struggles

I have been working on the first two stations since late October.  I have found that black has to be contended with, at least in this case.  I confess I'm struggling; perhaps overthinking, as I wait and discover where these paintings want to go.  Much progress today, things are beginning to click for me.

I've said many times that work comes from work.  I'm not a big believer in inspiration or those lightening strikes moments in creation.  The best ideas/revelations/observations come in the moment of doing, when the mind is hyper-focused and attuned.  I am coming to terms with just how large of an undertaking this series truly is.

I'll build two more stretcher frames this week and skin them toward the end of the week or next weekend.  With 4 in play, I think I can begin to see them differently.  I was excited to move the two together on the large wall yesterday.

Black can be academic.  It's heady and intellectual from a painterly perspective.  It shows everything and what I'm most interested in right now is eliminating everything from my paintings and simply getting to the essence.

I took a long drive yesterday, down the two lane back roads and rural highways across to Union and back.  The pleasure of driving alone in a responsive car with no destination in mind is something too many people never experience.  That oneness of man and machine is sublime; a way, like painting, that enables one to lose themselves and reach intense universal awareness.  It is a like being naked in the ocean, lying on your back and looking at the stars; as if there is no beginning or end or separation from self and sky and sea.

So that's my head space for this work.  To take away everything until I reach the point of fragility and entropy and then to somehow stop it just before that moment.  To find the where the painting is about to collapse and stop just shy.  No color, no form.  Oneness and meditation.

two in the night

Two canvases in play, I smoked a cigar in the brisk night.  Good work tonight, and the weight of the past weeks felt lifted.   Black has a spiritual presence; as if the absence is itself being.  I can get distance now with the space cleaned out.  I can see.

There will be much paint thrown this week, good paint to purpose and meaning.  Quiet house and warmth now after the dampness of the evening rain seeped into my bones.  I've built walls to make room, I'll build more painting storage this weekend and wrap and store the large paintings.  Over the next few weeks I'll have 4 to 6 paintings in play; moving in and out from one to another like a boxer.  I feel purpose and direction again.

the black paintings

I managed to build a new wall in the studio over the long weekend, and now have much more room to work.  The temperatures this week look as if they may cooperate and I will rush into the studio when they do.  I have two, 6' square black canvases there now waiting.  I've been wrestling with where to go next, but as I have considered it and after bouncing it off a friend this afternoon, I know that I have do the series in all black.

I guest curated an online series about art and mysticism.  I think selecting the paintings for that series got me thinking about my influences and about painting and of course being in the studio and making work...work comes from work in that way.

I've never hid my love for Goya.  His Black Paintings are very much an inspiration; though I stumbled upon this series rather than decided to do it.  I also love Rothko's black paintings, perhaps more than anything else in his oeuvre.  The final "sign" was the weekend I posted the picture in the last post.  There was an article in the NY Times that same week about Ad Reinhardt's black paintings.  It seemed all things pointed to it, and while I momentarily worried about being derivative, I realized that these will be very much my own.

There's a lot of work to be done.  At this point I think it would be ambitious to think I can finish the series in a year.  So I am embarking on something epic in scope, as the paintings are epic in scale.  Like the best journeys, I don't know exactly what it will end up being.  I don't know if I'll stick to strict squares or incorporate other shapes and ratios.  I don't even know if these first two will end up even being good paintings or if they will be experiences that end up in the trash heap.  Some do.

Embark

The year unravels and the days fall into one another as we all count the days until the students leave.  I'll sign off in a few weeks, my annual ritual of unplugging over the holidays helps me stay sane.  I feel that I'm coasting into December on vapors, one engine left and the other 3 enveloped in smoke.  I am spent; profoundly and utterly.

Yet.

I've begun my stations of the cross series.  I am not a religious person, but the story is so epic that I wanted to take it on creatively.  I've never been interested in being controversial or shocking people.  Despite being passionate about many issues, I've always remained mostly apolitical in my work.  So I do have the fear that these paintings will be maligned and misinterpreted and given agendas they will not have.  But the need to make them compels me, no matter the response.

I simply want to re-interpret the story.  I want to do it straight, without irony.  I've decided to rename some of the stations and alter the narrative, and it is likely those re-imagined versions will be the point of contention for some.  But that's honestly not my intention.  I know to refer to as it myth is deeply upsetting to a lot of people, but making myth personal is something that I believe is essential to our journey as humans.  I'm not concerned with historical accuracy or even a discussion as to whether the events depicted are real or embellished.  It doesn't matter to me.  It's a powerful story from which millions of people draw strength and comfort.  I've no wish to diminish it or mock it for anyone; quite to the contrary, I want to re-tell it to make it belong to people who might not even consider it in another context.

I'm reading Homer's Odyssey and it has cracked open a perspective toward art for me.  This series was a natural expression of where I find myself and what I personally believe art is for.

So these are my final apologies.   Like any body of work, once it goes out into the world I have no control as to how it will be received.  I can't worry about that in the making, either.  I have to be true to the course I set for myself in the studio and work with authenticity and integrity.

