Of all the unlikely people whose criticism would leave me feeling vindicated, lo and behold comes Jerry Saltz. Just when I had him made for a whore for doing "that-artist-reality-show-of-which-I-do-not-speak", his subsequent ruminations on that process as well as recent reviews have proven me wrong. I apologize, Mr. Saltz.
2007 Art in 2010
I've been spending a lot of time reading this blog, about an artist who has entered into a crisis of faith about, -well, being an artist. I confess I'm feeling it myself, ready to throw in the towel and walk away with what little money (and less dignity) that I have left. Painting seems so meaningless now. No one cares, and worse, no one knows why they should.
I have a shelf full of books about how to further a career as an artist. All of them insist that you don't need to live in NYC or LA to make it in American art. This is a complete lie. You can certainly garner some success in places like Chicago, Atlanta, possibly Dallas (although I would argue this is very specific), and some other mid-sized cities, but living where I do it is like fighting the surging tide with a dagger. An exercise in tenacity perhaps, but fruitless nonetheless.
There has to be community and without it, the lines between art, delusion and masturbation blur. I've fought alone and unsupported for as long as I can....uncle!
I still feel the need to make. I still experience the world with wonder and see the interconnectedness of things that make me want to accentuate or exploit patterns. I love the plastic, and I love discovering all the things it can do. Where will I put all of this? I don't know.
I have several artist friends who practice martial arts, and this has always seemed a very natural extension of the artist's life. I believe most artists are seeking a Way, after all. I used to get this to some extent when I was a cyclist. Riding for 50 or 60 miles, your body has to surrender and there were times when I felt emptied out and could only feel the pumping of of the pedals and only hear my own breathing. I get moments like this when I paint, or make. That's why I choose to believe that there is something to it, that it is -at least partially, my Way. But 13 years without any real external validation is a damn long time. The constant, and emphatic rejection has built up and with two children to take care of I question the sanity of continuing to attempt to make this Way into a money-making career. Perhaps they are (and have always been) separate things. Perhaps that's ok.
Since I'm unwilling to leave my wife and children and marry, -oh say an Italian porn star, or become a NY party-boy artist, I don't see myself garnering publicity enough to thrust my "art" into the public discourse. Since the one idea I did have which would have certainly done that I rejected out of both principal as well as implication, it is clear to me that I don't want that certain brand of fame (or infamy) enough.
Finally, there is the cold hard truth that I may just not have the mettle. That my chops aren't good enough and that no matter how long or hard I work at this it will never result in so much as minor gallery representation. I should be happy a handful of paintings have sold and go home.
steel and cotton
the mad hours where once we danced on the sofaoil and acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30", Rico '10
eating soil and drinking bullets from a cupoil and acrylic on canvas, 40" x 30", Rico '10
Living art
There's recent art criticism that makes me hopeful. I came across this article in Prospect Magazine, which draws comparisons between Post-Modernism and Rococo, comparing (rightfully so) Damien Hurst to the likes of Bouguereau. It is a compelling argument. So much of the blue chip art of the last decade, or even two, has been narcissistic, vapid pastiche; willfully plagiarising in the name of Concept or Commentary.
Ben Lewis lays it on the line in this unflinching article and I applaud anyone in this day and age with the cajones to say what they feel and the intellect and substance to back it up. Political writers could certainly take a page from this book. Similarly, the now-seminal Roberta Smith article from earlier this year gave so many of us hope that there may actually be art critics in New York that are paying attention to what they are NOT seeing instead of reaffirming the Program imposed upon us by Museums, auction houses and dealers. Smith is poised to become a truly great art critic, one that history will vindicate, even celebrate if she is willing to take it one step further; to get out into the studios and get dirty. Get thee to Brooklyn, Ms. Smith.
It's one thing to recognize there is great art (yes, I said great) being made outside the collective limelight. It is quite another to take the time, effort and risk to seek it out and champion it. Isn't this what a handful of art critics are best known for? Not only did it propel their own careers, but it brought unknown, desperate artists into the light of day (and under the lights of the galleries) who have since become the bedrock of contemporary art. Sadly, we have forgotten that the Impressionists were once outsider artists but were championed until people were able to see rather than look. This job is never over, and the onus of discourse (and to some degree discovery) lies squarely on the shoulders of those who would call themselves critics.
