I took a utility knife to two 6' x 6' canvases tonight, destroying 3 months worth of work. I have no problem admitting failure, nor do I fear it. Failure teaches. Coming out of it, I skinned both frames with new canvas and skinned two additional. I've got sizing on everything and it's all drying.
There's a seduction to destroying one's own work; especially when it hasn't been seen. The world will never know. Some aspects of my process are secret, and I've learned to keep them that way. There may come a day when someone wants access, but for now, I'm free to do as I please.
I solved the problems, and I've addressed the failures and the dramatic use of a knife was to ensure that I wouldn't flinch. I had to burn my ships at the shore. I know where I'm going now, I can see the way. There's this moment before another leap when I feel all alive and tingly and short of breath. That's when I know it's really something. I've never seen work like this before.
I'm halfway through my day job break. I accidentally read a calendar entry from work yesterday and it took all my facilities to push it back out of my consciousness. This year has an exit strategy; a line in the sand.
Interestingly, I'll have four canvases in essentially the same stage of development. I see the attack. I know how I'm going to approach them, but the next few weeks are all surface prep. I have 10 small (10" x 10") canvases coming this week to work out the process on. I'll show them to the Greenville dealer if they are any good, but for now they are tools. I'm not feeling poetic tonight. I'm in a place of uncertainty and I'm anxious to see how this all goes down.
The year unwinds. This is my favorite time of the year, the space between christmas and new year's. The world seems slow and optimistic. I haven't a clue what is going on in the world, or at the day job, or politically or anything else. I'll paint, I'll spend time with friends and I'll find a way to make this space expand into months instead of weeks.
The SAM show is on the horizon now. No word on the opening date, but likely the 16th or 23rd of January. I hope it goes well, and I hope it's well-received.
uncertainty
il primo fallimento [the third station], (in progress), December 2013
There is no satisfaction in art. Not in the making, and not in encountering. At the very least, a work of art should leave you uncertain. There should be some amount of anxiety. Martha Graham called the creative process a "divine dissatisfaction." Artists live in a state of uncertainty; we are by our very nature not satisfiers .
Failure is essential to the artistic process. Without repeated and progressive failure, there can be no growth, and without failure whatever you're making isn't art. I like to be surprised in the studio. I prefer a state of ambivalence where I may even be frightened or hesitant about what I see; what I've done.
The Stations series is taking me into that darkness. I did not anticipate what working with black on black paintings would be like, nor what they would look like. There is an eerie subtlety and haunting sensuality to this work; but that's speaking about impressions, not process.
The process involves laying down lots of paint and taking it away. With the white on black works this gave way to forms, but with the black on black, the paintings become as much about what is absent and what has been removed. Fitting from a theological perspective I suppose.
condanna [the first station], (in progress), Dec 2013
My initial experimentation with the process caught me off guard. The works were not what I had anticipated but a the same time so much more. As one would expect, they are incredibly difficult to photograph. There's a pathos to them. There's a sense of naked humanity and transcendent emptiness that I find very difficult to express in words.
sticks
via Instagram
Paint sticks and the big black sketchbook and bourbon, alone in the parlor. Fire and dog, hearth and home as the tired Odysseus; weary from the semester and its toll. Black on black my thoughts; trading in subtlety, perhaps waxing intellectual against my better judgement.
There's something fine about oil paint across surface. On paper, it glides and clumps and drags: roads, I am always on roads after all. There's the work. The work that is rigorous and hard but that is liberating in a way that nothing else is. I tend to happen upon. Yet I put myself there in the first place, and happenstance then becomes a constructed sum of intention and opportunity. When we prepare ourselves for chance...well, there you have it.
struggles
I have been working on the first two stations since late October. I have found that black has to be contended with, at least in this case. I confess I'm struggling; perhaps overthinking, as I wait and discover where these paintings want to go. Much progress today, things are beginning to click for me.
I've said many times that work comes from work. I'm not a big believer in inspiration or those lightening strikes moments in creation. The best ideas/revelations/observations come in the moment of doing, when the mind is hyper-focused and attuned. I am coming to terms with just how large of an undertaking this series truly is.
I'll build two more stretcher frames this week and skin them toward the end of the week or next weekend. With 4 in play, I think I can begin to see them differently. I was excited to move the two together on the large wall yesterday.
Black can be academic. It's heady and intellectual from a painterly perspective. It shows everything and what I'm most interested in right now is eliminating everything from my paintings and simply getting to the essence.
I took a long drive yesterday, down the two lane back roads and rural highways across to Union and back. The pleasure of driving alone in a responsive car with no destination in mind is something too many people never experience. That oneness of man and machine is sublime; a way, like painting, that enables one to lose themselves and reach intense universal awareness. It is a like being naked in the ocean, lying on your back and looking at the stars; as if there is no beginning or end or separation from self and sky and sea.
So that's my head space for this work. To take away everything until I reach the point of fragility and entropy and then to somehow stop it just before that moment. To find the where the painting is about to collapse and stop just shy. No color, no form. Oneness and meditation.
two in the night
Two canvases in play, I smoked a cigar in the brisk night. Good work tonight, and the weight of the past weeks felt lifted. Black has a spiritual presence; as if the absence is itself being. I can get distance now with the space cleaned out. I can see.
There will be much paint thrown this week, good paint to purpose and meaning. Quiet house and warmth now after the dampness of the evening rain seeped into my bones. I've built walls to make room, I'll build more painting storage this weekend and wrap and store the large paintings. Over the next few weeks I'll have 4 to 6 paintings in play; moving in and out from one to another like a boxer. I feel purpose and direction again.
the black paintings
I managed to build a new wall in the studio over the long weekend, and now have much more room to work. The temperatures this week look as if they may cooperate and I will rush into the studio when they do. I have two, 6' square black canvases there now waiting. I've been wrestling with where to go next, but as I have considered it and after bouncing it off a friend this afternoon, I know that I have do the series in all black.
I guest curated an online series about art and mysticism. I think selecting the paintings for that series got me thinking about my influences and about painting and of course being in the studio and making work...work comes from work in that way.
I've never hid my love for Goya. His Black Paintings are very much an inspiration; though I stumbled upon this series rather than decided to do it. I also love Rothko's black paintings, perhaps more than anything else in his oeuvre. The final "sign" was the weekend I posted the picture in the last post. There was an article in the NY Times that same week about Ad Reinhardt's black paintings. It seemed all things pointed to it, and while I momentarily worried about being derivative, I realized that these will be very much my own.
There's a lot of work to be done. At this point I think it would be ambitious to think I can finish the series in a year. So I am embarking on something epic in scope, as the paintings are epic in scale. Like the best journeys, I don't know exactly what it will end up being. I don't know if I'll stick to strict squares or incorporate other shapes and ratios. I don't even know if these first two will end up even being good paintings or if they will be experiences that end up in the trash heap. Some do.
I guest curated an online series about art and mysticism. I think selecting the paintings for that series got me thinking about my influences and about painting and of course being in the studio and making work...work comes from work in that way.
I've never hid my love for Goya. His Black Paintings are very much an inspiration; though I stumbled upon this series rather than decided to do it. I also love Rothko's black paintings, perhaps more than anything else in his oeuvre. The final "sign" was the weekend I posted the picture in the last post. There was an article in the NY Times that same week about Ad Reinhardt's black paintings. It seemed all things pointed to it, and while I momentarily worried about being derivative, I realized that these will be very much my own.
There's a lot of work to be done. At this point I think it would be ambitious to think I can finish the series in a year. So I am embarking on something epic in scope, as the paintings are epic in scale. Like the best journeys, I don't know exactly what it will end up being. I don't know if I'll stick to strict squares or incorporate other shapes and ratios. I don't even know if these first two will end up even being good paintings or if they will be experiences that end up in the trash heap. Some do.
Embark
The year unravels and the days fall into one another as we all count the days until the students leave. I'll sign off in a few weeks, my annual ritual of unplugging over the holidays helps me stay sane. I feel that I'm coasting into December on vapors, one engine left and the other 3 enveloped in smoke. I am spent; profoundly and utterly.
Yet.
I've begun my stations of the cross series. I am not a religious person, but the story is so epic that I wanted to take it on creatively. I've never been interested in being controversial or shocking people. Despite being passionate about many issues, I've always remained mostly apolitical in my work. So I do have the fear that these paintings will be maligned and misinterpreted and given agendas they will not have. But the need to make them compels me, no matter the response.
I simply want to re-interpret the story. I want to do it straight, without irony. I've decided to rename some of the stations and alter the narrative, and it is likely those re-imagined versions will be the point of contention for some. But that's honestly not my intention. I know to refer to as it myth is deeply upsetting to a lot of people, but making myth personal is something that I believe is essential to our journey as humans. I'm not concerned with historical accuracy or even a discussion as to whether the events depicted are real or embellished. It doesn't matter to me. It's a powerful story from which millions of people draw strength and comfort. I've no wish to diminish it or mock it for anyone; quite to the contrary, I want to re-tell it to make it belong to people who might not even consider it in another context.
