from Red, by John Logan

Setting:

The hardwood floor is splattered and stained with hues of dark red paint.
There is a cluttered counter or tables filled with buckets of paint, tins of turpentine, tubes of glue, crates of eggs, bottles of Scotch, packets of pigment, coffee cans filled with brushes, a portable burner or stovetop, and a phone.
There is also a phonograph with messy stacks of records.

One for LA. Details to follow.

Atlantic Approach, mixed media on paper, Rico 2009

Thoughts on Alex Cowenburg
April 8, 2010

I was exposed to the work of Alex Cowenburg through mutual acquaintances last year. Heretofore, I have only experienced the work through reproduction. In such manner, they engage; but in seeing better facsimiles recently, -which show the surfaces at greater accuracy- I must conclude that in person they envelope. His pictures, -for me, strike an almost spiritual balance between being clearly labored and yet appearing effortless and ephemeral. Rare that work (in reproduction, no less!) can convey such transmutation and achieve such truth.

This blog is now my studio blog. There will be updates from time, quotes and free prose, and works in progress, but mostly studio shots. Something I'll be adding this summer is video, so check back for that.

Thanks to all who read Machinations of a Distracted Mind for the past 3 years. Thanks for your comments and questions and kudos. Perhaps I find myself less inclined toward machinations or in some sense feel a little less distracted, but it was time to end MDM and forge ahead with the next chapter personally and artistically. My new state of mind is echoed in this blog's title, and as spring comes I am going inside the studio and locking the door behind me.

Keep track of the Nebraska Project, as it is still very much ongoing.

To my friends and readers in LA, look for news soon.

"There are relations between department store and museum, and here the bazaar provides a link. The amassing of artworks in the museum brings them into communication with commodities, which -where they offer themselves en masse to the passerby - awake in him the notion that some part of this should fall to him as well."

-Walter Benjamin (et al), "The Arcades Project"

"Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it."

-Rilke

"I see my [work] there before me: each one—even the most finished in appearance—a fragment, each one a failure. Yes, a failure! But there is in each one a little of what I would like to create one day. This in one, that in another, and in the third something that’s missing in the first two. But the [art] of which I dream incorporates everything that appears isolated and fragmentary in these various works. That gives me a longing, an irresistible longing to pursue my efforts—and perhaps in the end I will attain my goal."

-Alberto Giacometti
from James Lord's Giacometti: A Biography

veneration, oil on canvas, 60" x 60", 2006-2010 (in progress)