The Rico Act

divergence

when we are tired we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago

96" x 72", oil on canvas, Rico '14

The journey of my life has been ever towards my true self. It is a narrative steeped in adventure, disappointment, luck and struggle. Some will tell you that I've been through a lot, but I tend not to focus on hard times. I do not allow those moments to define me; the moments when I get back up and fight on are what define me instead.

For me, painting is about finding my voice. I don't think I've ever consciously attempted to make something new that's never been seen before. I've painted the way that interested me, and sometimes I've painted in the style of artists whom I admire for a time to learn about their process and materials. As I became more passionate about painting and as I've painted more and more paintings, I have moved toward a greater authenticity. As I have concerned myself less with content and narrative, the work has become (at times) more about story in a mythical sense.

I think the world (and the art world in particular) needs mystics. We need less religion and a deeper communion with the divine. We need to look up into the stars and clouds and feel our connection to the most majestic things and in that moment understand our own majestic humanity. If we can recognize it in ourselves we can hopefully begin to recognize it in others. Rare is the person who is killed for claiming s/he is a god. Common are those who are slaughtered for suggesting that we all are.

The past year has been one of profound existential struggle for me. I've wrestled with doubt and discouragement and even enduring, acute despair. Last Fall I was questioning everything and wondering if I could go on. Now I stand on the threshold of my next great adventure.

As I find my own clear and unique artistic voice, I find that the world around me looks and feels different. I interact with people differently than I have before. My day job has been a hard row to plow more often than not, but it has given me the opportunity to develop a personal resilience and fortitude in the face of harshness and alienation that I did not know I possessed. In my work environment, I am a unique mind and personality. There are no other artists, no divergent thinkers.

When we see life as a grand journey, I believe we are richer. I am surrounded by young students who see everything as a means to an end, and I am deeply saddened by the seemingly one-dimensional existence they are resigning themselves to. There's a joy and wonder in getting lost; there is an inexplicable freedom in not knowing what is coming next in life. I've lived on that edge for a long, long time and I can't imagine living any other way. I will never do just one thing. Life offers too many rich and exciting opportunities and there is so much to know and to experience. Choosing to live outside of our comfort zone is one of the most powerful life choices we can make. The rewards are boundless. Yes, there is struggle and pain. But those things come our way anyway.

This painting has taken months and taken a lot out of me. I struggled and struggled with it over the past several weeks; taking entire sections out, reworking them, putting them back in. How do I know when a painting is done? I think it let's me know.

Weird scenes inside the gold mine

My family attended the wedding of a good friend this weekend. The bride's father is a manager/producer and let's just say he's high on the food chain; not just in Nashville but globally. The house was extraordinary, the art collection mind-boggling and I'll just sum it up with one image:

A "selfie" by Ringo Starr, taken with a film camera in a bathroom mirror circa late 1960's. Signed. To said father.

The photo collection alone was a music geek's wet dream. Turning to leave the bathroom, up above the light switches...holy shit, a letter press print of sheet music signed by Brian Wilson. It just kept going. Taking in the Miro' on the staircase landing, I was filled with many emotions but ultimately I take some heart in the fact that people of that economic level collect art accordingly. Certainly not all of them, but some. Chagall, Warhol, Howard Finster, it just kept going; a feast to the eyes at every turn with a decidedly clear aesthetic. They were hung with appreciation but never in a vulgar, showy way. These people lived with their art, and I think that is what gave me hope.

It was a window into a world few of us (at my socio-economic level) get to see. Art that may or may never be viewed by the general public again. Out of respect, I left my phone in the car and didn't check-in. Alas, no selfie with the Miro', but everyone deserves their personal space if not their privacy. Who knows what treasures are locked in the temples of the 1% that will never again see the museums?

And tomorrow night, I will leave all that behind, suit up, and go finish the painting in the studio....

back to black and white

Painting is doing; it requires taking action and seeing it through. But it is also something more akin to being. It requires presence and quietness and listening. For me, the less agenda in a work of art the better. I'm not saying I'm against political art, but there has to be something else behind it. Art whose only content is ideas lacks something; it is all-too-often empty.

So the artist paints of his/her time. We paint of the moment in the hope of connecting to the timeless, and we paint from within in the hope of connecting with the universal. I make art, in a physical sense, to survive for hundreds of years. That alone doesn't make it superior, but one must concede it makes for a formidable case as to its intent.

The paintings I am most uncertain about are often the best. Those which please me, that is to say those that I look at and think, "that's exactly what I want" are generally not as strong as the ones cloaked in ambiguity or ambivalence. So this state of uncertainty and doubt is a powerful place from which to create.

