The artist's sketchbook

I received an advance pdf version of a friend's new book of paintings today.  He dedicated himself to a painting a day for an entire year and published the results, which, even looking at on my laptop screen I have to say are remarkable, lovely, and improbable moments of joy in material.

Many feel like sketches.  They have the hand-drawn rectangle borders to signify the parameters of an imagined canvas.  The lines of pencil or ink bleed through the delicate acrylic washes in flirty ways that feel intimate and immediate.  I love sketches.  What we lay down in expediency is often so much fresher than the eventual works they may or may not become.  Drawing (and I include drawing with oil stick, paints or other mediums) is such an essential and personal act for the artist.  It is the unfiltered expression of the mind.  I could look at my friends' sketchbooks for hours, we should all post more pictures of our drawings.

I come in and out of my drawing practice, but I don't do it nearly enough.  It pays dividends in terms of creativity and productivity, and many expressions live solely in dusty sketchbooks along my bookshelves or stacked in my studio.  My figure drawings number in the hundreds, dozens of them of the same model, Marge, with whom I worked for several years.  It seems strange that I don't show my nudes, and despite the abundance of them in my house (my wife periodically stole some and framed them) I've never exhibited them.

With how I'm painting now, I'm relying heavily on the shorthand of drawing with oil stick on black paper.  Some come from gesture and some come from a concept like a phrase or clouds I see as I walk through the world doing other things.  I read a line in a book at the pool the other day and it will be the title of the next painting I make; sometimes it happens like that, like I can see something in words and it won't let me go until I paint it.

Last call for exhibition, #GreenvilleSC

via Facebook

My show, "That was yesterday, that day" comes down at the end of this month.  I want to send a big shout out to the folks at Coldwell Banker Caine for supporting the show and my former classmate Kate for making it happen.  If you haven't seen the show, there are only a few weeks remaining.  I don't anticipate another South Carolina exhibition for some time to come, as my efforts will focus on Atlanta, NYC and L.A.

It's been a crazy year so far.  I'm still making work for my first solo exhibition in New York City next March.  I'm still submitting work to a few select juried shows, and communicating with Pryor Fine Art, which represents me in Atlanta.  There's always news and announcements coming up, so check back regularly.

A reminder that, if you're interested in any of the work currently in Greenville, please contact Teresa Roche at Art & Light Gallery.  She's graciously agreed to handle all transactions for this show.

I recognize that buying art is a deeply personal thing.  It seems like a lot of money when the world of "home decor" offers so many less expensive options.  But consider this; the median home price in Greenville is around $125K (good luck finding something for that, but I digress) so is 2% of that amount really that much to spend on something made to last longer than the house will stand?  Something one of a kind that tells guests you are not afraid to be who you are and like what you like?  There is also the investment factor.  Enough said.

I hope to be down at 428 S Main Street before the show ends via Periscope.  Look for an announcement on Twitter.

Impressionism and the body politic

I found myself in front of a Berthe Morisot painting in the Art Institute of Chicago last week.  It was hung next to two Renoirs.  Thus, by curatorial invitation I was inclined to compare the two painters, side-by-side, and I have to say Morisot kicked Renoir's ass.

I had several moments in the museum where I was struck by the power, quality and outright gravitas of several Impressionist painters, all of whom just happened to be women.

I think Feminism has done many great things, although I know many will disagree with me on that statement.  In my childhood it was called Women's Liberation, which I still think I like better.  It's taken decades, and it is still one step forward two steps back some days, but cultural attitudes are changing for the better, largely because of the good fight.  One thing I feel it hasn't been kind to (or especially effective with) is art theory and art history.  Looking at a Morisot or Cassatt through the lens of feminism undeniably has it purposes, but looking at them through the lens of contemporary painting, -gender blind- serves them much better to my mind.  I wanted to see this particular Morisot next to some of the lovely De Koonings in the Institute, for example.  There's so much in the power of the impasto that pre-supposes Ab Ex; namely the shared sense of immediacy in getting the paint to surface.  It made me sad that, in this museum like most others, everything is so cleanly delineated into periods and nothing gets mixed.  This just strikes me as a wrongheaded way to look at and think about art.  If you really think about it, nothing truly exists in a box. So why put art into all these little packages?