The current thread in Carol Diehl's blog about artist statements relates well to what I'm saying. It has become our task as artists to create not only our work, but equally to draft crib notes about that work for the flaccid art press. It's high time we got some educated feedback. I for one, make work because I want a dialog. I want to interact and to know what YOU, the people seeing it think. Art is not art in a dark studio. It only becomes art when people see it, and respond to it. In the end, my intentions, -no matter sacred or profane, matter little to the life of the work.
Art, ultimately, has to live and die on its own. Yet we have lost a sophisticated audience, and more poignantly, we have lost cultural leaders who can positively inform and educate audiences as to what they are looking at. I've beat this drum before, but art is not, NOT, 100% subjective. Like wine or literature or other cultural expressions, one must bring a certain amount of knowledge and awareness (as well as openness) to the table when encountering art. Personal tastes are inherently flawed and lack credibility in the broader conversations. There is a vast history that informs the way we perceive, and without knowledge or concern for these and other contexts, we become little more than gawkers.
Medium-sized cities like the one where I currently have a show want to import some kind of culture-template. But vibrant art scenes are not out-of-the-box products. They take time and nurturing and they take the audience meeting the artists and galleries half way. Asheville has this built-in because of decades of residents from Europe and New York and notably the Black Mountain College experiement. Contemporary art is not feared there, and audiences know how to respond to it because they have taken part in its genesis in America. Sadly, the recent influx of new wealth (that which lacks this very sense of history and tradition), may well be that city's arts undoing.
In this region there is a provincial mindset which lacks the tools to deal with anything post-Impressionist for fear of looking foolish. But this very fear is one of the major obstacles to a thriving scene. Artists would move here in droves if they felt supported. The cost of living is low, studios like mine can still be had at reasonable rents, and there are relatively few serious artists, so there is an honest potential for community. Moreover, the influx of truly professional artists to the area would thin out the playing field, marginalize the dilettantes, and bring the overall quality up. Right now we have fine art, craft artists and so-called Outsider artists all lumped together with no delineation that can easily be understood by the art public. The galleries, for their part, cannot execute real programs because they are forced into a one-size-fits-all, appeal to everyone business model that may sell a few $50 paintings here and there but does little to advance or cultivate a diverse and thriving art scene.
This hurts craft artists and artisans as much as it hurts struggling artists like myself. To be fair, why should someone pay $5000 for a painting that is hanging next to another of the same size and,-at least to the uninformed eye, same style for $500? The answer is a no-brainer, they shouldn't. The juried show presided over by an amateur and the flee-market approach to curating that is so popular here do not serve anyone. They only highlight the cultural inadequacies which are so prevalent. (But I am digressing and this is really another post).
Rather than embrace the accepted, isn't it time we ask to be surprised? I don't mean shocked, and certainly not shocked for shock's sake. I mean genuinely surprised by what we see on the walls? This is a trickle-down economy that actually can work, in visual currency and in aesthetic trade. The big city critics scour the studios, the museums get spines to risk ridicule and low attendance with shows of living artists, medium and small city museums follow suit, and the smaller scenes and remote artists respond to the renewed dialogue.
More next week.
Ben Lewis lays it on the line in this unflinching article and I applaud anyone in this day and age with the cajones to say what they feel and the intellect and substance to back it up. Political writers could certainly take a page from this book. Similarly, the now-seminal Roberta Smith article from earlier this year gave so many of us hope that there may actually be art critics in New York that are paying attention to what they are NOT seeing instead of reaffirming the Program imposed upon us by Museums, auction houses and dealers. Smith is poised to become a truly great art critic, one that history will vindicate, even celebrate if she is willing to take it one step further; to get out into the studios and get dirty. Get thee to Brooklyn, Ms. Smith.
It's one thing to recognize there is great art (yes, I said great) being made outside the collective limelight. It is quite another to take the time, effort and risk to seek it out and champion it. Isn't this what a handful of art critics are best known for? Not only did it propel their own careers, but it brought unknown, desperate artists into the light of day (and under the lights of the galleries) who have since become the bedrock of contemporary art. Sadly, we have forgotten that the Impressionists were once outsider artists but were championed until people were able to see rather than look. This job is never over, and the onus of discourse (and to some degree discovery) lies squarely on the shoulders of those who would call themselves critics.
