Leave it to an old musician friend to lay down a story that motivates me and pushes me into positivity. I started this year off consciously locking myself in the studio to work without concern for shows. I set a goal, and I will hit it. At times I feel an incredible sense of isolation and longing for my own kind, so to speak. But I've come here and I've done the work despite +100 degree temperatures, fiscal challenges and the pressures of familial responsibilities. I love what I do. I was at the cigar bar earlier this week to restock my humidor and one of the guys asked if I was staying for a drink. I said no, I had to go to work. He said, "sorry man," and I just laughed. I told him work was the studio and aside from loving what I do, I could smoke cigars on the job. What a life.
The story my friend hipped me to is about Charlie Parker, Bird. Seems he locked himself away for two years in a woodshed in the Ozarks and perfected his chops, then, when he knew the work was ready went to New York and changed jazz forever.
I've worked without distraction for years now. In a sense I've been on a private artist's retreat for close to five years, just doing the work and not worrying about scenes or the pressures of people asking for more. But in these years I've also pushed myself continuously. Somewhere along the way, I found my licks. Now it is time to take it to the City and find someone and make them understand so that they in turn can make others understand.
Somewhere in the last few weeks I had that moment where I looked at the work on the painting wall and I just knew. It's there. I think you just know it, and I'm not sure how to tell you I know. Every painting in here is not brilliant. But consistently they are damn good, and a few are something truly without comparison.
The 50 was always an open-ended project. In truth, I never saw it ending, even with canvas number 50. I always knew at about number 40 I would need to re-stock, re-load and push on through. But I never anticipated where the work has gone. Now I know the work is ready. Now it is time to bring it.
Day 202, Canvas 40
Frustrating night tonight. I got here later than usual and despite the wonderful pre-Fall air, I couldn't find my groove. It happens. I try to work through it, sit, look, see, go back in. Sometimes it isn't there and that's just all there is. I still worked, I laid some good paint.
No pics tonight, nothing looks anywhere close to what I attempted to document. Tonight I wish I were near civilization with its distractions.
I'm tired and Doubt is attempting to give me a lecture, so it's time to call this night and let fresh eyes come in here tomorrow.
anatomy of a painting: a glimpse into process
We'll subtitle this one "six months in the life". This is pretty much how I've been working this year. I don't think there is a single, fully-realized canvas from this body of work that took less than 2 months. I am in a good place overall, though today was awkward for some reason. Perhaps I'm not used to painting in daylight! In case you do not understand from the title of this post, all the photos below are the same painting as it went through its evolution. Enjoy.
March 29th
April 22nd
April 25th
May 5th
May 6th
May 7th
May 21st
May 23rd
May 28th
August 13th
August 30th
Day 189, Canvas 35
A few hundred dollars worth of paint arrived today as anticipated. At the day job, I completed a major portion of a massive project and for the first time in the past two months I feel some momentary sense of closure there. I read an artist's blog post about how painters, unlike most other professionals, sometimes (ok, often) find themselves in the midst of their work feeling like they have never done it before. Replenishing supplies is like that for me; it is almost like having to re-learn everything again. The first few paintings out of a fresh tube of paint are never as good as the ones you're squeezing the life and remnants out of. I have no idea why.
There's three paintings on the wall tonight, and they are shimmering like bodies of water inviting me to shed my clothes and jump in the country lake somewhere in Kansas where everything began to feel new and free so very, very long ago. They are nothing yet, this process involves massive amounts of what becomes underpainting. And yet, true to the current rules of engagement in these walls, they are lovely and it will be hard to paint them out. In the end, that's what will hopefully make them good.
So 15 canvases left; it feels strange. I had no time line. I have lived the process and that is the success of them to an extent. I've come somewhere, and I still have places to take it too.
all my pretty ones
Some days you get up and begin to walk in a direction and realize you do not want to be going wherever it is you find yourself going. You go home and change clothes and get in your pick-up truck and the dog comes along and you go sweep and clean and carry garbage to the county dump. The isolation doesn't bother you today; you wish it were more pronounced, farther away from all the senseless noise of pre-pre-pre-election three-ring circus media tricks and its players.
and later, you're back in this warehouse with brick walls and high rafters and plank floors and hundreds of paintings and these are all things you thought and felt and furthermore were compelled to express in some lasting form, and you wonder about them all -living their lives in this dark building and constantly squeezing over to make room for the daily additions. do they long to be out in the world?
You believe it matters, -because, as you tell your children you're that sort of bear; and perhaps it doesn't, but in the end that really doesn' t change anything either and you will find yourself here again tired after some random day of what most people perceive as respectable work. You'll work then, and it will matter again.
You contemplate that annual juried exhibition, or outdoor fair even though you work does not belong in some tent like a Bedouin. That's not who it's for, even if you have no idea who it's for most days. You only wish you knew. You only wish that audience could come forward somehow.
It's that kind of moment. You could step off into the familiar vortex of depression and its rash actions and poor judgements. You know the lay of the land, after all. But not today. The air is beginning to tease at Fall. you could stay here or you could go waste the afternoon in a movie theatre all alone and with no regrets. there's paint coming in the mail; one of of those delightful people in a big, brown or white or yellow truck will bring your lifeline in a stack of cardboard boxes. they are unaware of the power of the contents. it would be useless to explain, and they are always rushing about like the end of the world anyway.
and on the floor, there's some paintings you don't yet understand. They have languished for months and each day they seem different to you. you want to overpaint them, but not yet...not yet.
the space between
A slower night tonight. I need more paint and medium. It seems strange to think I've been in this body of work for almost 7 months now; there is an entire sub-series of red paintings that I have to walk quickly past to avoid the temptation of overpainting them. I am staying the course, I will go as far forward as I can before I start going back. It's a strange thing; not knowing what will survive from all these stacks of paintings.