I'm reading Homer's Odyssey and it has cracked open a perspective toward art for me. This series was a natural expression of where I find myself and what I personally believe art is for.
So these are my final apologies. Like any body of work, once it goes out into the world I have no control as to how it will be received. I can't worry about that in the making, either. I have to be true to the course I set for myself in the studio and work with authenticity and integrity.
I've got the first two paintings in various states of beginning. All 14 will be 6' square, and unlike the work I've been doing for the past 2 years, I don't know if I'm going to use white at all. I envision them all black. Originally I had thought to do them in order, but as I seldom name paintings until they are completed I felt this was disingenuous. Better to paint what comes than work linearly from 1 to 14. So the titles may skip around as I post the images over the next year.
I've also decided to make the titles in Italian as a nod to the painters of old and my heritage as a painter and craftsman. We were once the earthly hands of the Divine. We adorned the sanctuaries and painted the sacred stories for the illiterate. We worked for Tribe, Village, Church and King. What are now?
I believe art should speak to our humanity and offer us a look inside our being. Art should show us the depth of ourselves. That's what I'm interested in. That's why I do this.
So let the work stand. I wish no ill towards anyone or their beliefs, but I'm not responsible for anyone else's feelings either. In the end the paintings will endure or die because they are either good or bad.
So we begin...
grip
The cold nights are coming. Tonight I skinned the two large square canvases and managed to size one of them. It's a formidable size; I cannot span it and thus am forced to contend with it in a very different way than what is comfortable.
I read some old journals, going back to 2011. I'm not conscious of the struggles until I read old writings. Reading these entries from two years ago, I was gripped by a certain hopelessness; and while the work continues to get stronger, I find myself always questioning why I put myself through this for seemingly so little return.
And then I drag myself out of the comfortable exhaustion of the day and out into the night and after a few minutes in the studio I lose all sense of time. I'm not cold, I'm no longer tired. My knuckles are scraped and nicked and I am alive in a profound sense of the word. I grapple with these structures of wood and cotton duck and medium and I carve out some little moment of living. Maybe people get that and maybe they don't. Who knows why anyone likes anything?
I was speaking with a good friend of mine this weekend and he asked what my daughters thought of my work. I told them they were honest critics and often their observations made me think because I tend to take them seriously. One thing my daughters don't really do with my work is say things like, "I see a horse, " or "that looks like a dog." At 7, they seem to grasp the idea that abstraction can be read without literal or direct associations. They often will tell me how it makes them feel. I know a lot of adults who can't talk about art that way, or maybe any more.
square. stations?
The weekend was a blur of furious construction. I am no carpenter, but pneumatic tools and sunny skies blessed me and three new stretcher frames emerged. I have decided to embrace the square, for wherever may go with it; stand or fall. In the journey I have been thinking of a particular space, and these new canvases seem for that space. As I thought about my intentions towards composition, I suddenly thought of Newman's Stations of the Cross and something clicked. My fascination with Catholicism as mysticism, -that is to say, viewing it as a non-believer I tend to focus on how transformative space is used to serve spiritual/religious means within the codex of (visual) language.
Growing up a fundy I was deeply moved the first time I walked into a cathedral. I simply had no context for the wealth of visual imagery and other worldliness of the space. For the first time in my life I felt that everything within a worship space pointed unflinchingly towards the Divine. I had been raised in a tradition that viewed ornamentation (ANY ornamentation) as idolatry. In my artistic journey I have increasingly embraced the visual representation of the spiritual as a pathway to god, or that which moves the all.
I wrestle with it. I despise pseudo science and I have a particularly aversion to all things fundamentalist. But some myths are beautiful. Some stories are indelibly scored onto my consciousness, and I find a power when I embrace them rather than resist them.
So the square. Limitation and constraint. Symmetry. Balance. The square is difficult for me because the square is authoritative and final. As I looked over my sketches I considered the stations. The Way of Sorrow, as it were. This perspective of religion as a Way is uncomfortable for me, and yet....
So I brave the sub-freezing nights ahead. I will paint, and wrap, and bring home paints to protect them from the frost. The work feels good. Seeing this first square canvas tonight; naked and full of unknown. It stirred something in me. I'll see what happens.
Growing up a fundy I was deeply moved the first time I walked into a cathedral. I simply had no context for the wealth of visual imagery and other worldliness of the space. For the first time in my life I felt that everything within a worship space pointed unflinchingly towards the Divine. I had been raised in a tradition that viewed ornamentation (ANY ornamentation) as idolatry. In my artistic journey I have increasingly embraced the visual representation of the spiritual as a pathway to god, or that which moves the all.
I wrestle with it. I despise pseudo science and I have a particularly aversion to all things fundamentalist. But some myths are beautiful. Some stories are indelibly scored onto my consciousness, and I find a power when I embrace them rather than resist them.
So the square. Limitation and constraint. Symmetry. Balance. The square is difficult for me because the square is authoritative and final. As I looked over my sketches I considered the stations. The Way of Sorrow, as it were. This perspective of religion as a Way is uncomfortable for me, and yet....
So I brave the sub-freezing nights ahead. I will paint, and wrap, and bring home paints to protect them from the frost. The work feels good. Seeing this first square canvas tonight; naked and full of unknown. It stirred something in me. I'll see what happens.
the builder
It's late and my hands ache from building. I completed modifications to 6' x 8' stretcher frame I picked up for free at last year's ArtFields. They say you get what you pay for; and sometimes they are right on.
She'll hold cloth and shape and I'll haul her to the studio tomorrow. I'm building four 6' x 6' frames and forcing myself to work in square. I have resisted it with this body of work and I need to know why. I saw the square shape and I'm going to wrestle with it in the coming weeks. It will be a glorious battle.
Another 18 hour day in a long row of 18 hour days. They blur at times but coming home late with sawdust in my hair and paint under my nails I feel so alive it is hard to wind down. The alternative is not an alternative at all; burn out, stress out, drop out. Time in the studio is never wasted. The exhaustion is always worth it.
I've decided to go completely impractical with the scale of the next few paintings. Damn the torpedoes, we're making epic shit here. The road is long and at times demoralizing and frustrating but I always follow the work. The work knows where to go if I just listen to it. If I make enough noise then someone will eventually hear. I have to believe that or else I would go insane.
In a dream world I would be packing up to move to the Winter studio; somewhere towards the equator and the sea. It must feel so suspended there in the middle of the sun's path. I know I would. A hammock, a terrace on which to paint and little else. Four months of painting as the high sun warmed my bones. It's late and I am fading.
...I just deleted a long rant so it must be time to give in to sleep. Those precious 6 hours, followed by the 9 hours of have to, followed by the all-too-short family time and then the studio. I'm about to be in it. It's on.
She'll hold cloth and shape and I'll haul her to the studio tomorrow. I'm building four 6' x 6' frames and forcing myself to work in square. I have resisted it with this body of work and I need to know why. I saw the square shape and I'm going to wrestle with it in the coming weeks. It will be a glorious battle.
Another 18 hour day in a long row of 18 hour days. They blur at times but coming home late with sawdust in my hair and paint under my nails I feel so alive it is hard to wind down. The alternative is not an alternative at all; burn out, stress out, drop out. Time in the studio is never wasted. The exhaustion is always worth it.
I've decided to go completely impractical with the scale of the next few paintings. Damn the torpedoes, we're making epic shit here. The road is long and at times demoralizing and frustrating but I always follow the work. The work knows where to go if I just listen to it. If I make enough noise then someone will eventually hear. I have to believe that or else I would go insane.
In a dream world I would be packing up to move to the Winter studio; somewhere towards the equator and the sea. It must feel so suspended there in the middle of the sun's path. I know I would. A hammock, a terrace on which to paint and little else. Four months of painting as the high sun warmed my bones. It's late and I am fading.
...I just deleted a long rant so it must be time to give in to sleep. Those precious 6 hours, followed by the 9 hours of have to, followed by the all-too-short family time and then the studio. I'm about to be in it. It's on.
the bird of war
Paint-stained nails and fingertips on cut, wrinkling hands sun-soaked and blister-palmed. Punching blacks and caressing flake white to articulate and bend and she rises off the canvas like a bird of war; majestic and hungry. The terrible can be beautiful.
There's something menacing here; like the angel that says, "fear not."
We'll dance again tonight. Paint and smoke and whiskey and these aching hands, bare-knuckled and chipped and ink-stained. She'll become. She'll become.
scene
Today I saw an image; a scene from a studio I know well in Brooklyn. The artist is a poet, warrior, friend. His paintings have a physical presence, like someone standing behind you in a room at that moment before you fully realize it. They are often dark, rough, imposing things with battled surfaces and gristly edges and yet, as of late, I catch a tenderness in them from time to time; a product of fatherhood no doubt, yet also the light of the soul.
