en sueños

I dreamt I walked through my studio. There was nothing in it but giant painting walls, and on each was a 5' x 7' black canvas with ghostly abstracted gestures and forms. The works hung two feet off the floor and towered above me.

Readers of this blog (all half dozen of you) know that I am cigar enthusiast. Like everyone who has ever smoked, I'm fascinated with the twirls and undulations of the smoke itself as it floats up into the random currents of the air. I was thinking of this a few weeks ago sitting the rear gardens at dusk.

When one brings the images and forms of dreams into the physical world, there is always something lost in translation, but I have also found that if one allows for this there is something gained that takes those ideas and breathes life into them in a very different way. To me, these initial studies bring to mind x-ray imagery and paranormal associations. They seem more specter-like than smoky.

I love paint. I love what it can do and what it never fails to show me in terms of new possibility. The 50 are in some ways archaeological; they are about reduction and uncovering a historical record within each picture. I spent all morning on a single piece, watching it change a dozen times into decent pictures before obliterating it over and over and over.

My time with that body of work is nearing an end and it remains to be seen if I'll continue it into next year when I thaw out the studio. Whether or not I will realize these ambitious canvases from the studies shown here is yet to be known as well. These are the first drawings; a shorthand of concept and a familiarizing of the hand to the mind's eye. All I know is I'll be buying a few dozen of these post-card canvases next week, a couple of tubes of black and white paint, and we will go from there.

friday flow

while the whole moves, and every part stands still

oil on canvas; 24" x 24"; Rico '11

It's amazingly warm and sunny and the work flowed today. All 50 canvases have paint on them and are in various states of completion. The black studies are drying off to the side, waiting for the next movement to begin.

I peeked in a space today that I happened upon while walking Agnes. It would take an amazing deal for me to leave this space, but eventually I do want to own my studio outright. I have the dream building in sight of the present space, but that requires selling consistently at a much higher price bracket than I do now. Not impossible, but not here yet.

Today is thank a teacher day, and I am indeed thankful to my teacher Mark Raymond Anderson. He was one of the first people I met when we moved here ten and half years ago. He was immediately someone I could bounce ideas and opinions about art off of, and his canonical knowledge of art history is both formidable and like an endless fount of learning. He helped me become the painter I am today more than any other person I know, and though we did not become the friends I had hoped we would, I owe him my respect and gratitude.

I was an adult when I went back and took undergraduate art classes. I squeezed my teachers, -all of them, for knowledge. I made them prepare to come to class, because they knew I would press them if I disagreed. I always viewed the study of art history as a choose my own adventure book; being able to look out over the vast cannon of centuries of art always gave me comfort that I was joining an important Way of craft and perception. I worked my butt off in school, at times from the prideful need to be the best, -ruthlessly if need be. It is true I crushed a peer every now and then, but only if I perceived them as lazy or apathetic. In retrospect perhaps I should have been more gracious, but what is done is done.

for maybe what was disappeared into ourselves

oil on canvas; 24" x 24"; Rico '11

back to the woodshed

There are dozen paintings glistening with fresh paint lying in various states of evolution/birth/creation on the studio floor and the painting wall.  The dream of 3 nights ago haunts my vision; I saw the studio full of gigantic paintings and I walked amongst them feeling the canvas and smelling the paint.  

Sometimes it comes like that.  Not often, and I don't believe in waiting for inspiration anyhow.  But sometimes it happens like that and there it is and you have to; the only sin I believe in is hearing the call and choosing not to answer it.

So I pulled out the last of my post-card-sized canvases this morning and we'll see about bringing those visions into the physical world.  

For now, there's Donald Bird on the speakers and it's cold as I sit and type.  These mornings I always think of Pollock trudging out the barn and firing up the dream.  At his best, there wasn't even a nice glass of whiskey waiting as reward for the day's effort.  Paint is resilient, that's what I've found out working in here for the past 5 years.  It can take what you dish out, no worries.  The worst kind of painting treats materiality with preciousness.  I've no tolerance for it, not in this era.  

It's time to get moving again, the damp cold is seeping through the layers and numbing my fingers.  

Day 269, canvas 50

The studio season is coming to a close, I've got a few more weeks and then it is only the odd warm winter day, -not uncommon here, to work.  The 50 has been a life/work changing experience for me.  As I hoped, I broke out of my comfortable orbit and into space itself. 

Despite my remoteness, no one works in true isolation, and I keep up with a handful of painters on both coasts.  I have seen all of our work evolve significantly this year, and I look forward to sitting in a Chelsea pub some random afternoon and discussing all these changes vehemently with two of them in particular.  

While the 50 is not complete just yet, I put paint on the final virgin canvas this morning.  I expect these last few will offer some clue as to what comes next in my work, but for now I am racing the cold to get these done.  Nonetheless, I feel a certain sense of closure at this moment. 

