Buffalo, 60" x 48",
oil and fibered aluminum coating on canvas, Rico '12
return of the heroic
Today I began the final realization of my dream from December. There are supplies on the way which will enable to build 3 epic (108" x 78") canvases. The largest size I've ever attempted, these will loom in the cavernous space of my studio and hopefully I will be up to the challenge. I can say from working nearly as large previously that the challenges are not just compositional or skill-based; when you work with something significantly larger than yourself it presents physical challenges as well. I stand a mighty 68" on a good day (and only after months of yoga), so there's a good 4 feet vertical and nearly a foot horizontal to contend with.
Something that my friend Mark said to me in NY has stayed with me. We stayed up late talking about art and career and he said something to the effect that the big ones will sell the small ones, but never the other way around. Like Rothko and others, the practical un-attainability of such a large work for most people makes the market for the smaller works hot. These can't go in most people's houses. They can only go in museums or large private/public spaces like atria. Intention set forth into the universe is a powerful thing.
Looming black and ethereal, I hope that they will convey that sense of encounter I am always striving to make within my work. When we meet something larger than ourselves, delivered on the human scale or beyond, we respond with awe. The processes I've developed over the past half year are unforgiving and difficult to control and perhaps that's why I'm having so much damn fun.
Looking back at the 7" x 5" post card canvases I worked out my initial ideas on back in January, I see a quantum leap ahead. I see them; I've always seen them, and I suppose that is one aspect of what it means to do what I do. At a party in the city we talked about experience and the duty of the artist to not only provide but to bring back experiences s/he has brought back from other realms of consciousness. I've never shied from stating that I'm interested in the sublime and the spiritual in art.
It looks to be a grand summer.
Something that my friend Mark said to me in NY has stayed with me. We stayed up late talking about art and career and he said something to the effect that the big ones will sell the small ones, but never the other way around. Like Rothko and others, the practical un-attainability of such a large work for most people makes the market for the smaller works hot. These can't go in most people's houses. They can only go in museums or large private/public spaces like atria. Intention set forth into the universe is a powerful thing.
Looming black and ethereal, I hope that they will convey that sense of encounter I am always striving to make within my work. When we meet something larger than ourselves, delivered on the human scale or beyond, we respond with awe. The processes I've developed over the past half year are unforgiving and difficult to control and perhaps that's why I'm having so much damn fun.
Looking back at the 7" x 5" post card canvases I worked out my initial ideas on back in January, I see a quantum leap ahead. I see them; I've always seen them, and I suppose that is one aspect of what it means to do what I do. At a party in the city we talked about experience and the duty of the artist to not only provide but to bring back experiences s/he has brought back from other realms of consciousness. I've never shied from stating that I'm interested in the sublime and the spiritual in art.
It looks to be a grand summer.
The New York Chronicles
Stayed in Hell's Kitchen with my gracious hostess who will be getting a surprise in the mail in a few weeks and then immediately shuttled into Brooklyn to hang at the painter's studio. Much wine, beer, whiskey, art, career talk, discussions of size and heroic painting into the morning. Dragged my hung over self out of bed and crawled Chelsea all morning until my eyes hurt from looking at art. Brice Marden's concurrent exhibitions, -still taking that in, and saw the good, the bad and the utterly banal elsewhere. Work that made me think, re-consider, wonder and yes, a hell of a lot of bullshit that just pissed me off. Too beautiful a day to stay mad at lazy artists and the lazy gallerists who promote the ever-shifting "now," I climbed onto the High Line and dug the City from a higher vantage point then dipped back down underground and up into a crazy Turkish parade which winded and flowed and sucked me in, dancing to crazy music and hugging happy people in the streets. MoMA and the wall of exhaustion hit me simultaneously but I was lost in Siqueiros' wonderful bound woman painting on burlap for a long time and then Miro before eyeing the usual suspects at length. Back to the Kitchen and Pakistani food before heading back uptown to catch the opening. Met the amazing James Little, many more people drinking and laughing and arguing into the night. Walked alone through the cool night after coming out of the hot tunnels again and was wonderfully lost in thought and delight at all seen and experienced. Black sedan out of town and into the harsh Laguardia light, then on the open road listening to Campbell and Moyers talking about god and art and everything.