NY is calling my name and has been all summer. It's been too much of one kind of travel at the expense of the other. Duties here, social and familial; things I don't mind, but still a part of me is always away.
This thing of going to a space and contending with surface and material and image, one wonders how one finds oneself in such a Way. To listen to a visual thing, this is a strange and wonderful discipline indeed. Tired hands and stained skin and then the attempt to wind down and catch up on the sleep that seems to always be two steps ahead of me, eluding me from day to day.
Whiskey stones and laundry are the remnants of this day; another day that did not stop, and finds me exhausted and unable to give in to sleep.
Today I saw a scene from Brooklyn. A promise of another level, making me bring up my game to the next level, and so it goes and so it goes. A picture of a studio wall that made me want to paint. That's honor. It's a glorious thing really. So I raise my glass tonight to Brooklyn and all the lights on tonight in rooms with paint on the floors and at least a wall, and canvas and books and music and longing and sweat.
NY is calling my name and has been all summer. It's been too much of one kind of travel at the expense of the other. Duties here, social and familial; things I don't mind, but still a part of me is always away.
This thing of going to a space and contending with surface and material and image, one wonders how one finds oneself in such a Way. To listen to a visual thing, this is a strange and wonderful discipline indeed. Tired hands and stained skin and then the attempt to wind down and catch up on the sleep that seems to always be two steps ahead of me, eluding me from day to day.
Whiskey stones and laundry are the remnants of this day; another day that did not stop, and finds me exhausted and unable to give in to sleep.
Today I saw a scene from Brooklyn. A promise of another level, making me bring up my game to the next level, and so it goes and so it goes. A picture of a studio wall that made me want to paint. That's honor. It's a glorious thing really. So I raise my glass tonight to Brooklyn and all the lights on tonight in rooms with paint on the floors and at least a wall, and canvas and books and music and longing and sweat.
after
The opening went very well. Those in attendance were engaged, and the comments I encountered were thoughtful and positive. We stayed up late with one of the artists, his wife and the curator drinking wine into the night.
fastened down to oblivion, exhibition view
I can't speak positively enough about Ann Stoddard's curation of the show. She brought together six wildly-different abstract artists and created not only a first class exhibition, but a teaching exhibition as well. The show stays up for most the semester and I hope students will visit (and revisit) it. It's a show that warrants multiple viewings.
Fortunately, there will be opportunity for multiple viewings. The Spartanburg Art Museum will be picking up the show in January. I'm very excited to be in the good creative company that I am with this show, and profoundly humbled to see the work hung in a museum.
an awful rowing toward god, exhibition view
One of the most interesting exchanges of the evening was with the College's president. After spending time with "an awful rowing.." he commented that it reminded him of the author's description of his encounter with the afterlife in Proof of Heaven, the story of a neurosurgeon who has a transcendent experience during a coma despite the fact that he intellectually rejected all such experiences prior to then. I haven't read the book, but our conversation made me want to. I found it interesting that he made such a connection.
I heard the word powerful a lot last night in reference to my work. This was tremendously gratifying; both that it stood the test of physical inspection and that it often seemed that people were having a similar experience looking at and being with the work as I had painting it. I feel I'm on my way.
letting go
I drove over to the gallery tonight, foolishly thinking it would be empty. Of course the director and her drones were busy with all the last-minute preparations; the space is alive and bright. I have to say, the show looks really good. I found the eclectic collection a bit jarring until I actually saw it hung, and I'm impressed with the curator's vision.
So now the funny part.
The large painting is hung upside down. I must have wired it this way in my exhaustion last week. The day job has been brutal for some time now and in my preparations I must have gotten disoriented. What's interesting is that I didn't notice at first. I have to say, I think I like it better the way it is hanging.
I've always believed one acts or one is acted upon. Neither is, inherently, a "better" condition. There are benefits to each. In this case, I received one of those gentle wacks to the head from the universe letting me know that I need to let go for awhile and just allow myself to be taken away. That's a really positive thing at this particular moment of time.
I think one has to keep a certain irreverence towards one's work. It's easy to take yourself too seriously and something like this could have caused me crazy stress on the eve before a show. But it honestly didn't. I sort of feel that everything is right and how it needs to be. It made me laugh and relaxed me, and now I go into a highly-charged situation (an opening) in a much lighter place.
So now the funny part.
The large painting is hung upside down. I must have wired it this way in my exhaustion last week. The day job has been brutal for some time now and in my preparations I must have gotten disoriented. What's interesting is that I didn't notice at first. I have to say, I think I like it better the way it is hanging.
I've always believed one acts or one is acted upon. Neither is, inherently, a "better" condition. There are benefits to each. In this case, I received one of those gentle wacks to the head from the universe letting me know that I need to let go for awhile and just allow myself to be taken away. That's a really positive thing at this particular moment of time.
I think one has to keep a certain irreverence towards one's work. It's easy to take yourself too seriously and something like this could have caused me crazy stress on the eve before a show. But it honestly didn't. I sort of feel that everything is right and how it needs to be. It made me laugh and relaxed me, and now I go into a highly-charged situation (an opening) in a much lighter place.
breath into water
Hot thick air and silent Main St. outside the door; ashes and droplets of Mars black stain and seep into the 100-year-old wood, like sweat, like breath into water. You're with me here. You always have been. I found the personal and through it discovered the universal. So these paintings are your poems and stories and struggles and hopes. They belong to us all, and perhaps least to me once the paint dries.
I don't remember the struggles aside from they happened is all. This time is fleeting and immediate and I am only passing through it like the cities and towns I've passed through my whole life. I once told a lover that leaving is simply what I do; no less love, only the constant longing to wander beyond and through and on and on and on. That's in the paintings now. That's in the blackness and shadow. The paint on my shoes keeps my feet on the ground, constant and steadfast. I can put that longing someplace physical and go back home.
I moved into this space and started a blog about the journey from obscurity. I always said if I found the answers I would share them for free, but now I don't know. My willingness hasn't changed, it's just that I don't think anyone would listen. If I told you it was easy, you would dismiss it. If I told you it involved pain and personal sacrifice, you'd ask if there were another way. There's not; either way, that is, another way.
I wanted to row out to the vastness and the unknown where it's dark and desolate and sky meets sea and somehow find something beyond, and then somehow -inexplicably, find my way back. Only then could I give it away. Maybe I'm close now, but whether I'm returning or continuing to row out doesn't seem to matter much any more.
There's a stillness to the studio when I'm about to begin a painting. Sensual and slow and steeped in loss of self. Things become enhanced, that's the only way to describe it. So much of it is labor; the building and the priming and the base coats over and over. Divine labor, heroic at times, but labor nonetheless. Then that first mark. Paint on surface and choice and negation and choice and option and over and over and it is forged and carved out of the nothingness.
dreams may come
I received notification of my first museum show, which will open in January of 2014. As I have yet to sign the contract, I will hold back the museum's name, but it is a regional art museum in SC. This came at one of those moments when the world seemed black and despair was taking hold of me in a profound way. The road is long. It's not for the faint at heart and even the strong face down the demons of doubt and hopelessness from time to time.
The art world is not a meritocracy. You don't get points for talent or even effort, and my trips to NYC have shown me that bullshit hangs on walls with red dots next it just as often (seemingly more so) than the kick-ass work that belongs there. There are countless painters out there that are amazing who will never see "success" on any grand scale. It gets demoralizing if one lets it.
For my part, I have stayed my course. I've worked alone and in obscurity for a very long time. At one point or another every friend or family member in my life has politely discouraged me from continuing along this path; for my own good, of course. I appreciate it. We don't like to see people we love in pain, struggling toward a seemingly unattainable goal. But I have always believed in myself absolutely. Even in my lowest, I have never given up on my work. I've always found a way.
On the day my daughters were born I made a promise to myself. It was one of those silent oaths we take in this life that is strictly between ourselves and our Source; that I would stay the course and prove to them by example that they can achieve their dreams. They don't come easy. They may even come at great cost, but they can be reached if they supremely believe in themselves and never let anyone (even those closest to them) discourage them. So when I walk into that museum next year with my daughters by my side, I will feel that I have fulfilled a sacred oath and that I have done something as a father that is meaningful and lasting.
As I've told my painter friends over many beers and tears, I have only ever sought greatness. Longevity, not fame, is what is important to me. I want to be a great painter, even if my audience is yet unborn. I value that more than all glossy magazine covers and art fair headlining that may or may never come.
This is a moment.
And tonight I will go back into the studio, roll up my sleeves, and do the work.
The art world is not a meritocracy. You don't get points for talent or even effort, and my trips to NYC have shown me that bullshit hangs on walls with red dots next it just as often (seemingly more so) than the kick-ass work that belongs there. There are countless painters out there that are amazing who will never see "success" on any grand scale. It gets demoralizing if one lets it.
