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.

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.