The current thread in Carol Diehl's blog about artist statements relates well to what I'm saying. It has become our task as artists to create not only our work, but equally to draft crib notes about that work for the flaccid art press. It's high time we got some educated feedback. I for one, make work because I want a dialog. I want to interact and to know what YOU, the people seeing it think. Art is not art in a dark studio. It only becomes art when people see it, and respond to it. In the end, my intentions, -no matter sacred or profane, matter little to the life of the work.
Art, ultimately, has to live and die on its own. Yet we have lost a sophisticated audience, and more poignantly, we have lost cultural leaders who can positively inform and educate audiences as to what they are looking at. I've beat this drum before, but art is not, NOT, 100% subjective. Like wine or literature or other cultural expressions, one must bring a certain amount of knowledge and awareness (as well as openness) to the table when encountering art. Personal tastes are inherently flawed and lack credibility in the broader conversations. There is a vast history that informs the way we perceive, and without knowledge or concern for these and other contexts, we become little more than gawkers.
Medium-sized cities like the one where I currently have a show want to import some kind of culture-template. But vibrant art scenes are not out-of-the-box products. They take time and nurturing and they take the audience meeting the artists and galleries half way. Asheville has this built-in because of decades of residents from Europe and New York and notably the Black Mountain College experiement. Contemporary art is not feared there, and audiences know how to respond to it because they have taken part in its genesis in America. Sadly, the recent influx of new wealth (that which lacks this very sense of history and tradition), may well be that city's arts undoing.
In this region there is a provincial mindset which lacks the tools to deal with anything post-Impressionist for fear of looking foolish. But this very fear is one of the major obstacles to a thriving scene. Artists would move here in droves if they felt supported. The cost of living is low, studios like mine can still be had at reasonable rents, and there are relatively few serious artists, so there is an honest potential for community. Moreover, the influx of truly professional artists to the area would thin out the playing field, marginalize the dilettantes, and bring the overall quality up. Right now we have fine art, craft artists and so-called Outsider artists all lumped together with no delineation that can easily be understood by the art public. The galleries, for their part, cannot execute real programs because they are forced into a one-size-fits-all, appeal to everyone business model that may sell a few $50 paintings here and there but does little to advance or cultivate a diverse and thriving art scene.
This hurts craft artists and artisans as much as it hurts struggling artists like myself. To be fair, why should someone pay $5000 for a painting that is hanging next to another of the same size and,-at least to the uninformed eye, same style for $500? The answer is a no-brainer, they shouldn't. The juried show presided over by an amateur and the flee-market approach to curating that is so popular here do not serve anyone. They only highlight the cultural inadequacies which are so prevalent. (But I am digressing and this is really another post).
Rather than embrace the accepted, isn't it time we ask to be surprised? I don't mean shocked, and certainly not shocked for shock's sake. I mean genuinely surprised by what we see on the walls? This is a trickle-down economy that actually can work, in visual currency and in aesthetic trade. The big city critics scour the studios, the museums get spines to risk ridicule and low attendance with shows of living artists, medium and small city museums follow suit, and the smaller scenes and remote artists respond to the renewed dialogue.
More next week.
the mad hours
the mad hours where once we danced on the sofain progress, 2010 Rico
I'm bi-polar. For years, I've survived and functioned through the standard ways of self-medicating, my well-known strength of will, diet, exercise and the fact that so many people tend to sleep walk through life and not really pay attention to anyone else. Lately, and by this I mean over the past year, the surf has become too rough. In the highs, I walk shoulder to shoulder with gods and angels. I am the Hero and the Tyrant, for they are one in the same archetype. I can't sleep, I seem to move through my day in vibration.
The lows have become soundless hollow pits, from which I can barely look out at my wife and children. I exhaust myself during the day trying to appear "normal" and when I get home I can hardly speak to anyone and this, -at worst, can go on for weeks. I can feel myself going down, but like being caught in a rip tide I lack the strength to escape and instead am swept away. The added hell to this is the fact that I am, all the while, completely aware of what is happening.
The time has come to try medication. I have so many fears and anxieties about this, but the things I fear losing the most pale in comparison to what I know I am losing now. I worry that I will lose creativity, because I know that true creation comes from resistance. I'm deeply conflicted because while my mental health has been on a steady decline, my work has seemingly hit a notable arc and we artists are a superstitious lot who fear the slightest change in routine will somehow shatter that fragile thing we believe is inspiration.
I've come to understand this is a lie.