Proper pics of this one as I complete it within the next few weeks. I like to snap pictures with my phone for shorthand reads. It enables me to see the work instantaneously and in an unflattering context. I need to be able to see the work in the moment, without context or history or the relationship I've developed with the long time spent.

Show announcement

the guarded glance of half solicitude, Rico '14

8" x 10", photo reproduction

My work is included in a group show, Fiction (with only daylight between us) at the University of Dayton, in Ohio. The show opened this past Friday night. I'm told it will move to the Neon Furnace Gallery when this run is over. The show was curated by the artist Jeffery Cortland Jones. Jeff is an acquaintance and I remember distinctly seeing his work for the first time in Brooklyn at Sideshow gallery. I love his sparse, open spaces which resonate with a quiet tension. I was honored to be invited to participate.

The show concurrently runs online at Jeff's virtual project space No Future Projects.

following the work

I've written many times that I believe work comes form work. Being in the studio on a regular basis fosters a discipline; a true practice. I work in series mostly, but I am never afraid to follow the work wherever it leads, even if that takes me off my current focus.

Because I build most of my canvases and stretcher frames, production of new work comes in fits and starts. The Winter kept me out of the studio, but now that the warmer weather is here I am getting back into the groove. I laid down paint on a big piece today, one example of following the work. I was working on the Stations series and an image caught my eye. I made some sketches and knew it had to be black and white and knew it wasn't part of the current series.

That's the way it is for me; ideas have to survive and endure. If I experience something that I think most people would call inspiration, I initially ignore it. An idea must persist. It must keep me awake at night, be waiting for me in the morning and not let me go. My paintings take months because I don't paint everything I think of or envision. Many fall by the wayside and never get past an idea.

When such an ideas survives, I become very quiet about it. Often that's how I know it is a powerful painting; if I've kept it close to the vest during process.

Mystery of Light at Lyons Wier

Soul String, James Austin Murray,

2014, Oil on shaped canvas

69 x 72 in / 175.3 x 182.9 cm

photo via Lyons Wier Gallery

My friend James Austin Murray has a solo show up right now in NYC. Here's a short article with a video interview. If you're in NYC or heading that way in the next few weeks, do yourself a favor and check it out. I've watched this body of work from it's seed, taking root at the Bemis Center in Nebraska and reaching full maturity in his new studio (which I haven't been to yet, but look forward to) in the flower district.

loose ends

I pick up my work from SAM today and the crazy run of this show comes to an end. It is bittersweet; one the one hand I've achieved something I thought was decades away and yet I question whether my career is altered even minutely from the experience. I remain an unknown in SC; a place still trying to wrap its head around Modern art, much less contemporary art. I sometimes think post-impressionism is where most people lose their comprehension of art around these parts.

So the studio will be full this afternoon. I'm grappling with a very large 3-panel piece that is giving me logistical problems, and I'm climbing out of the Winter paralysis and lockout. As I re-enter the studio after nearly 3 months of restricted access, I suppose I question the point. All this time and money and energy spent; for what? For whom? And while there is a freedom in the fact that no one is watching and I may do as I please, there is also the discouragement in knowing that my game is so much higher than most of what I see around me; and yet is goes unseen.

And still I keep going.

The large painting is something I have to paint for me. I hope to return to the stations once I complete it. I may have to rebuild the stretcher frames as I cannot seem to correct the warping of one seam. It's frustrating and time-consuming but not unforeseen. With my wife's show opening next weekend, I cannot imagine being able to get much done this week.

The warmer nights are coming, however. I'll be back in full swing soon.

creation as an act of sheer will

We build fires in the night and look up into the stars. We have always built fires, alone, with small groups and in ritual. Sometimes we are one with the fire and night and stars and one another; but inevitably, someone comes along and wants to rule. They tell us the fire belongs to them. We should depend on this person, for our protection, for our quality of life, for our advancement, for our freedom. Milena have come and gone. The big man, the chief, the king, the pope, the dictator and all the rulers have tried to sell us the same bill of goods; that they know best, and lining their pockets with our gold is the only way to maintain life as we know it.

It has always been a lie. It is a lie today.

There is no Art World. There are small enclaves of very wealthy people engaged in speculation and some kind of visual product happens to be being traded. It looks a lot like art; and sometimes it happens to be, but none of these people notice. There are galleries along the streets of Chelsea and the Lower East Side and they are selling something that, sometimes, was made by hand in some studio by someone and these someone call themselves artists. These big auction houses and large and small galleries and dealers tell us artists that we need them. That they alone can make our lives worthwhile and we should seek them out and lay our gifts at their feet for judgment lest we risk lifelong obscurity and poverty and madness. It's a compelling and, at times, seductive argument. But we should never forget that we built the fires before they came along with their white walls and client lists. We stared and shouted in the night sky before the glittering lights of SoHo faded into Tribeca. We will make, long after they can no longer afford the rent. We will create without their audiences, -in obscurity, and madness and poverty if we must.