For my part, I have stayed my course. I've worked alone and in obscurity for a very long time. At one point or another every friend or family member in my life has politely discouraged me from continuing along this path; for my own good, of course. I appreciate it. We don't like to see people we love in pain, struggling toward a seemingly unattainable goal. But I have always believed in myself absolutely. Even in my lowest, I have never given up on my work. I've always found a way.
On the day my daughters were born I made a promise to myself. It was one of those silent oaths we take in this life that is strictly between ourselves and our Source; that I would stay the course and prove to them by example that they can achieve their dreams. They don't come easy. They may even come at great cost, but they can be reached if they supremely believe in themselves and never let anyone (even those closest to them) discourage them. So when I walk into that museum next year with my daughters by my side, I will feel that I have fulfilled a sacred oath and that I have done something as a father that is meaningful and lasting.
As I've told my painter friends over many beers and tears, I have only ever sought greatness. Longevity, not fame, is what is important to me. I want to be a great painter, even if my audience is yet unborn. I value that more than all glossy magazine covers and art fair headlining that may or may never come.
This is a moment.
And tonight I will go back into the studio, roll up my sleeves, and do the work.
imitations of drowning
untitled, ink on arches paper, 22" x 30", august 2013, Rico
Black gesso. Black fingers, arms, and washing out the big brush under the Main St. streetlamp hunched spigot. At the door and I remembered the arches paper, ink, time, turnaround make one, make two, make three.
And drawing, mark-making, doesn't have to be obviously related, or good, or for anyone. It's a way of thinking about things; form, materials, flow, movement.
untitled, ink on arches paper, 22" x 30", august 2013, Rico
Fluidity. Suspension. Falling? Imitations of drowning.
There are new thoughts, but I'm working through the large canvas on the wall, already titled in my mind...some come like that. The day washes away into work and hands and sweat of labor. Painting is wrestling angels, either way there's loss but then again those moments; those moments when one really sees.
This meandering stream-of-consciousness thought flow ends now. A beer and Breaking Bad and to bed; and I'm very mortal once more.
Exhibition announcement
Kimono, oil on canvas, 48" x 60", Rico '13
My work will be included in a group exhibition at Presbyterian College's Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery this Fall, entitled Abstract. The show opens September 12th and runs through November 29th. There will be an opening reception on the 12th. The show has not been promoted to any real extent; partly due to the fact that the College cut the Director's position to third time. It is a terrific gallery space, and though I do not yet know with whom I will be sharing the walls I'm excited to be showing in my "home town."
If you've seen my work in Greenville, please make the short trip down. If you attended ArtFields, you saw my work in the HUB space, and another large work will be exhibited in this show along with 3 works the size of the one above.
I'll be switching out the current piece at Art & Light Gallery for this one, and I'm excited to have Kimono seen publicly. It's a pivotal piece in this body of work; an important one for potential collectors.
If you're reading this blog and live within a few hours, I hope to see you next month.
Arjuna
The path of doubt and relentless self-questioning is the road to light. Perfection is an illusion perpetuated by those who profit from having the masses chase unattainable desires. Desire is the path to anger and pain. Capitalism must create desire in order to feed itself.
I believe ambition can be healthy. I differentiate goals from desire because more often the journey to one's goal is far more satisfying than the attainment of one's desires. That is why millionaires try to become billionaires; having is never as satisfying as getting there.
The day job is in a state of acute crisis. Finding grace and resolve in the midst of tumultuous freak-out and widely-held frustration and pressure is, to my mind, the mark of a man. (see Kipling's "If"). I devote my energies to many things, often at once, and this crisis will pass because I will resolve it. I have come to understand that no problem is unsolvable; there is a spectrum of potential solutions to any situation that runs from the completely undesirable to the absolutely desirable, and finding the point on that line is simply what I get paid to do. I have always worked to learn before working to earn. Every job I've ever had (and I've had quite a few) has held a lesson within its experience. This one has taught me to deny the impossible. I've become fearless in the face of unraveling chaos, and in the end this has made me a better artist, a better father, and a better man.
Arjuna has been a difficult painting. Not because the process was any different; it wasn't. It has been difficult because I had to destroy a good painting to get to it. That moment of destruction was fraught with anxiety and doubt, but equally a sense of absolute liberation from expectation and comfort. I divested myself from self-assurance and anticipation. Painting is best when it's blind; I love uncertainty.
A friend of mine painted a painting called The Way of Hardship. It's a terrific and powerful painting, one might even say sublime, and I've sat in front of it many times. I've come to think that it is a visual representation of the artist's Way, and I mean specifically the painter. We tend to seek out resistance more than other artists (except maybe writers, but that's another post). The path of most resistance can be destructive. But it can also be a path to enlightenment, if only fleeting, which most enlightenment is anyway.
The work right now is about doubt and struggle and choosing paths from divergent options. This theme seems to be recurring throughout the past 20 months or so. I'm embroiled in a struggle to find something, though that "thing" is elusive.
I believe ambition can be healthy. I differentiate goals from desire because more often the journey to one's goal is far more satisfying than the attainment of one's desires. That is why millionaires try to become billionaires; having is never as satisfying as getting there.
The day job is in a state of acute crisis. Finding grace and resolve in the midst of tumultuous freak-out and widely-held frustration and pressure is, to my mind, the mark of a man. (see Kipling's "If"). I devote my energies to many things, often at once, and this crisis will pass because I will resolve it. I have come to understand that no problem is unsolvable; there is a spectrum of potential solutions to any situation that runs from the completely undesirable to the absolutely desirable, and finding the point on that line is simply what I get paid to do. I have always worked to learn before working to earn. Every job I've ever had (and I've had quite a few) has held a lesson within its experience. This one has taught me to deny the impossible. I've become fearless in the face of unraveling chaos, and in the end this has made me a better artist, a better father, and a better man.
Arjuna has been a difficult painting. Not because the process was any different; it wasn't. It has been difficult because I had to destroy a good painting to get to it. That moment of destruction was fraught with anxiety and doubt, but equally a sense of absolute liberation from expectation and comfort. I divested myself from self-assurance and anticipation. Painting is best when it's blind; I love uncertainty.
A friend of mine painted a painting called The Way of Hardship. It's a terrific and powerful painting, one might even say sublime, and I've sat in front of it many times. I've come to think that it is a visual representation of the artist's Way, and I mean specifically the painter. We tend to seek out resistance more than other artists (except maybe writers, but that's another post). The path of most resistance can be destructive. But it can also be a path to enlightenment, if only fleeting, which most enlightenment is anyway.
The work right now is about doubt and struggle and choosing paths from divergent options. This theme seems to be recurring throughout the past 20 months or so. I'm embroiled in a struggle to find something, though that "thing" is elusive.
returns
Slow night but courageous; painting into the safe, destroying to build, allowing the paint to lead the way without judgement...or perhaps against it. Bright, big moon cloaked in deep prussian blue black clouds of night like the sky reflecting on the ocean far away from the shore. It is the creator's prerogative to obliterate and flood and burn away; even the beautiful.
The full studio is a dangerous place. Work must struggle against the tyranny of aesthetic and its reassurances. Each new picture is an autonomous entity, rightfully so; heir to its own being and presence.
Unexpected breeze blows through the studio, carrying Miles and echoing the horns against the brick and wood and floating along with cigar smoke into the rafters and visual memory for another night when the hot wet thick air returns. August is coming.
Sometimes the artist must struggle in order to forget what s/he knows; about life, about love, and art. Forget and play. Forget and make marks against the comfortable and the known. Forging out into the icy sea to feel one's course through the walls of frozen oblivion-makers, like skyscrapers in the city.
Smoke and sky. Slow burn of dried leaf curls and rises as do thoughts subdued by action, repetition and waiting. The paint bleeds and blends and pools and now it dries a mile away in the darkness; white and breathing and vulnerable and naked.
Charcoal-stained fingers from page after page of exploring line. Line, form, weight, gesture; fundamentals of the practice that serve to ground and to humble and to connect eye to hand, circumventing thought and mind.
It's good to be back.
The full studio is a dangerous place. Work must struggle against the tyranny of aesthetic and its reassurances. Each new picture is an autonomous entity, rightfully so; heir to its own being and presence.
Unexpected breeze blows through the studio, carrying Miles and echoing the horns against the brick and wood and floating along with cigar smoke into the rafters and visual memory for another night when the hot wet thick air returns. August is coming.
Sometimes the artist must struggle in order to forget what s/he knows; about life, about love, and art. Forget and play. Forget and make marks against the comfortable and the known. Forging out into the icy sea to feel one's course through the walls of frozen oblivion-makers, like skyscrapers in the city.
Smoke and sky. Slow burn of dried leaf curls and rises as do thoughts subdued by action, repetition and waiting. The paint bleeds and blends and pools and now it dries a mile away in the darkness; white and breathing and vulnerable and naked.