One can no more turn being an artist on and off than with any other imprinted way of being. We are born stamped with certain things: sexuality, intellect, predisposition to safety or adventure, and yes, the artist. With this in mind, so-called inspiration does not truly exist outside of one's self. It is the soul, the hard-wired personality which interprets the external world (every moment of it) as inspiring. We feel compelled to speak about it, -through words, through the making of things, music, and so on. Who in their right mind would choose this, after all?
So a new adventure begins in my life, and one on the outset of which, i confess, that I am very anxious and unsure. I've documented 4 years of my little life within these bandwidths, and at times I know it has been like watching a slow-motion train wreck. So I'll document this, because this is inseparable from the artistic practice.
It's a cliche', but I'm making the first step toward change by admitting the problem, -at least the major symptom of whatever the larger problem truly may be.
You may well say that, in light of this I have no business using the works of Anne Sexton as my current point of reference for the work going on in the studio. You might be right. But Anne and I have been together for a long, long time. The moment finally came when it was time, and "no" was simply not an option. Forgive me if I obsess on death and loss. It doesn't mean I'm feeling sorry for myself, or indulging my black-beret-wearing stereotype. It's just my moment for wrestling with it, nothing more.
eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup
in progress, 2010 Rico
So these are the mad hours. The funny thing about time is that it is always moving. Time is the shark and we are the prey. We could worry ourselves about the inevitability of our death, or we could enjoy swimming in the vast sea while we are able. Sometimes in schools, sometimes alone in the nooks and coral of the shallows. We cannot escape the time, and no man or nation or corporation can stop it.
It's hard to believe that art matters. By extension, it is often hard to imagine that my life and its pursuits matter either. What good does it do to make work that so few see, and that far less care about? Yet I can't stop. What tolls have been paid, and at what cost?
I am off to Missouri next week for a family wedding. Weddings and funerals are magical because we often simultaneously dread and enjoy them. Family gets together, and we observe life outside of ourselves. I think this is why they are healthy things, that sense of taking a moment from our busy, self-absorption and focusing -utterly and entirely on someone else's life.
I'll leave off with one final image, still untitled and larger than the other canvases I'm working on right now. More later this week.
The lows have become soundless hollow pits, from which I can barely look out at my wife and children. I exhaust myself during the day trying to appear "normal" and when I get home I can hardly speak to anyone and this, -at worst, can go on for weeks. I can feel myself going down, but like being caught in a rip tide I lack the strength to escape and instead am swept away. The added hell to this is the fact that I am, all the while, completely aware of what is happening.
The time has come to try medication. I have so many fears and anxieties about this, but the things I fear losing the most pale in comparison to what I know I am losing now. I worry that I will lose creativity, because I know that true creation comes from resistance. I'm deeply conflicted because while my mental health has been on a steady decline, my work has seemingly hit a notable arc and we artists are a superstitious lot who fear the slightest change in routine will somehow shatter that fragile thing we believe is inspiration.
I've come to understand this is a lie.
One can no more turn being an artist on and off than with any other imprinted way of being. We are born stamped with certain things: sexuality, intellect, predisposition to safety or adventure, and yes, the artist. With this in mind, so-called inspiration does not truly exist outside of one's self. It is the soul, the hard-wired personality which interprets the external world (every moment of it) as inspiring. We feel compelled to speak about it, -through words, through the making of things, music, and so on. Who in their right mind would choose this, after all?
So a new adventure begins in my life, and one on the outset of which, i confess, that I am very anxious and unsure. I've documented 4 years of my little life within these bandwidths, and at times I know it has been like watching a slow-motion train wreck. So I'll document this, because this is inseparable from the artistic practice.
It's a cliche', but I'm making the first step toward change by admitting the problem, -at least the major symptom of whatever the larger problem truly may be.
You may well say that, in light of this I have no business using the works of Anne Sexton as my current point of reference for the work going on in the studio. You might be right. But Anne and I have been together for a long, long time. The moment finally came when it was time, and "no" was simply not an option. Forgive me if I obsess on death and loss. It doesn't mean I'm feeling sorry for myself, or indulging my black-beret-wearing stereotype. It's just my moment for wrestling with it, nothing more.
eating soil and drinking bullets from a cupin progress, 2010 Rico
So these are the mad hours. The funny thing about time is that it is always moving. Time is the shark and we are the prey. We could worry ourselves about the inevitability of our death, or we could enjoy swimming in the vast sea while we are able. Sometimes in schools, sometimes alone in the nooks and coral of the shallows. We cannot escape the time, and no man or nation or corporation can stop it.