And it is amazing, and there is clarity, and there will be epic paintings about god and art and everything.
And it is amazing, and there is clarity, and there will be epic paintings about god and art and everything.
myth
"Buffalo"
in process
The artists do not create gods. We show the way to them. In this we die to ourselves; again and again and again. We implement the software, but I don't think we design it. Art must be relevant. It must serve the society into which it exists, but it cannot be completely of it.
I embark on my island journey. I'll return as if from another realm.
May 8, 2012
Girls on bikes in the late spring sun; brown skinned, long-legged giggly co-conspirators in the waining days of the school year. Next week I'll be on two islands; the first a deserted beach and then a dense concrete jungle. The nights are late, and I have to force myself to bed; for I have promises to keep.
Silver. The dream state luster dim glow beneath high rafters and the trails of cigar smoke carried away on a rare breeze. I can never stand still except when in the moments I'm still, still, the moments of total being and non-self. Sometimes I'm lost in the work, sometimes above it, around it, inside it and outside too. The hardware store standing among the containers and tools and implements explaining -rather trying to explain that I don't want to use this product or that trowel for its intended purpose. This is play; this is life and living and being and being a child and being alive in a world I woke up and found myself marooned on. Neverland seems so far away; I miss my lost boys except when my girls remind me how to play again...then I fly.
I'm always interested in the context of materials and how I can play with that. Nasty, toxic shit that I-don't-know-if-it-will-work type experiments. Play. Reach. See. Another idea comes along, another path (where was I going?) presents itself and I take it, -what the hell? I keep trying to get lost but somehow I never make that scene. I come from the water, so water always finds its way.
I'm there in the last hours of each day and I'm alive. I tell you time stops sometimes there; it's magical. Then back home and sometimes read books into the wee hours and sometimes drink a beer or whiskey to get back down to this earth where I have to go to work the next day and breakfast/school/work/dinner/bedtime comes and goes too quickly...all too quickly.
So my daughters are six and precocious and wicked smart and lovely and sneaky and funny and beautiful and we will paint pictures in the June sun in the backyard. At night I will smoke cigars in the moonlight and maybe drink rum and move paint and see what happens.
Quince
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| el capitán y el Matador mixed media, 108" x 50" Rico '09 |
I had the realization at a dinner party last night (that moment when you see someone across the room and you think you've met them but have absolutely no idea who they are) that I don't remember people or names or faces so much as I remember experiences. My closest friends are those with whom I've multiple experiences; the people I remember most are those who, when we met I had an experience. The mad ones.
Death is the cover charge to life, and everyone pays the same; no VIP's, no comps. In the end it doesn't matter how much you have or powerful you are or whether you live in a dirt floor shack or a cow palace; what matters are your experiences and maybe the impression you've left on those you leave behind. This country values "success" over just about everything, but we let life fall apart on the unerring path toward it. Families, marriages, friendships all become expendable as we drive ourselves to addiction, stress, obesity, and a host of other hells striving for a completely subjective destination that turns out to be no destination at all, just another stop along the way. Enlightenment is the same mirage for many who "reject" the status quo; there is no end until the big end, and then it doesn't matter.
So Cinco de Mayo always has profound meaning for me. It always reminds me of one of the most amazing men I've ever known. He may have been the last generation for whom the American Dream was even possible in the classical sense. He raised himself up from poverty and became an officer, a doctor and deacon in his church. English was his second language, but he hid his accent to the point that I only vaguely remember him having one. Today he would just be another brown-skinned alien bent on taking away white people's jobs. How ironic and how fucking revisionist. But somehow he not only overcame all these things but he kept me from experiencing them as a child. It breaks my heart that I don't believe his achievements are possible for a young boy just like him today; a boy, by the way, who was born in America. I painted the painting at the top of this post a few years ago about our relationship. It hangs on my studio wall and it may hang there always.
I started on another large canvas this week and I'll get back to it tonight in the hot Carolina night full of steamy, sticky train sounds and heavy air. I'll go where it takes me. In a few short weeks I'll be in NYC attending a fantastic painter's opening. I look forward to being around my own kind for a few short days.
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