Quince

el capitán y el Matador
mixed media, 108" x 50"
Rico '09

My father would have been 72 years old today.  As I catch up to the age he was when he died (57), I constantly ask myself how I want to spend the remaining years of my own life; what I want to accomplish yes, but more importantly what I want to experience.

I had the realization at a dinner party last night (that moment when you see someone across the room and you think you've met them but have absolutely no idea who they are) that I don't remember people or names or faces so much as I remember experiences.  My closest friends are those with whom I've multiple experiences; the people I remember most are those who, when we met I had an experience.  The mad ones.

Death is the cover charge to life, and everyone pays the same; no VIP's, no comps.  In the end it doesn't matter how much you have or powerful you are or whether you live in a dirt floor shack or a cow palace; what matters are your experiences and maybe the impression you've left on those you leave behind.  This country values "success" over just about everything, but we let life fall apart on the unerring path toward it.  Families, marriages, friendships all become expendable as we drive ourselves to addiction, stress, obesity, and a host of other hells striving for a completely subjective destination that turns out to be no destination at all, just another stop along the way.  Enlightenment is the same mirage for many who "reject" the status quo; there is no end until the big end, and then it doesn't matter.

So Cinco de Mayo always has profound meaning for me.  It always reminds me of one of the most amazing men I've ever known.  He may have been the last generation for whom the American Dream was even possible in the classical sense.  He raised himself up from poverty and became an officer, a doctor and deacon in his church.  English was his second language, but he hid his accent to the point that I only vaguely remember him having one.  Today he would just be another brown-skinned alien bent on taking away white people's jobs.  How ironic and how fucking revisionist.  But somehow he not only overcame all these things but he kept me from experiencing them as a child.  It breaks my heart that I don't believe his achievements are possible for a young boy just like him today; a boy, by the way, who was born in America.   I painted the painting at the top of this post a few years ago about our relationship.  It hangs on my studio wall and it may hang there always.

I started on another large canvas this week and I'll get back to it tonight in the hot Carolina night full of steamy, sticky train sounds and heavy air.  I'll go where it takes me.  In a few short weeks I'll be in NYC attending a fantastic painter's opening.  I look forward to being around my own kind for a few short days.

The 50: epilogue

eastern studio wall, April 2012

The 50 are now a broken set.  I love having collectors visit the studio.  There is nothing like watching people who love art look at art and carefully consider what they want to acquire.  Unlike openings, a studio visit is a low-key soft sell.  It is absolutely magical to watch people walk around my space and make observations and ask questions.  

I feel so positive right now, and good things are flowing.  I look forward to getting back to work tomorrow night and getting back on schedule after a crazy couple of weeks.  I'm flying up to NYC next month for an opening and I'm looking forward to seeing lots of folks and spending all day at MoMA.  

On the personal side I am finally addressing a tattoo repair I've wanted to do for years and located an artist and studio in Atlanta that I feel I can really work well with.  I feel that I am entering into a new stage of life and I feel good about it.  So many things are about to change; things that have needed to change for a long, long time.  

two more

where i waved at the sky, oil on canvas, 60" x 48", Rico '12

The Death of the Fathers, oil on canvas, 60" x 48", Rico '12

more works on paper

untitled, oil on black vellum, 17" x 11", Rico '12

untitled, oil on black vellum, 17" x 11", Rico '12

You can see more images from this set here.  I'll be uploading another 40 images over the weekend and adding them to that page.  

the fruit of exile

The past few nights have been manic-driven late night hammer-slinging grunt work.  I stand in here today and I see the wall of dreams.  Next week I will post a picture of "the 50" hung on this wall.  I'll have a family studio visit next weekend and then I can re-dedicate myself to what will eventually hang on this wall.

Over the xmas/new year break I had a vision.  I started working through it in small, post-card sized canvases and have since taken it to 17" x 11" works on black vellum to tremendously successful effect.  That body of work, nearing 100 as of this writing, will live a life of their own.  They are on a level of anything out there and I'll find a home for them; and for me.  I have no doubt of my success and it has been hard fought.

I'm running on a little over a dozen hours of sleep in 4 days and fortunately the drywall compound has to cure for at least 24 hours.  But remember this image.  Hold on to it and prepare.  Gloves off.

construction time again

Drywall and lumber got delivered yesterday and I worked into the midnight hour. Slept through my alarm this morning but got the kids to school on time and myself to the day job. By this weekend, there will be an 11' x 24' wall along the Eastern side of the studio. I will hang "the 50" in a grid and will post those pictures next week.

With this work there is a sense of absolute knowing, and this is causing tremendous stress in the balancing of two careers, as they compete for time and energy. I feel hapless and helpless in my ability to get the work "out there." I truly don't know how to begin anymore. I've asked for help, but in the end I will have to find it within myself. I have to spend the time researching to figure out where and towards whom I need to direct my energies. It only takes making that one right person understand; that person who is in a position to spread the gospel of Rico. As I've blogged many times, my geographical and cultural isolation does nothing to help my efforts.

the primordial gaze

I'm deep in the work. The associations are obvious: 19th century photography, early x-rays, paranormal photography, deep aquatic life, the celestial. Beyond those thing there is, for me, the freedom...the invitation to breath life and association into the work at will. I see the Why that cannot be answered, the curiosity of the beyond, the ephemeral nature of the now, of life. There are lots of formal things going on but honestly who gives a shit except a handful of painter friends? No, there's something tapped here; something real and visceral and shared. The Sublime and I'm not afraid to say it.