It's hard to believe that art matters. By extension, it is often hard to imagine that my life and its pursuits matter either. What good does it do to make work that so few see, and that far less care about? Yet I can't stop. What tolls have been paid, and at what cost?
I am off to Missouri next week for a family wedding. Weddings and funerals are magical because we often simultaneously dread and enjoy them. Family gets together, and we observe life outside of ourselves. I think this is why they are healthy things, that sense of taking a moment from our busy, self-absorption and focusing -utterly and entirely on someone else's life.
I'll leave off with one final image, still untitled and larger than the other canvases I'm working on right now. More later this week.
emerging
Attended the Faculty art exhibition last night and enjoyed speaking at length with a group of people I haven't seen in some time. I live and work in isolation, so contact with others of my ilk is often very magical and even emotional for me. For the most part I enjoy my "Splendid Isolation" as Zevon put it, but now and again is feels good to yak about art over booze and get loud and passionate about it all.
The work is steady and last night as I answered questions about how it is going, I was able to more clearly express what I'm interested in with these paintings, what excites me about non-traditional space exhibitions, and my upcoming trip to NY. When one speaks with others in one's field, it's just so much easier because you can go straight to specifics, and talk about the things that matter or concern you. There's no preliminary explaining to do.
Met some people and may have cultivated them into potential collectors, so the evening had that added bonus. Tonight the show at UVA opens and hopefully that will get my work in front of people who may have heard my name but not seen what I do. Logistics prohibit me from attending, but I'll see the show in a couple of weeks.
I feel a new sense of focus, and a new desire to get it in front of people. After 13 years, I have to confess that only now do I feel that sense of emerging.
transparency
All of the images in this post are the same painting in stages, chronologically from top down. The bottom photo is the current and final stage in the process and the image above is where i started tonight.
Not complete, but it came a long way over the past two weeks. More in the morning.
Not complete, but it came a long way over the past two weeks. More in the morning.
I made some much-needed updates to the website this morning. The gallery is a work in progress, so bear with me for a few weeks. I'm making work faster than I can document and upload it (which is a good thing). I hope to do a heavy re-design at the end of the year, during our long semester break and hopefully on a mac.
The new photo on the "about" page was shot by my friend and super-Pro, Andrew Howard. He was instrumental in the book, the film and has been a good friend and a tremendous help to me for many years. (Howie, if you're reading this the faculty show is next Thursday and you guys are welcome to stay with us).
I hear back from UVA about my entries for the juried show today. I'll tweet that information as soon as it is confirmed. Submitted 2 paintings, but there was a TON of art there, so I don't know if both (or either) will be accepted. Still, I press on.
Lots of travel coming up in the next 2 months, sadly very little of it art-related. I'm planning my first day trip to NYC in mid-October, the weekend before Matisse comes down. Fly in early, take in MoMA all day and then jump out late that evening. If you're the City and haven't seen the show (or want to see it again) drop me a line. Time-permitting I'd like to jump down to Chelsea and peep the galleries as well.
The new photo on the "about" page was shot by my friend and super-Pro, Andrew Howard. He was instrumental in the book, the film and has been a good friend and a tremendous help to me for many years. (Howie, if you're reading this the faculty show is next Thursday and you guys are welcome to stay with us).
I hear back from UVA about my entries for the juried show today. I'll tweet that information as soon as it is confirmed. Submitted 2 paintings, but there was a TON of art there, so I don't know if both (or either) will be accepted. Still, I press on.
Lots of travel coming up in the next 2 months, sadly very little of it art-related. I'm planning my first day trip to NYC in mid-October, the weekend before Matisse comes down. Fly in early, take in MoMA all day and then jump out late that evening. If you're the City and haven't seen the show (or want to see it again) drop me a line. Time-permitting I'd like to jump down to Chelsea and peep the galleries as well.
"first I'm gonna make it, and then I'm gonna break it 'til it falls apart." -Echo and the Bunnymen
Spent the first cool night of the end of summer in the studio, working on this larger painting and beginning another in the current series.
After I laid down the base layer of color (the most uplifting red I've seen in some time), I reclaimed the famous orange chair and just enjoyed looking at that red before I started to bury it.
Had some visitors stop by and I realized that I've started re-connecting to the world outside the studio walls. In that peaceful moment, in my chair, I realized that I have been in a state of chrysalis, and that now I am emerging a changed being.