Miles is on the speakers and I have no desire to be online another second....

one painting, four ways

45

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

This is a perfect Friday! It's a great day to enjoy the company of others and just hang out. It's also a good day to endorse situations or promote ideas or get people to work together on a project. Sports, playful times with children, romance, vacations and social diversions will all be upbeat and fun!!

unfinished business

paint-stained sneakers

My day in Atlanta was beautiful and peaceful and full of connecting with people.  It was good to see friends and to see how people continually are growing and growing up.  Accolades are nice, I won't lie, but after all that it is time to put it out of my mind and work.

I ripped back into it tonight and it didn't come easy but it did come.  I'm winding down as Winter approaches, I can already feel it.  I wish there was a studio in Mexico waiting for me; a place to ride out the cold and paint by the sea.  

Tonight I'll smoke a cigar and think about what worked and what didn't and what went down and wrap my head around how all this laying down of paint can be so flat and dull or so full of living energy.  The trains are coming through this little town and there's jazz on the speakers.  I'm still in a t-shirt so I can't complain yet.   The stillness is a rich full wind for my ragged sails.  I'm amazed how true I have stayed to my course, and now I feel that a long-sought after shore is near.

delivery day

Tomorrow morning I will rise early, as I do most days. I'll bag the three small paintings I just wired and signed, pack the van with one of the Forest and the Sea paintings, and drive to Atlanta. The work will be available at Nandina Home Design, and we will see if at last I am able to get traction in a market I have tried to find a way into for years.

It's strange for work to leave the studio unsold. But it is right that people will see it, -it should not live here like a captive. I feel I am nearly at the end of one journey and immediately beginning another. Time will tell.

My studio in Atlanta was subterranean; a vast, concrete tire warehouse in which I lived illegally for 4 days a week for close to a year. The nights were pitch black, cold and often uneasy. During that period, I broke away from working with metal and began the journey to paint on surface. I always found it symbolic that a block away was a historical marker for the surrender of Atlanta to General Sherman.

...and now I will drink another Sapporo and get ready for the day.

time away

Life comes in; there you have it. Days turn to weeks at the blink of an eye in my life now, so weeks away happen and I feel that tense-empty feeling creep up and take me over. Time away is good, it has the ability to give eyes in a way. Frenetic pitch is good too, it leaves no time for doubt and questions and analysis...action has its own seduction.

I sit on top of a large body of work now. It was an ambitious process, a Dare of magnitude and significance and, in the end (but I'll leave that to others to decide) of some possible importance in the oeuvre of Rico.

In my angry moments (and there are some, yes indeed), I paint to kill Warhol, to kill Jasper Johns, to kill all that nudge-nudge-wink-wink crap that makes great poster art and feeds our cynicism and endless appetites for the so-called new. Burn it. Toss Koons and Hirst on the bonfire and let our vanities grow cold and hungry once again. This is about PAINT. What it can do, what it has yet to discover, unveil, instruct, alter and offer. Paint on surface; no pretty edges to offer up illusion. The Unclean, there for you to digest -if you can, if you have the stuff. I don't do it for me, and I am unabashedly spiritual and shamelessly in search of the Sublime. If these pursuits amount to a career death sentence, so be it.

When I look at the work in the studio now, the words of Motherwell haunt the space..."an art stripped bare," exposed, naked before you like Manet's Olympia. Approach it, -gauntlet thrown-, bring it if you feel you can. I do this shit, I don't play at it. I'm going to break it all open, and that is my word.

fostering creativity

A quick personal note today. Ever since they have been physically able, we have let our daughters dress themselves. I love watching them get ready in the mornings because it is an extension of play and develops their creativity. I've been keeping up with a lot of the fashion week coverage, watching the runway photos and so on, and some of the combinations they come up with rival anything I see in Paris or New York.

When I look at fashion street blogs, I often think to myself, "that person's parents let them dress themselves as a kid". My wife sometimes recoils at the color combinations, but to me it seems they are exploring an endless universe; that is what color is for me. I think it is so important to let children play, and part of that play includes playing with identity and personal style. Soon the social pressures of school will begin to shape what they wear, but hopefully they will have built a great sense of their own style by then and can weather trend and conformity.

They seem naturally gifted with an ability to create dynamic collisions of texture and pattern that I find tremendously exciting. (I mean, sparkly red slippers pretty much go with everything, right?) I know some parents view their children as extension of themselves, or at least comments on themselves, but I've always fostered autonomy in my children. Partially this is because they are twins, I suppose. Partially it is because I believe that a clear sense of personal autonomy and healthy self-love are the only paths to successful relationships later in life.

I'm fighting a cold and lost this week of studio work, and I'm traveling next week so I long to get back in there and get some closure. Things look promising for the new year and I look forward to where the work takes me.

empire state of mind

empire state of mind

oil on canvas, 24" x 24"

Rico, 2011