These two are coming slowly, I maintain the rules: don't get attached, keep putting on the paint. Sometimes the knife sings as I whip it across the surface and off of the edge. There's that clear ring of stiff steel, absolutely unmistakable. Got back into the big painting I thought failed before. It has new life and may yet become.
studio soundtrack August 18
Found this little gem of a recording only today, Miles Davis' soundtrack for Louis Malle's "Elevator to the Gallows." If you haven't seen the film, you simply must do so as soon as possible, and go for the Criterion Collection edition. I'm a huge Miles fan, and I remember being distantly aware of how great the music was in this film, but for some reason never made the connection. This will be the go-to soundtrack for working for some time.Week one of kindergarten is pretty rough. I'm thankful that it only happens once!
stay
Today my girls started kindergarten. It has been an emotionally taxing day to say the least. They did well eventually, though the drop-off/departure was pretty rough. They are anxious and scared, sad that life has changed. But we saw them on the playground when they couldn't see us and they were fine. However long the transition takes, we'll be there every step.
There was no hesitation to come to the studio tonight, and I jumped deep into it. The work is coming faster, I have a handle on what this is; even though I am still unsure what makes it significant. It seems that this work brings in a great deal of my vernacular, and somehow turns my phrases and lines into songs. These works are deeply realized canvases, and I am in the studio having this moment of acknowledgement and understanding that I have just entered the Conversation on a whole new level.
What a confluence of highs and lows this day is.
I am going to enter my first outdoor art festival in the next few weeks. Based on the juror, I really don't think I have a chance, but in the end who can say why or when people connect to work? I am experiencing a new sensation of openness to life, and feeling that at any moment I will be given an opportunity to say "yes" to something that will forever alter my life as I know it. Unlike my 5-year-olds, this prospect thrills me; I am not afraid any more.
the medium is the message
The journey in the studio this year has been toward flow. For me, at this moment, the medium is the message; I never want people seeing my work to forget that they are looking at paint on surface. It is the ability of the human mind to transform message into meaning (or meaningfulness) that most interests me. All painting is illusion to a greater or lesser degree. It seems, -to me, to be distinction between passive and active illusion. One attempts photo-realism through an intense set of processes, but these are designed to fool the eye. The viewer believes what (s)he sees because it is rooted in the familiar if not always the comfortable. With abstraction -and in this way I have never understood the aversion so many people have to it- one is compelled to engage the mind and imagination and to play. It is simplistic to suggest this is merely about "experience" or "feeling" because these are vague and generalist terms for a very specific action; engagement. The job of the artist, then, is to engage. The audience must also bring engagement.
I don't set out to make difficult work. Again, at this moment I am exploring material concerns, or the plastic, but I eschew the notion of painting about painting. At best, this idea is disingenuous. At worst it is academic and pretentious. No, what is going on at this moment is a level of comfort and trust in my materials; that (obviously in a consciously directed process) the behavior of paint and its relationship to surface and light will foster a willingness on the part of the viewer to engage the work. There are certainly thematic currents which run through my oeuvre, and I do not deny them. But I feel that pre-knowledge of these themes and ideas are unnecessary to attribute meaningfulness to the work at hand.
I feel a quickness right now in the studio. A certain sense of mastery but also a constant nagging of imperfection. The "divine dissatisfaction".
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others"
-Martha Graham
a song
A short session tonight. I had one of those momentary failures as a parent tonight, as a dad, and I'm sick with sorrow. I realized that the journey of understanding how to deal with one of my daughter's iron will is also and equally the journey I must take to deal with my own. It can be a strength; I would not be doing the work I'm doing without it. But it can also bring years of unnecessary strife and problems, and I hope to spare her only the unnecessary pains. In the end I realize that I cannot do this, and that my purpose is to pick her up and hug her when she falls and let her know all the remaining days of my life that I love her, and that my love is unshakable and constant.
Work, as in the day job, is incredibly stressful right now. Like so many, I am paid virtually nothing for doing the work of 3 people. I am disposable, I am overworked, and try as I might not to bring it home there are times when it slips under the door. But I walked here tonight. I made myself come because I know this is the reason for all of that. May I never lose sight of the significance of family and art. If I did this for money, I would have quit a decade ago. I've started something this summer that must see its natural life cycle, and where ever that may or may not take me as a consequence is immaterial.
Hope to be in better spirits tomorrow night and to begin a few new canvases.
the hymn of the Wheel
Some in-progress shots tonight. A brief but good session, the part of the process which slows down as I add layer upon layer of glaze. I am painting confidently, in full flow of mind and body and as I have yet to sail off the end of the world, I shall keep pushing onward. I've posted a few of the recent ones on Facebook, that quick gauge of public reaction. And while I wish at times it were more of a crit forum, it serves the purpose of putting work out in front of wildly diverse range of people with all levels of art knowledge. I receive it and then I move on and try to forget about it.
In the end, there are cycles of flow and struggle and these are ongoing. Despite my idealistic manic moments of relentless seeking, "There" isn't really a place after all. One never reaches it, we only get glimpses. Right now I'm grateful for the vista.
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