I've got the first two paintings in various states of beginning.  All 14 will be 6' square, and unlike the work I've been doing for the past 2 years, I don't know if I'm going to use white at all.  I envision them all black.  Originally I had thought to do them in order, but as I seldom name paintings until they are completed I felt this was disingenuous.  Better to paint what comes than work linearly from 1 to 14.  So the titles may skip around as I post the images over the next year.

I've also decided to make the titles in Italian as a nod to the painters of old and my heritage as a painter and craftsman.  We were once the earthly hands of the Divine.  We adorned the sanctuaries and painted the sacred stories for the illiterate.  We worked for Tribe, Village, Church and King.  What are now?  

I believe art should speak to our humanity and offer us a look inside our being.  Art should show us the depth of ourselves.  That's what I'm interested in.  That's why I do this.

So let the work stand.  I wish no ill towards anyone or their beliefs, but I'm not responsible for anyone else's feelings either.  In the end the paintings will endure or die because they are either good or bad.

So we begin...

grip

The cold nights are coming.  Tonight I skinned the two large square canvases and managed to size one of them.  It's a formidable size; I cannot span it and thus am forced to contend with it in a very different way than what is comfortable.

I read some old journals, going back to 2011.  I'm not conscious of the struggles until I read old writings.  Reading these entries from two years ago, I was gripped by a certain hopelessness; and while the work continues to get stronger, I find myself always questioning why I put myself through this for seemingly so little return.

And then I drag myself out of the comfortable exhaustion of the day and out into the night and after a few minutes in the studio I lose all sense of time.  I'm not cold, I'm no longer tired.  My knuckles are scraped and nicked and I am alive in a profound sense of the word.  I grapple with these structures of wood and cotton duck and medium and I carve out some little moment of living.  Maybe people get that and maybe they don't.  Who knows why anyone likes anything?

I was speaking with a good friend of mine this weekend and he asked what my daughters thought of my work.  I told them they were honest critics and often their observations made me think because I tend to take them seriously.  One thing my daughters don't really do with my work is say things like, "I see a horse, " or "that looks like a dog."  At 7, they seem to grasp the idea that abstraction can be read without literal or direct associations.  They often will tell me how it makes them feel.  I know a lot of adults who can't talk about art that way, or maybe any more.

square. stations?

The weekend was a blur of furious construction.  I am no carpenter, but pneumatic tools and sunny skies blessed me and three new stretcher frames emerged.  I have decided to embrace the square, for wherever may go with it; stand or fall.  In the journey I have been thinking of a particular space, and these new canvases seem for that space.  As I thought about my intentions towards composition, I suddenly thought of Newman's Stations of the Cross and something clicked.  My fascination with Catholicism as mysticism, -that is to say, viewing it as a non-believer I tend to focus on how transformative space is used to serve spiritual/religious means within the codex of (visual) language.

Growing up a fundy I was deeply moved the first time I walked into a cathedral.  I simply had no context for the wealth of visual imagery and other worldliness of the space.  For the first time in my life I felt that everything within a worship space pointed unflinchingly towards the Divine.  I had been raised in a tradition that viewed ornamentation (ANY ornamentation) as idolatry.  In my artistic journey I have increasingly embraced the visual representation of the spiritual as a pathway to god, or that which moves the all.

I wrestle with it.  I despise pseudo science and I have a particularly aversion to all things fundamentalist.  But some myths are beautiful.  Some stories are indelibly scored onto my consciousness, and I find a power when I embrace them rather than resist them.

So the square.  Limitation and constraint.  Symmetry.  Balance.  The square is difficult for me because the square is authoritative and final.  As I looked over my sketches I considered the stations.  The Way of Sorrow, as it were.  This perspective of religion as a Way is uncomfortable for me, and yet....

So I brave the sub-freezing nights ahead.  I will paint, and wrap, and bring home paints to protect them from the frost.  The work feels good.  Seeing this first square canvas tonight; naked and full of unknown.  It stirred something in me.  I'll see what happens.

the builder

It's late and my hands ache from building.  I completed modifications to 6' x 8' stretcher frame I picked up for free at last year's ArtFields.  They say you get what you pay for; and sometimes they are right on.

She'll hold cloth and shape and I'll haul her to the studio tomorrow.  I'm building four 6' x 6' frames and forcing myself to work in square.  I have resisted it with this body of work and I need to know why.  I saw the square shape and I'm going to wrestle with it in the coming weeks.  It will be a glorious battle.

Another 18 hour day in a long row of 18 hour days.  They blur at times but coming home late with sawdust in my hair and paint under my nails I feel so alive it is hard to wind down.  The alternative is not an alternative at all; burn out, stress out, drop out.  Time in the studio is never wasted.  The exhaustion is always worth it.

I've decided to go completely impractical with the scale of the next few paintings.  Damn the torpedoes, we're making epic shit here.  The road is long and at times demoralizing and frustrating but I always follow the work.  The work knows where to go if I just listen to it.  If I make enough noise then someone will eventually hear.  I have to believe that or else I would go insane.