Another 10 tonight and each one is autonomous and self-referential even side-by-side to others. One can look at these for a long, long time.

I took it large to some effect. I prepared another large canvas tonight and we'll see.

Picked up an old book on Mexican art and flipped to this dog-eared passage....

"Between our gaze and the world, images previously produced by habit, culture, museums, or ideologies impose themselves. the first thing a painter must do is to brush away from his eyes the spiderwebs of styles and schools. The experience is dizzying and blinding: the world leaps to our eyes with the innocent ferocity of what is too alive. Seeing without intermediaries: a painful apprenticeship that never ends. ...Asceticism of vision: the hand learning to obey the eye and not the head, until the head stops thinking and begins to see, until the hand conceives and the eye thinks. To see the world in this way is to see it with one's whole body and mind, to regain the original unity in order to win back the original gaze..." -Octavio Paz, from "From Criticism to Offering"; Paris, December 29, 1960

the morning

untitled drawing; oil on vellum, 11" x 17", Rico '12

untitled drawing; oil on vellum, 11" x 17", Rico '12

what the water gave me

It's 9 pm and I've just completed half a dozen drawings and I'm trying to figure out what the hell just happened. For the past few months, I've been using butcher paper as a drop cloth for the small post-card studies. I looked at it the other day, how the paint worked with the slick translucence, and so I ordered some black vellum on a whim. When I look at these drawings tonight I see the physical manifestation of my dream from the holidays. The scale and proportion of these are spot on, and the translucent surface further pushes the x-ray read of these works. I want to go call my doctor and clip these to his light wall just to see them like that.

The lightening rod moments don't happen often, -for some never, way it goes. But this is different. This, -tonight, is a breakthrough; one I can't fully comprehend at the moment other than the hair on the back of neck is standing up and I'm going to type this and make some more to see if this is really happening. Nothing has ever felt so truly my own before.

I'll have to see in the morning, of course. That's the rub of being a night painter sometimes.

I don't want to stop.

It's as if I fully grasp my medium for the first time; it combines all the aspects of my vernacular as a painter. Drawing has been missing from my practice for too long and I've known it. Drawing is the meat of studio work for us all. You've got to put in the time. I have to see how it dries. It reminds of the early work in copper back in the 90's. How it's evolving and changing on its own after I work it.

and the first big black canvas is staring me in the face, "c'mon, what you got?"

Appalachian Spring

The first day of Spring is next Tuesday, but things have already heated up to 80's. The summer will be brutal, and resistance is futile. I work best in the Summer. I love to open up the doors on either end of the studio and paint and sweat and drag the canvases outside. If I could ever afford to build a studio in coastal South America, I would have endless Summers forever.

I got the shipment notification today that my canvases will be here tomorrow. Four big, black-primed canvases to enjoy and contemplate and mark and stain and scrape. Cigar smoke will billow and twirl and the staple of Southern Summer, -Mexican beer, will be stacked in the fridge.

There's a few bottles of good rum at the studio as well for the longer nights when everything seems to work and you have to just sit and wonder at it all.

sunday ruminations

sunday morning coming down like that song by the Man in Black. there's sunlight and jazz and week-old cigar smoke and paint under the nails and these things rip away the veneer of the week. for all practical purposes, spring has arrived and set up camp. everything is in bloom, my allergies are kicking my ass and tomorrow is a holiday; one to be spent mostly here.

there are hundreds of paintings in this space. no one is calling for them, but I keep making them because i can't stop. rebuffed with every attempt at juried shows I try, I guess I should feel discouraged but somehow I just don't. i feel alive and sure of hand.

four large canvases are on their way from somewhere in New Jersey. they are primed black for me and as such they are grab-and-go; a necessity in the madness of time that is marriage, parenthood, job and life. i've blogged many times about how my practice has become more efficient since the girls arrived. there's an immediacy and urgency to being in here that continues to take my work places it never went before. 2009 felt the year I started over, so perhaps I should cut myself a break for not achieving wild success yet.

I haven't painted with a brush for almost 3 years now and it strikes me that painting is, -at its best, a vernacular, -perhaps a creole. when you encounter something new and truly honest on canvas, it generally is also somewhat foreign, otherworldly. you can't fully understand the language, but you get the feeling. finding your voice and all that I guess.

prepped 12 post card canvases this morning in that brooding tar of mars black. so flat and deep and it feels like swimming in a cave lake in pitch darkness; in other words, liberating.

washes, stains, smears and drips and streaks. paint puddled into pigmented pools becomes alive and reaches out and explores and wanders...to be alive is to be in motion. you might not always perceive the motion if the life is titanic. but mountains stretch and breathe, as do oceans.

Clytemnestra I

study for Clytemnestra, 72" x 48"

Publish Postoil on canvas, Rico '12