They say that Scorpios go through 3 distinct phases. I have entered into my phoenix stage, where I am both aware of and at peace with the full extent of my powers, and I have realized the largest battles I fight are solely with myself. Despite the catastrophe of my personality over the course of my life, I have survived these attacks of self on self, and now I feel stronger and more confident in virtually every aspect of my being. This applies to the work as well.
If sleep disorders have returned temporarily to my life, it is largely out of excitement rather than anxiety. I feel that I see the road ahead more clearly than I have in years, possibly decades. And if my particular corner of the zodiac is sometimes seen as magical and intense, my recent self-awareness has amped up these energies to particular effect.
I have to say it feels good to begin the arduous process of getting out there once again. I've a way to go in terms of building enough work in this current series, but I expect to maintain my pace. We will see what the response is this weekend and throughout the month as the exhibition runs through October.
I am contemplating resurrecting MDM as part of the website overhaul.
After I laid down the base layer of color (the most uplifting red I've seen in some time), I reclaimed the famous orange chair and just enjoyed looking at that red before I started to bury it.
Had some visitors stop by and I realized that I've started re-connecting to the world outside the studio walls. In that peaceful moment, in my chair, I realized that I have been in a state of chrysalis, and that now I am emerging a changed being.They say that Scorpios go through 3 distinct phases. I have entered into my phoenix stage, where I am both aware of and at peace with the full extent of my powers, and I have realized the largest battles I fight are solely with myself. Despite the catastrophe of my personality over the course of my life, I have survived these attacks of self on self, and now I feel stronger and more confident in virtually every aspect of my being. This applies to the work as well.
If sleep disorders have returned temporarily to my life, it is largely out of excitement rather than anxiety. I feel that I see the road ahead more clearly than I have in years, possibly decades. And if my particular corner of the zodiac is sometimes seen as magical and intense, my recent self-awareness has amped up these energies to particular effect.I have to say it feels good to begin the arduous process of getting out there once again. I've a way to go in terms of building enough work in this current series, but I expect to maintain my pace. We will see what the response is this weekend and throughout the month as the exhibition runs through October.
I am contemplating resurrecting MDM as part of the website overhaul.
First things first. I apologize for the quality of the photos. I'm temporarily on a PC and the stock photo-editing software in a word, sucks. These two paintings are off to Greenville this weekend for submission to a group show. I'll post the dates when/if the work is accepted. I'm wrapping them up tonight and we're a go for tomorrow. It's been a crazy week. Someone at my new job asked me when I get time to paint, and I said I had to eliminate extraneous uses of time; namely, sleep. I discovered that sleep is overrated in college. I suffered from intense bouts of insomnia in my early 20's. By the time I moved to California, this had mostly subsided, but at its peak I would be up for 3 or 4 days at a time. When you don't get sleep, you're never fully awake. The strangest experiences ever were usually about day 3, when your body forces a kind of walking REM cycle. I would be walking around, doing stuff, but I would dream for what seemed like seconds. Long, complicated dreams, usually mirroring whatever I was doing, sort of like playing a video loop except you're living it. Needless to say, I loved Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club the moment I read it, though this was a decade after my own experiences.
I confess that hit the wall today. Thus the rambling....
So, back to the work. I borrowed the shadow-box frame from a painter friend in LA. Saw his work in Brooklyn last year and loved the frames. We talked about them on the phone and I'm pleased with how they came out and the extra "umph" they give the work. I feel good about the work.
I was finally able to order more canvases and hope to get back into a routine next week. I'm frustrated with not being able to blog as much as I'd like and the quality of the photos, but I will keep at it. Thanks for reading...whoever you are.
And thanks to those of you who comment and communicate with me via twitter or email. It means a lot to have your support and feedback.
Posted some of the current series on my Facebook page. Got a few thumbs up, which always feels good for a few moments. I'm off to buy lumber to make frames for the two submissions I'll be delivering next week, plus a larger painting I've decided to put in my new office.
I have some medium arriving this week and I can get back to work.
I told a friend recently that I'm ready to take my career to the next level, but I don't really know how to do that. It's been a crazy year, and even though there's lots to remain negative and even fatalistic about, I for one just don't have it in me anymore. We may lose a large chunk of our government to right-wing wackos (yeah, I said it) this november, but well, good luck with that people. As the fab four said, "we'd all love to see the plan."
