blank slate

Stretched and sized 2 more large canvases over the weekend, a brutally physical process in which I impart a substantial amount of my DNA into my work.  Let's just say that there will be no disputing authentic Rico's from fakes.

With aching hands and scraped-up knuckles this morning I look across the studio at pure possibility; there's something so beautiful about a blank canvas; especially so with two.

I complain about location.  I do this too much, though it is certainly a factor.  The biggest limitation on me, -on anyone, is myself.  While I step up my game every time I walk into this space to work, I hesitate outside these walls.  There is no one coming to find me, of this I am absolutely certain.  It is not even that rejection bothers me so much any more, I think it is simply that natural human tendency to resist change and to avoid the unknown.  What if I were incredibly successful?  What would come with that?  How would my life need to change and am I prepared to make those changes?

Yes.

Looking at this big black painting I see something really amazing and to an extent magical.  The fact I live with it day after day and that this quality is not diminishing says something about where I've gone with it.  Where I'm going is still unknown; and that's the real magic.

studio tonight

swimming at night

she thinks she can warn the stars (for e.k.)

108" x 78", oil on canvas, Rico '12

Here's a preview of the big black.  I'll photograph it properly tomorrow, but this is an exclusive for the half dozen people that read this blog.  After weeks of wrestling with this painting I feel I found my groove.  Tomorrow I'll start building the next one.  And so it goes.

I painted this for a friend whose daughter died.  Six days on the earth seems such a short time, but no one can own time.  As parents we assume a natural order to life and mortality, but in the end it is only a bold assumption.  I felt this spirit needed to be writ large, and today is the anniversary of her death so I wanted to lay it down tonight.  

And I'm spent, and I need to sit alone with this epic poetry for a time as the day falls away.

wandering in blackness

I've spent weeks with this large black canvas now, slowing applying thin layers of medium and paint.  During this time I've been trying to address the logistics of exactly how to move paint around such a large area that replicates the way I did it on small sheets of vellum.  I've had a couple of "ah-ha" moments and it's just been practice, practice.  The big canvases mess with you; it's a lot of work and visual real estate to screw up, so there's the pressure that weighs down creativity.  For my part I've been struggling to get the surface where I want it before the white gets laid down.

The demons of doubt and disappointment and frustration have descended on me and I feel like St. Anthony in that famous etching being ripped apart and consumed.  Try as I might, I can't catch a break; I no longer even get rejections, I only get silence.  Being ignored is far worse than being rejected because there is no closure; you're just left wondering.

There is nothing new under the sun; and so much more so with painting.  There's always some artist you never heard of somewhere that did what you're doing.  The best one can hope for is authenticity and hopefully that authenticity may afford a new vista for the audience, the artist and painting.  So back into the 100 degree studio I go, and I keep searching myself for that authenticity and honest expression onto surface that will break open my own ways of perception.

It's less stalling and more free falling.

Just one more second before pulling that ripcord, just one more, one more, one more.  The farther and faster I fall the quicker time becomes; the more the urgency is felt.  Let go of all that I know and accept the reality of my current being; hurtling toward oblivion at 9.8 m/s/s.  Because art/creativity should be dangerous.  It should come at a price, and a high one at that.  If you're not in some way risking your soul then you're not doing anything a monkey with a brush can't do.  You've got to be pulling g's up to the point that everything is about to fall apart and spin out of control, and then you've to pull out and touch the endless blue.

It's time we took painting somewhere again.

reflection

My 3-week solo parenting adventure officially ended last night.  Of this time with my daughters I can only say that I am filled with tremendous gratitude and have been given life-altering focus from the experience.  I've lived a life I have only dreamed of heretofore; that of being a stay-at-home dad.  Being free from a desk and an office for most of a month has made me see the reality of my current situation with new eyes.  It's given me new perspective on my art career and what needs to be done there.  It is a time I will always remember and cherish, and I hope that my daughters remember it as well; I hope parts of the last 3 weeks will become ingrained in their consciousness -even if they don't remember it clearly.

I look forward to a week in the studio catching up.  Incredibly, I've accomplished a respectable amount of things.  I've gotten 3 coats of gesso on the canvas, as well as building it and sizing it.  I figured out the technique I want to use to translate the small gestures into large ones.  In the process of this journey I happened upon something truly new and I can't wait to see it manifested.