In a dream world I would be packing up to move to the Winter studio; somewhere towards the equator and the sea.  It must feel so suspended there in the middle of the sun's path.  I know I would.  A hammock, a terrace on which to paint and little else.  Four months of painting as the high sun warmed my bones.  It's late and I am fading.

...I just deleted a long rant so it must be time to give in to sleep.  Those precious 6 hours, followed by the 9 hours of have to, followed by the all-too-short family time and then the studio.  I'm about to be in it.  It's on.

Room with a view: Abstract Invitational

 

the bird of war

Paint-stained nails and fingertips on cut, wrinkling hands sun-soaked and blister-palmed.  Punching blacks and caressing flake white to articulate and bend and she rises off the canvas like a bird of war; majestic and hungry.  The terrible can be beautiful.  

There's something menacing here; like the angel that says, "fear not."

We'll dance again tonight.  Paint and smoke and whiskey and these aching hands, bare-knuckled and chipped and ink-stained.  She'll become.  She'll become.  

scene

Today I saw an image; a scene from a studio I know well in Brooklyn.  The artist is a poet, warrior, friend.  His paintings have a physical presence, like someone standing behind you in a room at that moment before you fully realize it.  They are often dark, rough, imposing things with battled surfaces and gristly edges and yet, as of late, I catch a tenderness in them from time to time; a product of fatherhood no doubt, yet also the light of the soul.

NY is calling my name and has been all summer.  It's been too much of one kind of travel at the expense of the other.  Duties here, social and familial; things I don't mind, but still a part of me is always away.

This thing of going to a space and contending with surface and material and image, one wonders how one finds oneself in such a Way.  To listen to a visual thing, this is a strange and wonderful discipline indeed.  Tired hands and stained skin and then the attempt to wind down and catch up on the sleep that seems to always be two steps ahead of me, eluding me from day to day.

Whiskey stones and laundry are the remnants of this day; another day that did not stop, and finds me exhausted and unable to give in to sleep.

Today I saw a scene from Brooklyn.  A promise of another level, making me bring up my game to the next level, and so it goes and so it goes.  A picture of a studio wall that made me want to paint.  That's honor.  It's a glorious thing really.  So I raise my glass tonight to Brooklyn and all the lights on tonight in rooms with paint on the floors and at least a wall, and canvas and books and music and longing and sweat.

after

The opening went very well. Those in attendance were engaged, and the comments I encountered were thoughtful and positive. We stayed up late with one of the artists, his wife and the curator drinking wine into the night.

fastened down to oblivion, exhibition view

I can't speak positively enough about Ann Stoddard's curation of the show.  She brought together six wildly-different abstract artists and created not only a first class exhibition, but a teaching exhibition as well.  The show stays up for most the semester and I hope students will visit (and revisit) it.  It's a show that warrants multiple viewings.

Fortunately, there will be opportunity for multiple viewings.  The Spartanburg Art Museum will be picking up the show in January.  I'm very excited to be in the good creative company that I am with this show, and profoundly humbled to see the work hung in a museum.  

an awful rowing toward god, exhibition view

One of the most interesting exchanges of the evening was with the College's president.  After spending time with "an awful rowing.." he commented that it reminded him of the author's description of his encounter with the afterlife in Proof of Heaven, the story of a neurosurgeon who has a transcendent experience during a coma despite the fact that he intellectually rejected all such experiences prior to then.  I haven't read the book, but our conversation made me want to.  I found it interesting that he made such a connection.

I heard the word powerful a lot last night in reference to my work.  This was tremendously gratifying; both that it stood the test of physical inspection and that it often seemed that people were having a similar experience looking at and being with the work as I had painting it.  I feel I'm on my way.  

letting go

I drove over to the gallery tonight, foolishly thinking it would be empty.  Of course the director and her drones were busy with all the last-minute preparations; the space is alive and bright.  I have to say, the show looks really good.  I found the eclectic collection a bit jarring until I actually saw it hung, and I'm impressed with the curator's vision.

So now the funny part.

The large painting is hung upside down.  I must have wired it this way in my exhaustion last week.  The day job has been brutal for some time now and in my preparations I must have gotten disoriented.  What's interesting is that I didn't notice at first.  I have to say, I think I like it better the way it is hanging.

I've always believed one acts or one is acted upon.  Neither is, inherently, a "better" condition.  There are benefits to each.  In this case, I received one of those gentle wacks to the head from the universe letting me know that I need to let go for awhile and just allow myself to be taken away.  That's a really positive thing at this particular moment of time.

I think one has to keep a certain irreverence towards one's work.  It's easy to take yourself too seriously and something like this could have caused me crazy stress on the eve before a show.  But it honestly didn't.  I sort of feel that everything is right and how it needs to be.  It made me laugh and relaxed me, and now I go into a highly-charged situation (an opening) in a much lighter place.