It reminded me that there's a lot of division on both sides of the socio-political aisle these days, maybe for similar reasons.  People put themselves into boxes, and don't want to mix and mingle with the different or divergent.  There's a lot of venom from both conservatives and liberals, -and oddly, it's beginning to sound eerily similar.  The vitriol against Hillary Clinton from many (though certainly not all) of Bernie's supporters often sounds as violent and intolerant as the voices of Trump's minions.  Why have reached this point in our culture where we can no longer intelligently disagree with someone without verbally abusing them or trying to intimidate them?  Why do millions of people feel that being insensitive and vulgar is somehow "telling it like it is?'  I just feel we can do better.  That we must do better.

I'm surprised that so many people on the eroding edge of lower-middle class can support a billionaire, any billionaire, really.  In no scenario does this man care about "the people," just wait and see.  But I'm equally surprised that we are having, for the first time in decades, a serious conversation about some form of socialism, because that also indicates an enormous cultural sea change.  The times they are indeed a-changing, and while half of the people in this country are going to be royally pissed on November 5th no matter how things turn out, I wonder if either outcome will truly usher in the cultural apocalypse  so many on both sides fear.  More than likely, and sadly, it will be business as usual by February 2017.

I just wonder if we can pick our national discourse out of the comment section gutter and actually speak AND listen to one another respectfully again.  I am not naive to the deep cultural and ideological divides.  I've spent most of this year reading my Burke and Paine, getting to the roots of these polarized visions for democracy.  To be honest, it's hard reading.  It's much easier and more satisfying to call someone an "idiot" and leave it there, except for the fact that I feel I owe my fellow human beings the same grace I've been extended all the times in my life when I too was simply uninformed and unfoundedly opinionated.  We all have much to learn about one another and about our shared history.

So maybe the museum is a place to start.  Maybe if we mix the Monets in with the Pollocks and let ourselves free-associate for a while from a place of unfamiliarity and non-judgment we can open our collective perceptions.  Maybe what you don't like isn't crap, maybe you just don't like it because you've never thought about it, or perhaps never seen in from a different perspective.  When we cling to the safe and familiar we tend to become more frightened, not more free.  Freedom comes with letting go and stepping into the unknown.  Fear is the expressway to tyranny.

Out

When the going gets tough, go on vacation; in my case, a semi-perminent one.  The only downside of traveling is leaving the studio, paintings in various states of being.  It's been a long Spring, lots of uncertainty and an ever-present state of limbo.  These liminal spaces of life, they seem protracted whilst inhabiting them but all-too-brief in retrospection.  The truth is that I've need a vacation for a long time.  Sometimes we act, sometimes we are acted upon.  

I leave the studio and go out into the world to experience, and to share experience.  The Rico Act will return in about a week.

  

See me at #Artisphere2016

Coldwell Banker Caine Main Street Gallery, exhibition view

Greenville South Carolina's international art festival, Artisphere is getting ready to happen in just a few weeks, May 13-15.  I plan to be down at the Coldwell Banker Caine Main Street gallery throughout the weekend to answer questions about the work and meet people.  Come say hi.

Artisphere© has become a BFD for Greenville over the past few years.  Attendance appears to be growing, and this year the number of visitors may well creep into six figures.  It's a great time of year to visit SC, the temperatures can still be moderate (relatively speaking) and the city is in bloom.

Though not officially part of the festival, my exhibit at CBC gallery runs through this month and next, and the location (428 S Main Street) is highly visible.  Look for the glass blowers on the Reedy River bridge, and the gallery is right there.

Thanks to all who came out for the opening reception last month.  All of the work is for sale and Teresa Roche at Art & Light gallery has agreed to handle all sales on my behalf.  Because May is Mental Health Awareness month, I am going to give a percentage of all sales this month to the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, a non-profit charity that "is committed to alleviating the suffering caused by mental illness by awarding grants that will lead to advances and breakthroughs in scientific research."

Metal health issues increasingly touch our society, as seen all-too-often in the cases of mass shooters, military veterans who return from service with PTSD and other mental/emotional issues, and the family members who suffer along with those individuals with disorders and illness.  As an artist, this is a very personal issue for me and I wanted to do something.

Hope to see you at Artisphere!

Thoughts on "Via Dolorosa": Part 2

Apparizione della Madre (fourth station), oil on canvas

60" x 48", Rico '16

There is an inner light, largely unseen but not truly invisible.  I believe we are born with it.  It starts brightly because it is strong, perhaps not too far from wherever it originates. 

Resilience and transcendence are largely defined after the fact.  They need a baseline against which to be quantified, and the baseline often takes the form of crushing failure, loss, or defeat.  So there can be no true transcendence without profound loss, and loss/failure/defeat are not things to be feared.  Looked at this way, failure (and the like) offers us an opportunity for transcendence.  Resilience in the face of loss and disappointment is what enables us to define ourselves separate and apart from whatever event life throws our way.  Simply put, this is because resilience empowers us to write our own narratives. 