None of that changes going into the studio and laying it down and spending time letting the work speak. In some ways I feel like this current work is very technical, and yet it seems to have an unprecedented mass appeal. It's arguably the most non-objective painting I've ever done, while at the same time existing as almost straight-ahead landscapes. It's also a hell of a lot of fun to paint, so I see a lot of it coming.
For once in my life, I'm trying hard not to stop doing something because people tell me they like it. How's that for career-pathing?
I'm also really sick of hearing myself bitch and moan about being remote. I love being remote 99% of the time. I love NYC, but 48 hours of it and I'm ready to be in a big, open field by myself, or out on the beach. I don't think the vistas I'm creating could come from my previous life as an urban-dweller. The lack of density I have lived in this past decade has gotten me in touch with my childhood sense of space from the Southwest. The new work is small (by my standards) and ready to hang, so I've eliminated one of the many, and very real obstacles to exhibiting elsewhere.
For those handful of people that I know have followed me from the MDM blog and have a sense of the arc of my work in the past 3 or 4 years, I think there is a new maturity in this recent stuff. I'd like to hear from you. Not flattery either, just observations. Part of this blog, as well as MDM was about transparent process. Part of that process is a fair amount of self doubt and inhibition and even hesitation. Until recently, I held back on some approaches I wanted to embrace. Now I feel a new confidence and focus. I just need to figure out how to translate that into getting me and my work to a broader audience, preferably in person.
I have some medium arriving this week and I can get back to work.
I told a friend recently that I'm ready to take my career to the next level, but I don't really know how to do that. It's been a crazy year, and even though there's lots to remain negative and even fatalistic about, I for one just don't have it in me anymore. We may lose a large chunk of our government to right-wing wackos (yeah, I said it) this november, but well, good luck with that people. As the fab four said, "we'd all love to see the plan."
None of that changes going into the studio and laying it down and spending time letting the work speak. In some ways I feel like this current work is very technical, and yet it seems to have an unprecedented mass appeal. It's arguably the most non-objective painting I've ever done, while at the same time existing as almost straight-ahead landscapes. It's also a hell of a lot of fun to paint, so I see a lot of it coming.
For once in my life, I'm trying hard not to stop doing something because people tell me they like it. How's that for career-pathing?
I'm also really sick of hearing myself bitch and moan about being remote. I love being remote 99% of the time. I love NYC, but 48 hours of it and I'm ready to be in a big, open field by myself, or out on the beach. I don't think the vistas I'm creating could come from my previous life as an urban-dweller. The lack of density I have lived in this past decade has gotten me in touch with my childhood sense of space from the Southwest. The new work is small (by my standards) and ready to hang, so I've eliminated one of the many, and very real obstacles to exhibiting elsewhere.
For those handful of people that I know have followed me from the MDM blog and have a sense of the arc of my work in the past 3 or 4 years, I think there is a new maturity in this recent stuff. I'd like to hear from you. Not flattery either, just observations. Part of this blog, as well as MDM was about transparent process. Part of that process is a fair amount of self doubt and inhibition and even hesitation. Until recently, I held back on some approaches I wanted to embrace. Now I feel a new confidence and focus. I just need to figure out how to translate that into getting me and my work to a broader audience, preferably in person.
Took apart the large table last night and stood it up as a mock-up wall. I've been kicking around some reconfiguration ideas over the past few months. Long trip to Mississippi, and I've had a hard time bouncing back this week. I don't travel like I used to, though I enjoyed the journey immensely. I got an exhibition call from one of the Greenville arts groups I was a member of last year. I'm going to submit a couple of the current works to their group show, and see how they are received. I've honestly no idea.
I had some time to sit and think about the studio and next year. There's much to be said for a room of one's own. Even with the loss of working time due to extremes in temperature, I am able to work for 3/4 of the year in bad years and more normally. During my frantic periods of production I tend to churn it out, so it still seems worth it.
Yeah, Greenville. Sort of a crap shoot really, the last show (gallerist aside, who was wonderful) was a glorious waste of time. But I have reworked the brand, so to speak, and these current paintings are smaller and to me at least, distilled. They pack a lot of presence into a more compact visual space. I feel the price is fair, but again the Greenville market surprises me (not always pleasantly) when it comes to sophistication....nuff said in a public forum.
Felt good being back in the space last night after so much of the last month out. Reminded me how vital the studio practice is to my over all health and life.
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