Charcoal-stained fingers from page after page of exploring line. Line, form, weight, gesture; fundamentals of the practice that serve to ground and to humble and to connect eye to hand, circumventing thought and mind.
It's good to be back.
Junebug
Thick Southern air seeps into the skin and soul. Summertime is candela wrapped cigars and studio doors wide open to the heavy night. I am a summer painter. I love the slow heat. Undulating clouds of thunderstorms and distant tropical storms fill me with renewal and passion and longing. Twelve-year-old Hukushu to round out the night and still the mind, unwind, and leave the rigors of painting and grappling with form and materials to another session.
Two paintings in various states of beginning. A show in September to clear the studio of reassurances that come with lots of paintings surrounding me. There comes a point where they all have to face the wall; one has to recapture autonomy in each new effort. I have stayed within the parameters I set last year and the work benefits each time, but I cannot become self-referencial.
My process is the slow grind. Work and re-work, wait, dry, wait and re-work and wait. Weeks and months; using accidents but then honing their power into something directed and labored which eventually looks spontaneous. I am dedicated to the path of simplicity. Simplicity takes discipline and patience and honesty in one's practice.
There's a growing body of work in the studio. It is becoming intensely focused and deftly executed and at times I feel that I am watching it unfold and come into being as a passive observer. I am patient and watchful and have no objective in mind save being in the moment of each work as I participate in the dance of painting.
A second glass and the night is still and quiet. No trains now. No distractions of the mundane. Tomorrow I will visit the studio and see what I have to work with. I'll push ever onward.
salt life
I'm on the beach and Andrea passed us by. I'm watching the trails of lighting flashes in the sky and thinking about the two unresolved canvases in the studio back home. I was invited to be part of a group exhibition, so more on that when I have dates and more information.
The girls of summer are strewn on hotel beds; all-day poolside and ocean air-kissed sleeping the sleep of children and animals, unfettered by anxieties of the past or future. Life is new and immediate...these things we lose with age, and try every day to regain again.
The moment. Painting is so much about being present, patient and watchful. Every action creates possibility, and denies options. Make a mark. This single act of dissidence causes the whole of the universe to rush forward with all the power of its being. So paintings fail. Most are not built to withstand, but then, some do. I'm in the zone. New wall built, another one will be erected soon in the studio and with it more wall space, more contemplation of this thing, these visions that keep me moving forward and embracing the blessed uncertainty.
Black. White. Neutral elements and yet so powerful. Associations with the abyss and always with me I am looking to Caravaggio and, -as of late, grappling with that son of bitch and his blackness. No one paints the emptiness so full of presence. No one ever has. The Don Voisine show did that for me to lesser degree. Those blacks were so astoundingly rendered; so technical and precise and each painting so nailed. Well done, Maestro. Well done.
And what of this strange split life? New York every other month? Counterbalanced by the bucolic daily life and studio and town and Main Street dying around me like countless Main Streets dying all over the nation. The night is quiet and dim save the trains that thunder through day in and day out. I watch the cars filled to the brim with coal, then retuning empty, then full again the next day.
But tonight the sea. Moonlight and surf and stars and thoughts of the work in progress.
The girls of summer are strewn on hotel beds; all-day poolside and ocean air-kissed sleeping the sleep of children and animals, unfettered by anxieties of the past or future. Life is new and immediate...these things we lose with age, and try every day to regain again.
The moment. Painting is so much about being present, patient and watchful. Every action creates possibility, and denies options. Make a mark. This single act of dissidence causes the whole of the universe to rush forward with all the power of its being. So paintings fail. Most are not built to withstand, but then, some do. I'm in the zone. New wall built, another one will be erected soon in the studio and with it more wall space, more contemplation of this thing, these visions that keep me moving forward and embracing the blessed uncertainty.
Black. White. Neutral elements and yet so powerful. Associations with the abyss and always with me I am looking to Caravaggio and, -as of late, grappling with that son of bitch and his blackness. No one paints the emptiness so full of presence. No one ever has. The Don Voisine show did that for me to lesser degree. Those blacks were so astoundingly rendered; so technical and precise and each painting so nailed. Well done, Maestro. Well done.
And what of this strange split life? New York every other month? Counterbalanced by the bucolic daily life and studio and town and Main Street dying around me like countless Main Streets dying all over the nation. The night is quiet and dim save the trains that thunder through day in and day out. I watch the cars filled to the brim with coal, then retuning empty, then full again the next day.
But tonight the sea. Moonlight and surf and stars and thoughts of the work in progress.
the miles
Bronzed and freck-faced girls bowled me over at the doorstep, and home is where they are. Home and hearth; indeed a form of wealth in this oft-impoverished world. Heading back into the studio tomorrow night, renewed and strangely free; as though there is no longer pressure; as though there is only open road.
Chelsea days and nights and thankfully no dawns this time out. Minor misbehaving and nothing more. We marched across lower Manhattan and dozens of galleries, seeing the good, the bad and the inexplicable. At times one wondered why some works hung under the glow against white walls; and so many white walls there are. Mad shots and heroism of a sort. The kind men in twilight years tell tales of to the women who suffer them. The amazing work as well. The work that seeps into the soul and gives it light. More familiar faces each time I go, as I slowly begin to grasp that I, too, am becoming a familiar face to some.
Tomorrow night a cigar and the thickening night air and train whistles, and paint. Alone and peopling my solitude with memory and exploration and experience. The evening, the brick walls and wood floor and jazz floating and mingling with my smoke and my visions, twirling and winding back on itself into the rafters. I've no thought of the future, only the nowness of surface and purpose.
Chelsea days and nights and thankfully no dawns this time out. Minor misbehaving and nothing more. We marched across lower Manhattan and dozens of galleries, seeing the good, the bad and the inexplicable. At times one wondered why some works hung under the glow against white walls; and so many white walls there are. Mad shots and heroism of a sort. The kind men in twilight years tell tales of to the women who suffer them. The amazing work as well. The work that seeps into the soul and gives it light. More familiar faces each time I go, as I slowly begin to grasp that I, too, am becoming a familiar face to some.
Tomorrow night a cigar and the thickening night air and train whistles, and paint. Alone and peopling my solitude with memory and exploration and experience. The evening, the brick walls and wood floor and jazz floating and mingling with my smoke and my visions, twirling and winding back on itself into the rafters. I've no thought of the future, only the nowness of surface and purpose.
ramblings on process and death
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and there are the nights where I'd rather go to bed at 8:30 than drag myself to the studio. then I go; and more often than not there is some reward. it may be fleeting. it may only end in frustration, but the time's never wasted.
the rigors of painting, this thing I call my practice, arise out of action and release; call and response. tonight - a formidable image, and then, just as easily it was gone. the painting is fragile and the thing can crumble before the artist's eyes. weeks, months, even years, then..gone. I love that every decision negates certain future options, and equally, that each mark provides opportunity for another -often unexpected mark.
so one works through it. perhaps a vista, or prayer, or experience emerges and then before you is the reason for all the doubt and hours spent alone attempting to bring and to listen and see.
for me, my process has blind periods where I must wait. working wet I have allow drying and allow the paint to explore and overflow and retreat. I come in the next day to see what moves have been made; sometimes only to look and sit and stand and walk around and listen. I have come to understand the power of waiting, of being acted upon...of surrender.
one of my freshly-turned seven year olds just informed me this afternoon that 7 is almost 8. to which my mind answered, "and 8 is almost 18...and 28...and so it goes." mortality.
I raised a glass to Dad last night, who would have been 73 yesterday. he knew me as many things, but he never knew me as a father, and I suppose that makes me feel feelings I generally keep to myself. Too long gone, and every year I understand better how very young I was to have lost him. and then I see that what I say to my daughters is true; that I will always be with them.
my period of depression and doubt seems to be subsiding. work comes from working, not thinking about it or indulging the ego's whims of fancy and insecurity. painters paint; end of slump. we pick up and endure and push beyond. this odd and wonderful humanity.
and so it goes.
reflections on madness
Reflections on madness; what it means, relevance. I'm questioning my relevance as a painter. Then, with the imposed cultural template of Boston...context. Explosions. Is this what it takes to awaken the Sleeper? Sadness. Why do we look at fire and smoke? Think about it. Primordial instincts/aesthetics.
Is madness the inability to discern? Is one aware of the decent? Maybe, it's evolutionary. Process and by degrees. Or, is it at once? Is madness blindness? Or is it the condition which sees all at once and cannot subdivide into parts? Abandon is not madness. Ecstasy is not madness. What of peopling my solitude and personalizing my overwhelmed sense of crowds? I love New York for the alone-ness I feel; and its profound connection.
Am I worth my salt? I'm alone and adrift here. In less than two weeks I'll be booming Manhattan; hanging with others of my ilk. Here; now; alone and madness.