I got interested in the Stations of the Cross when I saw Barnett Newman’s collection of paintings by the same name in the National Gallery.  I love the story because it begins from a place of defeat and moves through agony, humiliation, loss and brutality and eventually to transcendence.   I’ve tried on a few occasions to tackle the theme in a series of paintings, but the time wasn’t right or the work wasn't there.  When I saw the Narthex gallery at St. Peter’s, I knew that if I ever had the opportunity to exhibit there I wanted to do the stations.

My style (if one can call it that) of painting is not about depicting events or trying to visually represent people or places or even actions.  This, combined with the fact that I consider myself secular, set up an interesting set of problems before the first paint ever hit the first surface.

I was born into the era of pop art.  Though I’ve learned to appreciate some of it, overall I find it either nihilistic or cheeky, and these are not the places from which I approach art personally.  I’m unabashed in believing that one of the reasons art exists and continues to endure is because it speaks to the spiritual, the universal, and the primordial.  It has the power to give image to that which exists unseen, voice to that which is unheard, and substance to that which we perceive as intangible.   These things are the measure of a culture long after civilization dissolves and fades away.  Empires rise and fall, but their greatness is only truly assessed after they crumble into dust and we sift out the artifacts of their culture.

What is vital to me is twofold: one, that I have to keep my channel open to the singular expression that is uniquely my own when making the work.  When doing this, the process is less about creating and more about discovering.  This is a much more rewarding and, dare I say, enduring perspective to adopt in the studio when making work.  Two, that the audience make the work their own, truly their own.  The former is achieved through artistic practice; the latter can only be approached through mindfulness and openness without attachment.   I’ve found that attachment is often an impediment to creativity.  Non-attachment frees the soul in a way that transmits energy to the hands in making.

So this body of work is increasingly (as I am writing this in the making of it) about that inner light.  The light which is, at times, enveloped in darkness and the Void, but somehow manages to reach us and reach others through us.  As I continue to make these paintings I am experiencing unexpected emotional depths and changing perceptions. 

Thoughts on "Via Dolorosa": Part 1

Main Street Studio, April 17, 2016

"Via Dolorosa" is a street within Old Jerusalem believed to be the route walked by Jesus on the way to crucifixion.  The stations of the cross mark the journey, and to many Christians this is an intensely moving, spiritually profound symbolic visual journey.  As a secular person, I find (like so much in the various holy books) the metaphor of this "painful way" to be very touching and relevant, even taken out of its literal/historical context.  The 14 stations, which in many ways mirror the hero's journey (which Joseph Campbell discussed in his writings and interviews), represent a transformative movement from the everyday realm into the transcendent realm.  The miraculous resurrection, with all do respect to my believer friends, is not the part of the narrative that I find interesting.  So I end with station 14, entombment.  

In delving into a passionate and admittedly sensitive topic, I wanted to do so with respect but also with artistic authenticity.  I'm taking liberty with some of the stations' names, and reinterpreting the overall journey through a secular lens.  Good stories endure.  They are subject to new insights and updated tellings as they age, and it is my belief that such practices do not diminish or dilute or deride the original narratives; on the contrary, they may breathe new life into them.

Working on this show is itself a transformative experience.  I've found myself very moved at times working on the paintings.  As my first solo exhibition in NYC and as a cohesive body of work, I am, quite expectedly, growing as an artist as I make the work.  I may have started from a very determined, clear space of intent, but as I go on I feel less as though I'm creating and more as if I'm discovering.

The work is taking quantum leaps along the way.  Originally, I wanted to start chronologically and name the paintings as I progressed, but I've realized this is not to be.  I will have to produce all 14 paintings before I decide which is which and in what order.  

Giving voice to things is a way of self-liberation.  Giving voice to this body of work is exercising many demons and long-held pain, and maybe that shows in the paintings and maybe it doesn't.  In the end, I hope I can produce a significant body of work that touches people and sparks dialogue.

progress

studio view, April 2016

No  particular order to thoughts today, worked in the studio this morning and to-date have completed 5 stations, likely 1-4 and 6.  Crisp morning, overcast, Dizzy on the speakers, paint, solitude.  Strange that something done in isolation becomes social and shared and interactive.  Odd that a static image can be thought of as interactive, but paintings give back and, in their own way respond.

Context, certainly this is one way art becomes altered.  This is why some art shines in the gallery and why some does not, but why most is vibrant in the studio.  People like seeing art in the artist's studio because it has original context; and yet, it's seldom made with the intent of remaining in the studio.  Chew on that.

