two if by sea

studio wall, August 24

untitled paintings in progress, 30" x 24" (each), Rico '14

Stolen hours Sunday morning, a host of smaller canvases in play.  Despite the intensity of the road ahead, I keep reminding myself of the days and nights I've left behind.  Those days began as these, before the dawn hours.  Then an intense office job all day, a workout mid-day, home to homework/dinner/bedtime routine until 8 or so and then off to the studio until the final hours of each day.  So as overwhelming as it all seems in its newness, I've handled greater.

I am liking these small 30 by 24 canvases.  They are big enough to work with and yet small enough to be portable and (perhaps as important) shippable.  The doubts and agony of my last post are, -at least for the moment, fading.  I must preserver and stay in it.  I have to find the time.  I know now that I will.

My upcoming plans for NYC are canceled.  I had hoped to attend a friends solo show just north of the city, but I would sabotage myself on many levels if I made the trip now.  As much as I need to see those friends, and as much as I need the encouragement I feel in seeing said friends getting shows and the accolades they deserve, I must respect the path I am on and its limitations.  Such is life, we can't have everything we want.

By the end of this month I should have a handle on my schedule and what hours are available for studio time.  For now I do as I have always done, I make time; stealing it if I have too, making the most of the unplanned interval, I have come to understand that it is about what I do and not how much or how often.  If the time is fruitful, that's all that matters.

Self forgiveness is my daily practice as of late.  I'm a person with enormous personal expectations and it is difficult to let myself off the hook when I don't meet them.  Today, at least, it felt as though I did.  

machinations of a distracted mind

I have been in the doldrums in terms of studio practice.  There is no wind to push me onward, my vessel has been sacked by vicious swells, my sails ripped, and I have been floating motionless and uncertain for most of the past month.  Voices in my head are at war: one side is telling me to walk away, the other is pleading not to give up.

After Damascus, I don't know if I have anything left to say.  Recent disappointments weigh a bit too heavy on my soul, and the road ahead (graduate school) seems narrow enough with family, much less an art practice and all that comes with it.  I am still toying with shuttering the studio in January, putting everything in storage and accepting a 2-year hiatus.  And yet hope, that cruel lover, persists in whispering in my ear.  Two decades down the line only to abandon it all, what then?

People tell me it is purely location.  To an extent that is true.  My overtures to NYC were neither unsuccessful nor ignored.  Yet the effort is costly to maintain, and for most of this year I simply haven't had the means.  There is no market for my work locally, perhaps even regionally.  I spent years trying to break into Atlanta with no success.  For the past 2 or 3 years I've simply retreated into the studio and have stopped reaching out altogether.

I am not a person who backs down easily.  Tenacity (and perhaps sometimes pride) has always propelled me to overcome life's obstacles.  When I realized that art was the thing, -the purpose if you will, of my life I dug in and I've never looked back.  Yet human arms can only fight the currents for so long without a lifeline.  Eventually we are consumed and sink into the depths.

The irony perhaps is that the world,  now as much as ever, needs artists.  Real artists who make us uncomfortable and do not merely entertain or provoke for provocation's sake.  There are so very few, and fewer still whose work is truly meaningful and pure and cut from authenticity with sweat and blood and anguish and alienation.  I'm not suggesting artists have to be unhappy people, what I am saying is that artists can rarely, if ever, be satisfied people.  This time is a pivot point where new paradigms are rising.  Art gives meaning and context to these movements, and it offers understanding.

I see our country in a state of unraveling.  Our time as Empire is drawing to an end.  20 years ago that statement in some obscure blog or even in print wouldn't carry much weight or get noticed; now it borders on sedition to even utter it.  So few people possess an understanding of art, partly because of the Art World's intentional insulation; money, power, blah, blah.  Partly because we have purged cultural education from our schools.  We're producing entire generations incapable of appreciating beauty and experience.  They watch reality television yet seldom, if ever, seek any truth.

My time away last weekend was healing and steels me for the immediate road ahead.  Yet there is this numb dissatisfaction that aches in my belly.  If not through art, how will I be?

the road

A road trip in the waning days of summer.  A last blast before graduate school begins and with it a new life.  Two old friends meeting in a great southern city; whiskey and great food, sights and long conversations into the dawn.  There are people in our lives with whom the conversation never truly ends; it seems to pick up where it left off, no matter the time and miles between.

The road trip is about minimalism.  One has to be honest with one's self about what they need and take nothing more.  I am a one bag traveler.  I refuse to check luggage except in the event of an extended stay.  My childhood in the military life taught me how to grab and go, and I've always applied that philosophy to travel since.  I like a clean, empty car with nothing but tunes, a map and a proper camera.  I'll instagram when it's over, memories tend to happen when you're in the moment and not lost in cellular prayer.

I'm taking my time.  I plan to wander, maybe even get lost for a bit.  Summer winds and open road and back road discoveries will people the journal entries and sketchbooks in the coming months.  I'll drink with locals.  Tales of high adventure and good friends, and maybe, if I'm very lucky, new friends too.