Pretty? Violent? Spiritual? I see pointlessness and failure, but I am close and in it. Do I have the chops? I still feel I can take it further. I feel I must. I reject the beautiful out of hat. (what a phrase!) I reject the pretty out of conscience
I fear only two things: lack of freewill and mediocrity.
My day job makes these fears acute. I am going insane painfully and slowly.
I'm drawing again in my head. Big black paper with lines. I see. I am seeing. Take that, motherfuckers.
I've seen death half a dozen times. Show me something new and meaningful. Let me see. In seeing there is freedom; liberation.
Madness.
Is madness the inability to discern? Is one aware of the decent? Maybe, it's evolutionary. Process and by degrees. Or, is it at once? Is madness blindness? Or is it the condition which sees all at once and cannot subdivide into parts? Abandon is not madness. Ecstasy is not madness. What of peopling my solitude and personalizing my overwhelmed sense of crowds? I love New York for the alone-ness I feel; and its profound connection.
Am I worth my salt? I'm alone and adrift here. In less than two weeks I'll be booming Manhattan; hanging with others of my ilk. Here; now; alone and madness.
Pretty? Violent? Spiritual? I see pointlessness and failure, but I am close and in it. Do I have the chops? I still feel I can take it further. I feel I must. I reject the beautiful out of hat. (what a phrase!) I reject the pretty out of conscience
I fear only two things: lack of freewill and mediocrity.
My day job makes these fears acute. I am going insane painfully and slowly.
I'm drawing again in my head. Big black paper with lines. I see. I am seeing. Take that, motherfuckers.
I've seen death half a dozen times. Show me something new and meaningful. Let me see. In seeing there is freedom; liberation.
Madness.
measures
Late night, much rye whiskey and reflection on Serra; the artist, the sculptures, the drawings.. the fucking drawings. This idea of art compressing, altering, redefining, inhabiting space. I think of James Austin Murray's show; the collision of surface and light and the volume of space. Associations with Stella, of course, but only now association with Serra. I quote:
Something else; "one cannot take down the Master's house with the Master's tools." So we forge and hack, and co-opt and guerrilla. One must be irreverent towards materiality; the formal must be the cage from which we free ourselves. Is this the whiskey talking? I think not. For me, the Spanish masters.. Velasquez, Goya, and the Italian Caravaggio. I wail against the blacks; the eternal space within the space which recedes and yet always asserts.
I am up against the process now. I cannot execute the size and scale I want to with my current process of working vertical/horizontal/vertical. I cannot physically lift and lower the pieces which exist in my mind's eye. They must be contended with; my most challenging work is work I've had to contend with physically. Like wrestling angels. There are many warrior paths; mine is the peaceful warrior Way; discipline, repetition, aestheticism. How can I engage the plane in a vertical condition? I must wrestle with this.
More Serra:
Indeed; the reconciliation between my sculptural intents and painterly practice. I forge the picture; austere and hermetic and unapologetically concerned with the spiritual through no particular god. I've been contemplating our instinctual human need for new gods. It is time. We need gods and myths that speak to our condition. We need heroic epic poetry to bring our men and women warriors back across the sea.
And now, Boston. Madness and tragedy. Senselessness. Can art [Art] counteract ignorance? I believe it can, or else I go mad myself.
Since black is the densest color material, it absorbs and dissipates light to a maximum and thereby changes the artificial as well as the natural light in a given room. A black shape can hold its space in relation to a larger volume and alter the mass of that volume readily. [italics my own]Serra contends that, "black is a property, not a quality," and why not? Indeed. I make work that physically alters the space it inhabits. This is interesting to me. Sculptural yes, I fancied myself a sculptor when I began. Yet the making of things led me to painting; kicking and screaming at times, but led me to it nonetheless.
Something else; "one cannot take down the Master's house with the Master's tools." So we forge and hack, and co-opt and guerrilla. One must be irreverent towards materiality; the formal must be the cage from which we free ourselves. Is this the whiskey talking? I think not. For me, the Spanish masters.. Velasquez, Goya, and the Italian Caravaggio. I wail against the blacks; the eternal space within the space which recedes and yet always asserts.
I am up against the process now. I cannot execute the size and scale I want to with my current process of working vertical/horizontal/vertical. I cannot physically lift and lower the pieces which exist in my mind's eye. They must be contended with; my most challenging work is work I've had to contend with physically. Like wrestling angels. There are many warrior paths; mine is the peaceful warrior Way; discipline, repetition, aestheticism. How can I engage the plane in a vertical condition? I must wrestle with this.
More Serra:
[black] holds itself to a more compressed field, it is comparable to forging.
Indeed; the reconciliation between my sculptural intents and painterly practice. I forge the picture; austere and hermetic and unapologetically concerned with the spiritual through no particular god. I've been contemplating our instinctual human need for new gods. It is time. We need gods and myths that speak to our condition. We need heroic epic poetry to bring our men and women warriors back across the sea.
And now, Boston. Madness and tragedy. Senselessness. Can art [Art] counteract ignorance? I believe it can, or else I go mad myself.
the rains are coming
Work is the preferred state of man. Jobs are socially imposed constructs; they are seldom related to work but instead are directly tied to production and monetary compensation. There's a reason a hard day's work in the yard, or garage or studio feels different than a day on the job; no matter the job. It is because work is done for self and for betterment and for purpose and only tangentially for outcome. The studio is work. I lose track of time there. I become immersed in the process of doing and seeing and listening and being when I am in the studio. Paint. Putting paint onto surface and taking it off and moving it around and watching it become, fall apart, become again; these are meaningful activities and meaningful purposes. Art, the product of work, appeals to us precisely because it represents something tangibly different from the lack of truth from our jobs. Even if, in the capacity of performing one's job some thing is made (more likely produced); it does not hold the life force of that which is wrought from work.
Painting is work. Bloody knuckles and strained hands and tired eyes from honest labor in the service of the work. I find it amazing when people from very different walks of life from my own find this quality in my art; I believe in that moment they see the work.
I don't care about illusion. I never want to disguise that this is support and ground and surface and paint. I've nothing against my West Coast brothers and sisters with their finish fetish, but it's not for me. I love the raw, poetic edge of a canvas. It is the anthropological record; the blood and bone and sinew. It would be a falsehood for me to attempt to hide it or paint over it. I inhabit the raw, bloody land of history and enslavement and war and struggle. The work must breathe with this inhabitation and its ghosts.
The rains are coming.
And there is a cigar and a porch and whiskey as the big drops wash away the blood and sweat and struggle into night.
Painting is work. Bloody knuckles and strained hands and tired eyes from honest labor in the service of the work. I find it amazing when people from very different walks of life from my own find this quality in my art; I believe in that moment they see the work.
I don't care about illusion. I never want to disguise that this is support and ground and surface and paint. I've nothing against my West Coast brothers and sisters with their finish fetish, but it's not for me. I love the raw, poetic edge of a canvas. It is the anthropological record; the blood and bone and sinew. It would be a falsehood for me to attempt to hide it or paint over it. I inhabit the raw, bloody land of history and enslavement and war and struggle. The work must breathe with this inhabitation and its ghosts.
The rains are coming.
And there is a cigar and a porch and whiskey as the big drops wash away the blood and sweat and struggle into night.
march on
Jocasta, oil on canvas, 60" x 48", Rico '13
Notification came from Carolina's Got Art, a large, duel-Carolina juried art exhibition. I confess I was surprised at the decision (submission above), but ultimately all juried shows intersect an audience at a moment of time and place. There's no reward in wondering why; it is a judgment and one takes it and moves on.
I finished crating my entry to ArtFields this afternoon. It's wrapped, boxed and I make the journey to beautiful Lake City on Friday, apparently in the rain. Though I envisioned a perfect storm, alas I was rebuffed by Charlotte this time. I will wage another campaign, albeit through another process.
Clearing the studio of work is always a positive experience. I hung two of the smaller paintings on the big wall and I feel really great about the work going on right now. I have two canvases in process, one is ready to go the next time I get into the studio.
I lose this week to my wife's tech week for her play, but there are always the stolen moments.
Overall, I feel so fortunate and so focused. The setback today was unexpected but not substantial. If everyone liked my work I would have to seriously re-consider what I'm doing. It shouldn't be easy to like; there should be barriers to it. I think of Gauguin, "the ugly can be beautiful; the pretty, never."
new york stories
I first went to NYC when I was 20 years old. Times Square was the manifestation of every cautionary tale from my fundamentalist upbringing brought to life and writ large; hookers, pimps, dealers, hustlers, junkies. It was dirty and dim and sketchy and I took those first steps along the yellow brick road toward my own Oz.
In the times I've returned throughout the years, I think back on that first impression and it makes me smile. Walking through the post St. Patrick's Day parade crowd in Times Square in heavy wet snow on Saturday night on my way uptown was nothing like that first encounter. (I got a high five from Batman, for christsake). New York, like all great cities of the world, gets under your skin and into your blood; and there is a part of me that is home there like nowhere else.