For us there is no business plan. There is only an imperative. We must make, and we must reach, and we must push out beyond the known and the possible because we alone know in our hearts that out in those regions we will build new fires and find new gods and build new worlds. That anyone who offers us freedom in exchange for anything isn't actually offering freedom at all.

There is nothing wrong with the art world. It lives in 200 sq foot studios in the flower district, and make-shift garages, and abandoned warehouses, and storage units, and extra (or not) bedrooms from coast to coast and across the world and it cannot be owned or regulated, and it is immune to your auction houses and soulless collections that collect dust for the sole purpose of making more money. It lives in the faces of the mad, the obscure and the poor in every city in this country and quite a few small towns and rural hamlets too. You will never see the greatest painting this nation has to offer. Those people will die and the work will not endure and great treasures will be lost. There are many, many things that wealth can never own. You don't have to be rich to collect art, that too is a lie.

We don't need. We want; and in our wanting we suffer. That is why people are given power; because we believe their lies that they can end our suffering.

I paint to reach the possible, which always lies just beyond the impossible, I think. I paint grand to see if I can do it. I stretch my physical and technical limitations because I believe that is the whole point of living; and that safety and security and comfort are slow, numb deaths that bring us nothing and surround us with so much that we don't even notice it anymore.

I may never have fame. I may never sell another painting in my lifetime. All my work may end up locked away and destroyed without seeing the light of day. But I will never quit. I cannot. I have tried and tried to walk away; there are better ways to not make a living, as the saying goes. I come back every time because if I do not paint I am diminished as a human soul. So I speak to every soul, whether they want to hear or not.

47 things I've learned in 47 years

I'm in the doldrums. Winter lingers and the placid sea merely offers buoyancy; no direction. I'm feeling introspective and so here it goes, in no particular order of significance....

You can always change your mind. The road to change may not come easy, but there is no path from which you cannot diverge.
Life is about relationships. Maintain them with the utmost care.
Always be willing to step outside your comfort zone. The greatest moments of your life result from the unexpected detour, the choice you wanted to say no to but didn't.
Buy the ticket, take the ride. See your decisions through and deal with the consequences.
Things happen for a reason; sometimes that reason is piss-poor judgement, bad luck or lack of perspective. Learn from these moments and move on.
Follow your bliss.
Trust your visions.
No one can give you answers, but seek out people whom you believe can anyway. You'll probably end up calling each other friends for life.
Every problem hides a kernel of wisdom. Break it apart. Use a hammer if you need to, but discover whatever it is you're supposed to learn from it.
Sometimes we act, sometimes we are acted upon. There are equal merits to either condition.
Treat every person you meet with respect and dignity and you will meet god many times over.
Everyone should have one shitty job in their life. A job where you serve people and are made to feel invisible. There is a clarity from this experience that nothing else offers.
Your relationship with money is just that; decide whether it is a long or short term, honest, caring, abusive or destructive, and act accordingly. If you don't like the results, learn to have a different relationship.
Buy the best shoes you can afford and care for them.
Become a snob about one thing, but don't be obnoxious about it.
Do something you will never be great at; this is called a hobby. It should be fun and utterly pointless.
Always take a job to learn before you take a job to earn.
Learn more about money than your accountant.
Be in better shape than your doctor.
Your body is the greatest gift you'll ever receive, treat it well.
Life is an endurance sport, not a sprint. Watch your friends and peers revolve on the wheel of fortune and you will understand this. Stick around, it doesn't get easier but you get better at it.
Dress your age, but dress well; how you act is up to you, but own where you are in life.
Go to New York. Often.
Ride roller coasters.
Finger paint with your kids and make a mess. You'll remember why it's fun.
Drive a stick shift.
Keep a journal. You don't have to write every day, but you should write at least one entry a week.
Get a really nice pen.
Drink water. Lots of water.
Exercise as often as you can, no one is too busy to take care of themselves.
Travel for good friends, good conversation and good experiences.
If your best friend calls and needs you to come, go without hesitation.
Do not buy into other people's emotional states or drama.
Read great books. Seriously. Even if it takes you a year to read a great novel, you join a society once you do. You understand metaphors and you get references. This simple act makes you smarter and opens doors in ways you cannot conceive.
Have a drink with your father-in-law and listen to him.
Bad things happen to most people. What defines us is how we respond to these moments.
Discuss religion and politics if you must, but turn the conversation toward BBQ or college football in the South and you should be ready for fist-to-cuffs.
See great art in person. Art is meant to be experienced live.
Cultivate yourself. Ignorance is a treatable condition.
Take walks. Don't take your phone, don't wear headphones, don't do it for exercise, just take a damn walk; preferably in the woods, but anyplace outside will do.
Get out of bed when you wake up. The snooze button is for losers. My first hour of the day is an amazing personal time where I collect my thoughts and put on my skin for what lies ahead. I'd rather get up in the dark than get a little extra sleep and try to catch up with myself for the rest of the day. I always feel there is something profound about seeing the sun rise.
Learn to cook. You will never be without friends.
Cultivate one noticeable flaw, but otherwise be your best.
Make a bucket list and start checking it off.
Eat local food; no matter where you go.
Love with abandon, live with purpose.
The journey is the destination.