Strangely, I am hoping that events this week will lead to a major interruption.  That I'll be back on the night shift in the studio, because there's an urgency to the nights.  The internal dialogue is strong right now.

Two more stations should be done this week. Stations 7 & 8 are in early stages.  I'm 10 months out from shipping and am well on my way to have two of the walls completed.  I know the wall over the stairwell is going to be challenging and there will be fits and starts and possibly even casualties (not the human kind).  I don't even want to think about trying to install those 5 paintings.  The idea of hiring a crew is becoming more appealing.

Show preview: Greenville

"That was yesterday, that day" opens on April 1st, with the reception on April 21st from 6-8 pm.  The Coldwell Banker Caine Main Street Gallery is located at 428 S Main Street in downtown Greenville. In addition to the previously posted images here and here, the four paintings below will also be on view.  The gallery is open to the public M-F.  

Just a friendly reminder, all images of my work on this blog and my website are my intellectual and creative property.  If you want to share, please ask beforehand and no images or partial images may be used for your commercial purposes without my express consent.  Ever.  Sadly, this needs to be stated periodically.  

Following me on Twitter, Instagram and here at Blogger get you first look access to upcoming exhibitions and works in progress as well as studio shots.  Consider subscribing. 

and I am broken to their passing feet

2016, oil on canvas,  36" x 24"

ballad of the firebombers (for Anne)

2016, oil on canvas, 36" x 24" 

 the sea that bangs in my throat

2015, oil on canvas, 36" x 24"

fearing death and what death invents

2015, oil on canvas, 36" x 24"

The next movement

what you alter in the remembering has yet a reality

2016, oil on canvas, 36" x 24"

The madness of deadlines has set upon me.  From here forward I work against the enemy of oil painting, drying.  As the cool snap abates, there are night sessions ahead ,working, working, working.  I deliver next Wednesday and then take a breath before jumping back into the Stations show.  In one year, I will be in NYC, looking at the work hanging up on walls.  It seems so surreal even now.  

The work is beginning to take on new aspects, it feels as though it's evolving and I'm along for the ride.  New approaches present themselves, making the process fresh and interesting.  I love that subtle changes in things like where I get my canvases from cause issues to either incorporate or work around.  I'm happy.  I'm fortunate.

Show Announcement

that was yesterday, that day, 2016, oil on canvas, 36" x 24"

I'm pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition in Greenville, SC.  The lovely folks at Coldwell Banker Caine have opened their Main Street Gallery to me for an April-June run.  Yes, the exhibit will be open and available for viewing during Artisphere.

"That was yesterday, that day" is a collection of small works, and my first show in Greenville since being in the upstate artists juried show in last year's Artisphere.  This may be my last exhibition in South Carolina for some time, so I hope to see you there.  There will be a reception on Thursday, April 21st (one month from today) from 6pm to 8pm.  Drinks and such will be provided.

I did an interview with them to support the show.  Please check their blog soon to view it.  If you are interested in purchasing a work prior to the opening, please contact me through the comment form on my website.  There will only be 6-8 paintings available for this show.

City stories

A friend (and fellow painter) and I were walking around the lower east side of Manhattan last Friday, checking out art shows and talking.  At one point we were discussing social media and how it's never been easier to get one's work out into the world.  The conversation turned to an Australian artist whose work we both admire, are mutually friends with on Facebook, and whom we have never met.

Just the fact that two artists, one from NYC and one from SC were walking around discussing her work on the other side of the world is an incredible thing if you think about it.  To me personally, the greatest success is respect and recognition from my peers.  When you enter into real dialogues with those who do what you do professionally, you grow.  Even though artists do what we do in isolation (the studio), we all need and benefit from community.

I visited The Cloisters, the Met's mediaeval art museum along the Hudson at the northernmost tip of Manhattan.  It's a haul, but I got what I needed and was able to come home and finish a painting I had been wrestling with for a few weeks.  If there is one advantage to living in a large city with world class museums, it is, as an artist, being able to go see whatever art you're thinking about.  Even if you can only see a related piece, it's huge.  It reminds me of the story of Delacroix's Taxi.  Here's a version told by artist Byron Kim.

I am currently pushing ahead on the upcoming Greenville show.  I load in a week from next Wednesday, so there's lots of work to be done.  This show was unexpected and so about half of it is new, and the other half were incomplete paintings that I've since gone back into and finished.  I'm effectively working on three shows at once now, and it's been a very good place in terms of how I work.  I'll post details about the opening reception soon.