The Ides of March, James Austin Murray's solo show at Narthex Gallery did not disappoint. There will be more reflections on that in the weeks to come; it's still so new in my experience and so powerful in my memory. A friend said it best, "it is the perfect combination of art and space." The work belongs there. It inhabits the space in an intensely powerful way while somehow managing to coexist with it. It is solid, significant work, -by far the best painting I saw on the walls my whole visit.
I've spent the last 15 months or so shedding. Like Bird, I reached a point where I felt I had to withdraw for a time and find my voice. I may be no Charlie Parker to the visual art world, but I've got chops that ain't like nobody else's. It feels time to climb into the ring, to live or die by the intensity of personal vision and unyielding tenacity. I may get a few beat downs along the way, but the world will never see what I make no effort to show it. Now I know that it has to see it; that's why I'm here.
So I come back into the daily grind recharged and transcended. Good art always makes me want to paint. Being in artists' studios always makes me excited and on fire to return to my own. Shots in the pub and much bantering about art and paint and space and form, it's time well spent...always. But painting is what unites us. Time in the studio getting in and getting down; that is its own realness.
In the times I've returned throughout the years, I think back on that first impression and it makes me smile. Walking through the post St. Patrick's Day parade crowd in Times Square in heavy wet snow on Saturday night on my way uptown was nothing like that first encounter. (I got a high five from Batman, for christsake). New York, like all great cities of the world, gets under your skin and into your blood; and there is a part of me that is home there like nowhere else.
The Ides of March, James Austin Murray's solo show at Narthex Gallery did not disappoint. There will be more reflections on that in the weeks to come; it's still so new in my experience and so powerful in my memory. A friend said it best, "it is the perfect combination of art and space." The work belongs there. It inhabits the space in an intensely powerful way while somehow managing to coexist with it. It is solid, significant work, -by far the best painting I saw on the walls my whole visit.
I've spent the last 15 months or so shedding. Like Bird, I reached a point where I felt I had to withdraw for a time and find my voice. I may be no Charlie Parker to the visual art world, but I've got chops that ain't like nobody else's. It feels time to climb into the ring, to live or die by the intensity of personal vision and unyielding tenacity. I may get a few beat downs along the way, but the world will never see what I make no effort to show it. Now I know that it has to see it; that's why I'm here.
So I come back into the daily grind recharged and transcended. Good art always makes me want to paint. Being in artists' studios always makes me excited and on fire to return to my own. Shots in the pub and much bantering about art and paint and space and form, it's time well spent...always. But painting is what unites us. Time in the studio getting in and getting down; that is its own realness.
practice stillness
Althaea (in progress), oil on canvas, 48" x 60", Rico
I was able to get into the studio for a long session yesterday and made tremendous progress on two paintings I've been working on; one since last year and the other since February. I am fighting a cold I'd very much like to rid myself of before my NYC weekend.
I read one of my favorite art blogs and there's much to see in Chelsea, so I'll ask if anyone wants to make a day of it with me. Basquiat is top of my list.
The rare times when I'm able to log hours in the daytime make me wonder what my work would look like if I did this full time. As it stands, I can hardly keep up; I'm limited only by time and materials. Increasingly I can afford the materials and I keep myself well-stocked, but time is always against me. With oil, time is a medium in and of itself. I love that paintings take multiple sessions, because coming in and out of a picture enables me to see more than I would if I were able to plow through. Sometimes I miss acrylics for their immediacy, but mostly not. I'm interested in the Way of painting; the eternal journey towards perfection that manifests itself in daily practice. Keeping it slow means I spend most of my time looking in an attempt to see.
Something is reoccurring in the pictures as of late, these wide passages of emptiness; gaping orifices that recede into blackish void. They remind me of Caravaggio in the overt reference to the Nothingness; that backdrop of our conscious lives and the curtain that will eventually fall on each of us. Light and motion punctuated by eternal stillness. I think about the placid lake we hiked around on Paris Mountain last month. How ripples dissipate and stillness is itself a presence. Since the beginning of this body of work I have noticed references to the anatomical and the sensual. They often begin as gesture drawings, which of course also reference the body and nature. I don't think about these things in the studio when I'm painting. I attempt to clear my mind and paint with the non-mind. I'm interested in what the paint wants to do and I try to follow it. But here at home on a Sunday, I take a moment to consider.
11 days
In 11 days I'll be in NYC, attending the opening of the artist James Austin Murray. The show is a culmination of a year's work; a site-specific installation cum painting exhibition. I've watched the beginnings of this body or work through its evolution at the famous Bemis Center in Omaha, NE. Murray's work is menacing, beautiful, epic and powerful; it combines brutal physicality with a masterful dance with light and illumination. The deep grooves in his blacks bring associations of crowding around records in my teenage years; the ritual of taking in the album cover, the liner notes, the sleeve and the vinyl itself as visual and aesthetic experience. They are both terrible and wonderful to behold; and that's through reproduction.
Facebook has been on fire over the weekend with a posting by the online curator Art Orbiter of artists' studios from around the world. For me personally, to be included in any post with Miquel Barcelo, one of my major influences, is a tremendous honor and delight. It's so great to see all the different spaces in which artists practice. Before my current studio, I was reminded of the many studios I've had before; storage spaces, garage, extra bedroom, basement, subterranean tire warehouse, loft apartment. I stuck with it in the times between studios as well. Who is Art Orbiter? I may have a clue, but I'll never tell.
My own show opens next Thursday at Art & Light in Greenville. I ran into one of the other artists, a well-known printmaker whose work my wife and I have collected for years, and we found out we're in the same venue, the Hub, at ArtFields.
I submitted Jocasta to Carolina's Got Art this afternoon, so my potential reach in April extends far and wide across the Carolinas.
Tonight I'll brave the cold and sit on our front porch and smoke a nice maduro with my Japanese scotch. And still I rise.
Facebook has been on fire over the weekend with a posting by the online curator Art Orbiter of artists' studios from around the world. For me personally, to be included in any post with Miquel Barcelo, one of my major influences, is a tremendous honor and delight. It's so great to see all the different spaces in which artists practice. Before my current studio, I was reminded of the many studios I've had before; storage spaces, garage, extra bedroom, basement, subterranean tire warehouse, loft apartment. I stuck with it in the times between studios as well. Who is Art Orbiter? I may have a clue, but I'll never tell.
My own show opens next Thursday at Art & Light in Greenville. I ran into one of the other artists, a well-known printmaker whose work my wife and I have collected for years, and we found out we're in the same venue, the Hub, at ArtFields.
I submitted Jocasta to Carolina's Got Art this afternoon, so my potential reach in April extends far and wide across the Carolinas.
Tonight I'll brave the cold and sit on our front porch and smoke a nice maduro with my Japanese scotch. And still I rise.
ink
It's been slow going due to my personal travel and the cold nights. I have another 48 x 60 ready to receive paint, and hopefully I'll get in this Friday during the warmer daylight hours. My wife starts her rehearsal schedule this week, so I bought some white ink and black arches paper to be able to do some work at home.
I'll hear from the ArtFields venue this week and hopefully get some logistical details at that point.
The day job has me completely stressed to the point of losing sleep. Combined with not being able to get into the studio, my emotions and anxieties are close to the surface. But I have everything ready to go in the studio when I get that break of time and climate. I basically work outside, which is why I love the summers. If I can move some work in next week's show, I hope to begin some of the construction projects which will help me combat the cold months. I've noticed some discoloration of the whites if I try to paint below 40 degrees.
I'm excited about the ink drawings, -excited to embark on a period of drawing; period. I was looking through book of Richard Serra's drawings this weekend and they are superb. He is an artist who constantly draws, and it shows in everything he does. It's our brains' lifeline as artists.
This work is getting stronger. I finally feel I have the blacks right, which took the better part of year's worth of effort. I'm anxious to see where it takes me this year.
I'll hear from the ArtFields venue this week and hopefully get some logistical details at that point.
The day job has me completely stressed to the point of losing sleep. Combined with not being able to get into the studio, my emotions and anxieties are close to the surface. But I have everything ready to go in the studio when I get that break of time and climate. I basically work outside, which is why I love the summers. If I can move some work in next week's show, I hope to begin some of the construction projects which will help me combat the cold months. I've noticed some discoloration of the whites if I try to paint below 40 degrees.
I'm excited about the ink drawings, -excited to embark on a period of drawing; period. I was looking through book of Richard Serra's drawings this weekend and they are superb. He is an artist who constantly draws, and it shows in everything he does. It's our brains' lifeline as artists.
This work is getting stronger. I finally feel I have the blacks right, which took the better part of year's worth of effort. I'm anxious to see where it takes me this year.