rain and oil

study for Prometheus, oil stick on paper, 2014

My drawing practice has recently returned, largely in part to being frozen out of my studio and my wife's aggressive rehearsal schedule. I draw in negative; the images I get down are flipped in my mind's eye. The whites are black and blacks white. I've tried working on black paper, but over the holidays I started using paint sticks in various shades of black and I've been very happy with the process.

I get images from everywhere, and lately I've been appropriating photographs from the various Tumblr feeds I check-in on daily. I confess that I've become addicted to Tumblr, I like the idea of scrolling through hundreds of images with little or no text. It's a feast for a visually-oriented person like me.

I'm taking a break from the stations series to paint another painting or two. It's not like anyone is busting down my studio door demanding the work for a show anyway, so I am happy to go at my own pace and wander in and out of the series at will. Maybe I also need a psychological break from the all-black fields, who knows?

That's the way art goes, I think. Changing one thing makes something else occur to me. Then I'll go explore that new idea. I've said it many times, but work comes from work. Painters paint, actors act, musicians play music. There are enough waiters and waitresses in the world; do what you have to do to keep your dream alive, but don't buy into the means as the end. Anyone can keep working if they are successful. Those of us who work without concern for recognition or money and keep at it are a different breed. I've been fortunate with getting my work into the world and even selling it. But I do it because, try as I might some times, I cannot not do it.

Today is a work holiday and I'm off to the studio to smoke a cigar and enjoy the rain.

what we see

7th station, in progress, studio

I've been invited to participate in a group show curated by an incredible artist and acquaintance at U Dayton (I'm big in Ohio, ladies and gentlemen, what can I say?). The assignment was simple, but it's gotten me thinking about appropriation and images and seeing. Painting, and really all art-making I can think of, involves an altered perception. Not the kind you get from substances, but an altered sense of looking/listening/experiencing a thing. It's taken me decades to fully grasp that I see the world fundamentally differently than most people; that I experience the world around me profoundly differently. So if I take an image and rotate it and reverse it and filter it, it becomes a thing it was not before. My active experience and interaction alters the thing itself, and thus forever changes the perceptions of others as well.

It's said that we don't really know what art is, but we know it when we see it. I'd add to that Jerry Saltz's famous quip, "art can be for anybody, it's just not for everybody." The viewer has a responsibility in encountering art. I really don't think a painting is done until someone has seen it. For me, seeing people see the work gives me closure. I'm not responsible for what they take away, but I'm very interested in what they bring.

If you think about it, every one of us is alone in the universe. We are experiencing life and our surroundings in a unique and solitary way. "Blue" to me isn't necessarily blue to you, and so on. Artists train themselves to trust this. We invite it in and use it, and we attempt to bring those perceptions to a table of universality through the personal. I think artists are sharing people. It makes it especially hard for us to understand those who do not share.

Over time, I've developed a way of using my medium to facilitate what I see and communicate it to others. I eschew the common notion of inspiration, but truth be told I walk around in a constant state of being inspired by everything. I'll stop and take pictures of clouds, or puddles because I find them remarkable. All that looking has brought about a way of seeing; or is it the other way around?

I'm long overdue for a trip to NYC. Good conversation is hard to find in this town.

the fourth station

Apparizione della Madre (fourth station) [in progress],

acrylic and oil on canvas, 72" x 72", Rico '14

The weekends seem shorter, the winter drags on. I work with constraints (mostly time) but increasingly without limits. I'm fairly far along on four paintings now, and I saw them all hung for the first time in the studio today. They are strong, and there is a long way to do.

A quiet night fades into a busy week. More stretchers to build -always we begin, again.