal side I am finally addressing a tattoo repair I've wanted to do for years and located an artist and studio in Atlanta that I feel I can really work well with.  I feel that I am entering into a new stage of life and I feel good about it.  So many things are about to change; things that have needed to change for a long, long time.  

two more

where i waved at the sky, oil on canvas, 60" x 48", Rico '12

The Death of the Fathers, oil on canvas, 60" x 48", Rico '12

more works on paper

untitled, oil on black vellum, 17" x 11", Rico '12

untitled, oil on black vellum, 17" x 11", Rico '12

You can see more images from this set here.  I'll be uploading another 40 images over the weekend and adding them to that page.  

the fruit of exile

The past few nights have been manic-driven late night hammer-slinging grunt work.  I stand in here today and I see the wall of dreams.  Next week I will post a picture of "the 50" hung on this wall.  I'll have a family studio visit next weekend and then I can re-dedicate myself to what will eventually hang on this wall.

Over the xmas/new year break I had a vision.  I started working through it in small, post-card sized canvases and have since taken it to 17" x 11" works on black vellum to tremendously successful effect.  That body of work, nearing 100 as of this writing, will live a life of their own.  They are on a level of anything out there and I'll find a home for them; and for me.  I have no doubt of my success and it has been hard fought.

I'm running on a little over a dozen hours of sleep in 4 days and fortunately the drywall compound has to cure for at least 24 hours.  But remember this image.  Hold on to it and prepare.  Gloves off.

construction time again

Drywall and lumber got delivered yesterday and I worked into the midnight hour. Slept through my alarm this morning but got the kids to school on time and myself to the day job. By this weekend, there will be an 11' x 24' wall along the Eastern side of the studio. I will hang "the 50" in a grid and will post those pictures next week.

With this work there is a sense of absolute knowing, and this is causing tremendous stress in the balancing of two careers, as they compete for time and energy. I feel hapless and helpless in my ability to get the work "out there." I truly don't know how to begin anymore. I've asked for help, but in the end I will have to find it within myself. I have to spend the time researching to figure out where and towards whom I need to direct my energies. It only takes making that one right person understand; that person who is in a position to spread the gospel of Rico. As I've blogged many times, my geographical and cultural isolation does nothing to help my efforts.

the primordial gaze

I'm deep in the work. The associations are obvious: 19th century photography, early x-rays, paranormal photography, deep aquatic life, the celestial. Beyond those thing there is, for me, the freedom...the invitation to breath life and association into the work at will. I see the Why that cannot be answered, the curiosity of the beyond, the ephemeral nature of the now, of life. There are lots of formal things going on but honestly who gives a shit except a handful of painter friends? No, there's something tapped here; something real and visceral and shared. The Sublime and I'm not afraid to say it.

Another 10 tonight and each one is autonomous and self-referential even side-by-side to others. One can look at these for a long, long time.

I took it large to some effect. I prepared another large canvas tonight and we'll see.

Picked up an old book on Mexican art and flipped to this dog-eared passage....

"Between our gaze and the world, images previously produced by habit, culture, museums, or ideologies impose themselves. the first thing a painter must do is to brush away from his eyes the spiderwebs of styles and schools. The experience is dizzying and blinding: the world leaps to our eyes with the innocent ferocity of what is too alive. Seeing without intermediaries: a painful apprenticeship that never ends. ...Asceticism of vision: the hand learning to obey the eye and not the head, until the head stops thinking and begins to see, until the hand conceives and the eye thinks. To see the world in this way is to see it with one's whole body and mind, to regain the original unity in order to win back the original gaze..." -Octavio Paz, from "From Criticism to Offering"; Paris, December 29, 1960