Summer has arrived with her usual vengeance, it was in the mid to high 90's in there this morning.  Interestingly (at least to me) the acrylic gesso dries almost instantly in these conditions, while I'm used to oil paint staying wet for days.  I've got sanding and then another layer of gesso and then at least three layers of alkyd to apply before it sees paint.  I am still surprised at the size of this canvas.

I want to post pictures but they don't offer anything interesting at the moment to anyone but me.

There will be late nights, and undoubtedly reflection on the process as I go forward.  Cigars and night caps, and this massive work will come to life slowly.  

knowing why

I've written my share of artist's statements as well as read many others.   With few exceptions (including my own) these are often painful and uncomfortable things to read.  They are either nonsensical, pretentious, arrogant or hopelessly naive; the worst are trite banalities about feeling.  What an odd and ridiculous thing to force someone who has chosen to express themselves visually to attempt to explain themselves in writing.

Yet, the larger purpose of these things cannot be overstated; know why it is that you do what you do.  Why do you paint with acrylics?  Why do you collage?  How does your work fit into the historical and cultural strains in which you have been born and raised?  What is important enough to you that you feel compelled (against the better judgement of friends, family and lovers) to dedicate your time, energy and money to this expression?  What is it, exactly, that you hope to achieve?

I think we should ask ourselves these questions as artists; and I think we should ask them frequently.  The answers can be simple (at least in simple language) but they must be authentic.  Art without integrity (notice I didn't say Integrity) will always be empty.  One has to apprehend that sense of what purpose it serves, -even in their own lives alone.  I know the answer isn't the same for everybody; that's not the point.  But the difference between art students, crafters and professionals is that the latter should no longer do things simply because they are provocative or edgy or "now" without having something else behind it.

I think that's how you survive and eventually thrive.  You figure out what's interesting and why, and how you think you can do it and what materials speak to you and you do that and you find out everything about how to do it and when that thing/idea/style becomes interesting to a larger audience you are already doing it and doing with absolute authenticity and integrity and the come-latelys can't hope to compete against that truth.

Maybe, maybe not.

day 1: again

I had a professor friend who taught me the "old ways," and to this day I prefer them.  There is nothing like stretching your own canvas, the smell of rabbit skin glue wafting through the studio and bloody, scraped knuckles and sweat.  Knowing that I'm building just like the altiers of old gives me sense of connection to heritage.  I don't have to do this; I could buy ready-made cavases.  But there's something about doing it, it's a journey.  Going large is like an epic wrestling match; the challenges are myriad.  But when you get it right, when you hear that taut drum hum of the surface as you flick it, -it's a pleasure all to its own.

It was 93 degrees in the studio today as I pulled and stretched and stapled.  I was dripping when I left, but when I look at that big, blank canvas I feel true joy because I know that over the course of five months I have brought a picture from my mind's eye into physical being.  This work was always this size; it simply took me this time to get there.

I'll size this canvas in the next day or two and then I'll start applying black gesso.  It has begun.  It has begun.

renewed

Week # 1 of solo parenting is winding down, and it is amazing.  I have not been as happy as I have been over the past week in ten years.  The combination of spending most of the day with my daughters and not being chained to a desk in a windowless office has awakened something in my consciousness that I realize has been dormant for a long time.  I feel a renewed sense of life purpose.

Tonight I have a sitter and at last will be able to get into the studio to begin the grand canvases.  I've painted them in my mind for weeks now, and I can't wait to bring that vision to life.  I have been thinking a great deal about authenticity in art.  I remember the first time I heard a Lenny Kravitz record; how I thought to myself that it sounded like it was recorded during the time of his obvious influences and yet was so fresh at the same time.  It's like if you could transport him back in time, he would be immediately accepted by those he most admired as both a peer and a pioneer.  When I think about painting, I have always and only ever been concerned with greatness.  I do not hide my influences; I celebrate them.  It is my dream to one day hang in the same room as a Rothko and for people to see it and say, "yeah, that works."  I have never hid my passion for the sublime in art.  My paintings are imbued with a sense of the mystical and primal.  I'm concerned about the primordial energies of the universe, and I want my work to be a gateway to those energies for the people that see and experience it.