Artfields notification
the mad hours; oil on canvas, 108" x 76", Rico '12
official entry to Artfields 2013
As I mentioned in a previous post, I submitted work to Artfields, an interesting and ambitious project in an eastern SC community called Lake City. It's potentially something to watch, both from the standpoint of how small, agricultural-based communities and towns are adapting to the ever-shifting cultural and fiscal landscape as well as how to build a respectable regional art show from the ground up.
I want this to go well. It's in my best interest that it does, and I love an underdog in the art world. So the questions going forward are, can a tiny rural community actually pull this off? Will they get regional and national press to bolster their efforts? Will they be taken seriously as a legitimate arts festival instead of a provincial crafts fair? Tough questions, all.
As for me, I'm truly grateful to be included. I really want this work to get in front of people of all walks of life. This is a nice acknowledgement after years of flying beneath the radar in this state, while simultaneously continuing to receive critical accolades both coasts. I'm glad my work will be seen. This is my year, the ascent is already under way.
#secretshow
I made the decision to let some of the paintings from "the 50" be shown in a commercial gallery in SC. I dedicated all of 2011 to a very specific exploration of color and technique in the studio and "the50" are the result. At the suggestion of a friend from the West Coast, I hung all of them in an enormous grid in my studio; and I have to give it to her, it was fairly magnificent.
The work has been stored ever since, and at the end of 2011 I was already moving toward the black and white work that I'm doing now and plan to continue indefinately. So these paintings are unique to me, and likely to never be repeated. I've given one gallery exclusive access to the entire cache, the works have been selected, and they will be shown in Greenville, SC in March. I decided rather than to promote the show in the normal way of a flier, that I would take a very different approach and not tell anyone where it is until the last minute. So the idea of the "secret show" was hatched; replete with hashtag.
Another enticement for this show is that it is a chance to pick up one of my paintings for 3 figures. Think of it as akin to a low IPO on art futures, and don't wish you had gotten it when. So follow #secretshow for details and more teasers, including previews of the works included.
Follow me on Twitter as @ChristopherRico
St. Christopher
untitled study, 4" x 7", oil on canvas board, Rico '13
"Hang on St. Christopher through the
smoke and the oil, buckle down the rumble seat
let the radiator boil..." -Tom Waits
I submitted work to ArtFields, an interesting endeavor in the small town of Lake City, South Carolina. It is my first attempt in a very long time to exhibit work in the state in which I have lived for over a decade. The moment felt right, the work is ready to be seen and so I stuck my neck out. I'll update this blog in a couple of weeks when I hear the panel's decision. Either way, I will pull no punches about the process, the festival and the quality of work exhibited. They want to make some noise. So do I.
My head is in NYC at the moment. I found out there will be a large Basquiat exhibit going on while I'm there and I look forward to seeing what else is on the walls. My Greenville dealer is coming down next week for a studio visit, so that will be what it is. Always a pleasure to host Teresa, she is one of those rare people who genuinely loves, and I mean loves art and artists. There are times I wished we both lived in another part of the world; I feel we could move a tremendous amount of paintings.
I've been down with health issues all week, despite my overall healthy lifestyle. There are parts of growing old that don't bother me one bit and there are parts that completely stink. Death is the price of life, no one avoids the long march into night. I hope I go in my studio with stained fingers and the paint still wet on whatever I was working on.
Between the cold and illness I haven't worked in over a week, which causes tremendous internal stress. I've so much to do, several works in process and I need to get back in the studio for these things and my own sanity. I hope to catch a break this weekend. Until then I hold on.
drift
"Buffalo 2", in progress, oil on canvas
60" x 48", Rico '13
There's this sense of living with the work. I don't know how to explain it; I start a painting and it is like I'm searching for which note will come next as I play. That's the thing, -one feels the way through; it isn't prescribed or a picture in the head thing. It's organic. Paintings evolve and for me it is almost a call and response relationship for weeks or months or years. Paint is laid down. Sometimes in earnest, sometimes tentatively at first (though one has to overcome that immediately). I do a lot of looking. Eventually I see.
This one wouldn't let me go. Thought it was nearly done last year but it wasn't. I painted out huge swaths of it over the weekend because I wanted that openness in the composition. I wanted to take it right up to looking incomplete. Maybe that's how we are; that's the human condition.
I'm becoming more interested in gray.
New canvases arrived today, along with black gesso and tubes of Mars black. I can't stop now, I'm in deep.
voice
The rain came down on the tin roof of the studio last night and there was jazz, mournful and ethereal, filling the space. I had deemed a painting lost just before the New Year, but decided to go back into it and keep in it. It is slow going but it it coming. It feels like sculpting stone, as I've had to chip here and there and wait and look and try to see.
A cigar and a nice Roija and contemplation as the paint dried. I looked over some of the newer studies; I looked around the studio and I felt a sense of singularity -a sense of voice. There are those who say that there is nothing new. I say that when one is open and honest and seeks out their voice, that expression is unique in the universe. It has never been and it will never be again. I've no concern for novelty for its own sake. I try to stay open and to paint through.
I've been in this studio for 5 years this month. It is a second home, a respite to a working father and husband and gentleman. It is my Byronic island where I detach myself from the world. There will be construction this month, a new wall on the south side. The space will change, but I am changing and my work is changing and evolution is fitting and natural to the sustained purpose of things.
A cigar and a nice Roija and contemplation as the paint dried. I looked over some of the newer studies; I looked around the studio and I felt a sense of singularity -a sense of voice. There are those who say that there is nothing new. I say that when one is open and honest and seeks out their voice, that expression is unique in the universe. It has never been and it will never be again. I've no concern for novelty for its own sake. I try to stay open and to paint through.
I've been in this studio for 5 years this month. It is a second home, a respite to a working father and husband and gentleman. It is my Byronic island where I detach myself from the world. There will be construction this month, a new wall on the south side. The space will change, but I am changing and my work is changing and evolution is fitting and natural to the sustained purpose of things.
the spiritual in art
currently untitled, oil on canvas, 60" x 48", Rico '13
It's not just about beauty. I'm interested in magnificence and wonder. The oceans and mountains stir in us the sensations of both admiration and fear. Nature, as anyone who spends time outdoors will tell you, must be respected; and there's a heavy price for not doing so. I have a deep love of the epic and vast landscapes of deserts and oceans and the arctic. They are to me the places of the gods, old and new. I'm concerned with the primordial and divine, even though I practice religious abstinence as a rule in my personal life.
I don't know that I've gotten to that place yet in my work, but I feel I'm getting close. I don't care about cleverness, -I loathe it in art to be brutally honest. I respect work that is powerful and muscular, or ethereal and fluid, and defies itself; whatever that self may be. I believe that so-called color field abstraction is the great unfulfilled promise of the Ab Ex movement. It was snuffed, -not because of the exhaustion of its ideas, but because of the fear of its mysticism. Hard edge and geometrical abstraction, -to my mind, won the day because it is far easier to be intellectual than to trade in matters of the soul. I have nothing against that kind of abstract painting, I have more friends and acquaintances that paint in those styles than paint like me. Being an exile, I have the freedom to associate with painters I respect, and that in fact don't seem immediately related to my aesthetic, even though they often are in subtle ways. I like good art. I hate bad art. The "style" has jack to do with whether a painting succeeds or fails; it's what's behind it and in it and what comes through it.
I'm an artist because I'm invested in working toward the perfection of my ideas. I may not get there, but it doesn't really matter. The journey will continue to transform me and perhaps a few others along the way. I may never sell another painting and there are times when that is so incredibly liberating. When work sells it gives voice to all those other aspects of self that try to come into the studio: the critic, the procrastinator, the naysayer and the conformist. The best work I've sold has sometimes been undocumented, and there's something fitting about that. I can't refer to it as a template. I can't ever look at it again and say, "yeah, I should do 20 of those." Working towards the perfection of my ideas means that the work leads the way. I follow it; sometimes unwillingly, sometimes in wild abandon. I don't paint like I did 8, 5 or even 1 year ago. There is a vernacular, -I suppose that's unavoidable and perhaps that is what people refer to when they refer to style. It's my manner of painting, but it isn't conscious. I repeat themes, but I attack them differently as I learn from each painting. I believe that every painting should be autonomous in the studio.
I was thinking today how fortunate I am to have to grapple with doubt as often as I do. Some never doubt themselves or question their existence, and so far in my experience I find them to be not very interesting people and often quite tedious. Fundamentalists of all persuasions are the worst; there are few traits more tiresome in a human being than certitude and self-righteousness. But to have to climb into the ring against yourself, that is to my mind the measure of man and the essence of an artist. You can't fake yourself out, and you can't really ever cheat your art because your soul will not give you comfort if you do. There is what Martha Graham called "that divine unrest" that drives the true artist to push through and beyond and to keep going when it feels like they are all alone in a place no one will ever see or know, much less understand. I believe one has to go to those places and bring it back and put it up on the wall, or on the page, or on stage. You have to take us as the audience on that great quest. It may be the closest some of them ever get to a real quest in their lives. That's the artist's charge.
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