divergence

when we are tired we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago

96" x 72", oil on canvas, Rico '14

The journey of my life has been ever towards my true self.  It is a narrative steeped in adventure, disappointment, luck and struggle.  Some will tell you that I've been through a lot, but I tend not to focus on hard times.  I do not allow those moments to define me; the moments when I get back up and fight on are what define me instead.  

For me, painting is about finding my voice.  I don't think I've ever consciously attempted to make something new that's never been seen before.  I've painted the way that interested me, and sometimes I've painted in the style of artists whom I admire for a time to learn about their process and materials. As I became more passionate about painting and as I've painted more and more paintings, I have moved toward a greater authenticity.  As I have concerned myself less with content and narrative, the work has become (at times) more about story in a mythical sense.

I think the world (and the art world in particular) needs mystics.  We need less religion and a deeper communion with the divine.  We need to look up into the stars and clouds and feel our connection to the most majestic things and in that moment understand our own majestic humanity.  If we can recognize it in ourselves we can hopefully begin to recognize it in others.  Rare is the person who is killed for claiming s/he is a god.  Common are those who are slaughtered for suggesting that we all are.  

The past year has been one of profound existential struggle for me.  I've wrestled with doubt and discouragement and even enduring, acute despair.  Last Fall I was questioning everything and wondering if I could go on.  Now I stand on the threshold of my next great adventure.  

As I find my own clear and unique artistic voice, I find that the world around me looks and feels different.  I interact with people differently than I have before.  My day job has been a hard row to plow more often than not, but it has given me the opportunity to develop a personal resilience and fortitude in the face of harshness and alienation that I did not know I possessed.  In my work environment, I am a unique mind and personality.  There are no other artists, no divergent thinkers.

When we see life as a grand journey, I believe we are richer.  I am surrounded by young students who see everything as a means to an end, and I am deeply saddened by the seemingly one-dimensional existence they are resigning themselves to.  There's a joy and wonder in getting lost; there is an inexplicable freedom in not knowing what is coming next in life.  I've lived on that edge for a long, long time and I can't imagine living any other way.  I will never do just one thing.  Life offers too many rich and exciting opportunities and there is so much to know and to experience.  Choosing to live outside of our comfort zone is one of the most powerful life choices we can make.  The rewards are boundless.  Yes, there is struggle and pain.  But those things come our way anyway.

This painting has taken months and taken a lot out of me.  I struggled and struggled with it over the past several weeks; taking entire sections out, reworking them, putting them back in.  How do I know when a painting is done?  I think it let's me know.  

Weird scenes inside the gold mine

My family attended the wedding of a good friend this weekend.  The bride's father is a manager/producer and let's just say he's high on the food chain; not just in Nashville but globally.  The house was extraordinary, the art collection mind-boggling and I'll just sum it up with one image:

A "selfie" by Ringo Starr, taken with a film camera in a bathroom mirror circa late 1960's.  Signed.  To said father.

The photo collection alone was a music geek's wet dream.  Turning to leave the bathroom, up above the light switches...holy shit, a letter press print of sheet music signed by Brian Wilson.  It just kept going.  Taking in the Miro' on the staircase landing, I was filled with many emotions but ultimately I take some heart in the fact that people of that economic level collect art accordingly.  Certainly not all of them, but some.  Chagall, Warhol, Howard Finster, it just kept going; a feast to the eyes at every turn with a decidedly clear aesthetic.  They were hung with appreciation but never in a vulgar, showy way.  These people lived with their art, and I think that is what gave me hope.

It was a window into a world few of us (at my socio-economic level) get to see.  Art that may or may never be viewed by the general public again.  Out of respect, I left my phone in the car and didn't check-in.  Alas, no selfie with the Miro', but everyone deserves their personal space if not their privacy.  Who knows what treasures are locked in the temples of the 1% that will never again see the museums?

And tomorrow night, I will leave all that behind, suit up, and go finish the painting in the studio....

back to black and white

Painting is doing; it requires taking action and seeing it through.  But it is also something more akin to being.  It requires presence and quietness and listening.  For me, the less agenda in a work of art the better.  I'm not saying I'm against political art, but there has to be something else behind it.  Art whose only content is ideas lacks something; it is all-too-often empty.

So the artist paints of his/her time.  We paint of the moment in the hope of connecting to the timeless, and we paint from within in the hope of connecting with the universal.  I make art, in a physical sense, to survive for hundreds of years.  That alone doesn't make it superior, but one must concede it makes for a formidable case as to its intent.

The paintings I am most uncertain about are often the best.  Those which please me, that is to say those that I look at and think, "that's exactly what I want" are generally not as strong as the ones cloaked in ambiguity or ambivalence.  So this state of uncertainty and doubt is a powerful place from which to create.

Proper pics of this one as I complete it within the next few weeks.  I like to snap pictures with my phone for shorthand reads.  It enables me to see the work instantaneously and in an unflattering context.  I need to be able to see the work in the moment, without context or history or the relationship I've developed with the long time spent.

Show announcement

the guarded glance of half solicitude, Rico '14

8" x 10", photo reproduction

My work is included in a group show, Fiction (with only daylight between us) at the University of Dayton, in Ohio.  The show opened this past Friday night.  I'm told it will move to the Neon Furnace Gallery when this run is over.  The show was curated by the artist Jeffery Cortland Jones.  Jeff is an acquaintance and I remember distinctly seeing his work for the first time in Brooklyn at Sideshow gallery.  I love his sparse, open spaces which resonate with a quiet tension.  I was honored to be invited to participate.

The show concurrently runs online at Jeff's virtual project space No Future Projects.