I unpacked the stretcher bars earlier in the week and they are things of beauty.  This is going to be a blast.

Buffalo

Buffalo, 60" x 48", 

oil and fibered aluminum coating on canvas, Rico '12

return of the heroic

Today I began the final realization of my dream from December.  There are supplies on the way which will enable to build 3 epic (108" x 78") canvases.  The largest size I've ever attempted, these will loom in the cavernous space of my studio and hopefully I will be up to the challenge.  I can say from working nearly as large previously that the challenges are not just compositional or skill-based; when you work with something significantly larger than yourself it presents physical challenges as well.  I stand a mighty 68" on a good day (and only after months of yoga), so there's a good 4 feet vertical and nearly a foot horizontal to contend with.

Something that my friend Mark said to me in NY has stayed with me.  We stayed up late talking about art and career and he said something to the effect that the big ones will sell the small ones, but never the other way around.  Like Rothko and others, the practical un-attainability of such a large work for most people makes the market for the smaller works hot.  These can't go in most people's houses.  They can only go in museums or large private/public spaces like atria.  Intention set forth into the universe is a powerful thing.

Looming black and ethereal, I hope that they will convey that sense of encounter I am always striving to make within my work.  When we meet something larger than ourselves, delivered on the human scale or beyond, we respond with awe.  The processes I've developed over the past half year are unforgiving and difficult to control and perhaps that's why I'm having so much damn fun.

Looking back at the 7" x 5" post card canvases I worked out my initial ideas on back in January, I see a quantum leap ahead.  I see them; I've always seen them, and I suppose that is one aspect of what it means to do what I do.  At a party in the city we talked about experience and the duty of the artist to not only provide but to bring back experiences s/he has brought back from other realms of consciousness.  I've never shied from stating that I'm interested in the sublime and the spiritual in art.

It looks to be a grand summer.

The New York Chronicles

Stayed in Hell's Kitchen with my gracious hostess who will be getting a surprise in the mail in a few weeks and then immediately shuttled into Brooklyn to hang at the painter's studio.  Much wine, beer, whiskey, art, career talk, discussions of size and heroic painting into the morning.  Dragged my hung over self out of bed and crawled Chelsea all morning until my eyes hurt from looking at art.  Brice Marden's concurrent exhibitions, -still taking that in, and saw the good, the bad and the utterly banal elsewhere.  Work that made me think, re-consider, wonder and yes, a hell of a lot of bullshit that just pissed me off.  Too beautiful a day to stay mad at lazy artists and the lazy gallerists who promote the ever-shifting "now," I climbed onto the High Line and dug the City from a higher vantage point then dipped back down underground and up into a crazy Turkish parade which winded and flowed and sucked me in, dancing to crazy music and hugging happy people in the streets.  MoMA and the wall of exhaustion hit me simultaneously but I was lost in Siqueiros' wonderful bound woman painting on burlap for a long time and then Miro before eyeing the usual suspects at length.  Back to the Kitchen and Pakistani food before heading back uptown to catch the opening.  Met the amazing James Little, many more people drinking and laughing and arguing into the night.  Walked alone through the cool night after coming out of the hot tunnels again and was wonderfully lost in thought and delight at all seen and experienced.  Black sedan out of town and into the harsh Laguardia light, then on the open road listening to Campbell and Moyers talking about god and art and everything.

And it is amazing, and there is clarity, and there will be epic paintings about god and art and everything.

myth

"Buffalo"

in process

The gods die.  They are reborn.  The artist is one who has the transcendent experience and must then bring it back to the living, conscious system/culture to deliver the new myths.  The Myth must be relevant to the time.  The gods of old are no longer relevant.  That "old time religion" is the graveyard of relativity to each each culture that exists and pushes into the Void.

The artists do not create gods.  We show the way to them.  In this we die to ourselves; again and again and again.  We implement the software, but I don't think we design it.  Art must be relevant.  It must serve the society into which it exists, but it cannot be completely of it.

I embark on my island journey.  I'll return as if from another realm.