Does this riot gear make me look fat?

I found this great essay of a dadaist talking shit about painters...bear with me folks, or don't...but I got really excited by this last night:

    "Oh those dear fellows, Maurice Denis and Charles Guerin. What a kick in the ass I'd like to give them! Oh jumping Jesus Christ Almighty! How phony is the ideal of Maurice Denis. He paints women and children all naked amid nature, a thing that you simply do not see nowadays. To look at his paintings....you'd think that children brought themselves up and that shoes could be resoled for nothing. How far we are from railway accidents: Maurice Denis ought to paint in heaven for he never heard of dinner-jackets and smelly feet. Not that I find it very bold to paint an acrobat or a man shitting; on the contrary, a rose executed with novelty seems much more demoniacal."

    "The chief thing that will be noted at the Salon is the place that has been assumed by intelligence among so-called artists. Let me say right at the start that in my opinion the first requirement for an artist is to know how to swim. I also feel that art, in the mysterious state corresponding to form in a wrestler, is situated more in the guts than in the brain, and that is why it exasperates me when, in the presence of a painting, I evoke the man and all I see is a head. Where are the legs, the spleen and the liver?

    That is why I fell nothing but disgust for a painting by a Chagall or Jackal, that shows you a man pouring kerosene into a cow's ass-hole, when even real madness does not appeal to me because it manifest only a brain, while genius is nothing but an extraordinary manifestation of the body.

     Henri Hayden. If I speak first of this painter, it is because Madame Cravan's hat went into the manufacture of his paintings. And manufactured it is indeed. Everything in it is out of place, muddy, crushed by the cerebral. I'd rather stay under water for two minutes than face to face with this painting: I should feel less suffocated. Values are arranged in it, to make a good impression, whereas in a work that issues from a vision the values are merely the colors of a luminous globe. The artist who sees the globe has no need to manipulate his values, which will always be false. Hayden has not seen the globe, for he has at least ten paintings on his canvas.

     A bit of good advice: take a few pills and purge your spirit; do a lot of fucking or better still go into rigorous training: when the girth of your arm measures nineteen inches, you'll at least be a brute, if you're gifted."   [Cravan, Arthur. "Arthur Cravan: Exhibition at the Independents." Dada, the Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology. By Robert Motherwell. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1981. 5-7.]

     Arthur's said two things I've been unable to articulate: the importance of the whole body in painting (the anti-quip) and the essential quality of a vision. There's no reason to summarize further. However, it also brought into focus the desperate, narcissistic neediness that exists now...well, everywhere (because when do you read a contemporary writing like his?). Not to say that I want to cultivate being an asshole, I actually think I'd find that nearly impossible. Not only is it just against my nature, but I suffer from the same fear of confrontation that most people do: a fear that is probably more a fear of being wrong than it is a desire to be nice.

     Back to the point, I want to cultivate being an asshole at the right time because being nice in our culture means fuck-all anymore. Maybe we could drown all the actual assholes and teach all the nice people to say what they actually think. There, culture saved. It probably would because I bet most of the actual assholes are at the ground zero of planet destruction stroking their persian cats. What a lovely image. Oh wait, there is no ground zero for planet destruction anymore. Hyperobject

     To bring it back to peacefulness, if you confront me about something I've done that you don't like or understand maybe I can:

1.) shed some light on my motivations

2.) realize you have a point and change my thinking

Here's a video that speaks to this narcissism by artist Ryan Trecartin:

Center Jenny (Aubrey Plaza is in this)

It will make you feel pretty dirty but there are some perfect moments in there.....I think worth sticking through for the whole thing.

VMFA Fellowship!

Well, I've been telling them for years... but the VMFA has finally concluded that I am, in addition to being a number one cheese deliverer and chicken tempura distributor, a professional painter!!

Since I do love a list...

WHY THIS IS RAD

1.

2. While this photo was taken in Joe's adjacent studio, the temperature is the same...you get the point

 

3. Holla

Forest Bathing (fear not the landscape)

I'm still here! Let's see if I can beat my two posts a year habit in 2015. Unlikely, but hope springs eternal, even for boneheads.

More incremental progress in the studio as per usual. I sold some paintings at the end of last year which gave me a little buoyancy to carry me into what will be a new body of work.

I'm done apologizing for the landscape that constantly appears in my otherwise 'abstract' work. I'm not even sure to whom I was apologizing or why!

What made me accept this into the image? Because, even though the idea of painting mimetically from the landscape feels like the wrong way to go, I still find myself building images in the manner of a landscape. I find myself doing this not just out of habit- let's be clear. I broke myself of that habit and found some interesting results in grad school and beyond. This penchant is coming from another desire in me: to put it simply, to relate to the landscape. And let's be real, these "landscapes" are still pretty damn abstract. I was taking inventory of the things I set out to accomplish:

1. I want complex space in the work.
2. I want the colors I see in life (even if I don't need to paint the object)
3. I want to seduce the shit out of the viewer (people do love the whiff of the familiar or archetypal)

Of course, I could still do all three of those things without allowing the landscape in.

4. I want the paintings to have a clearer (but still enigmatic!) relationship to that which is visibly universal.

Enter the scape! The change happened in paint first, as it should be. I painted over this small piece that just never quite delivered and ended up with the most bizarre little "street scene":

While that had me scratching my head, I painted this:

which is decidedly tree-like… sorry for the glare
and then this:

which is probably the most traditional painting I've done in a while...

I'm not saying these are great, but they are little footholds, and I want to go somewhere new. Also, I like the idea of giving the viewer a foothold also...right before I pull it away and go somewhere far out. I'm piecing this together with some other changes, resolutions, etc:

5. To pay more attention to varying textures
6. To build more patterns of mark-making (not so many one-offs)
7. Pay better attention to value

From that comes this:

I need to fix a composition issue there... but Omicron Theta IV wasn't built in a day....
I'm thinking of titling that one the Holy Mountain after one of my favorite movies. Too much for one post. Maybe I'll beat my two post a year record after all.

All Up In the Grey Area

The favorite dance of a painter is what happens after someone asks, "What makes a work of art meaningful?" or "What is the meaning of this?"

The dance has developed over the ages, not because the artist lacks the answer but because the answer so often does not satiate most people asking. Here's the pattern: question is asked, response is delivered, querent stares (if they're nice they'll try and help you out), artist stumbles on words because things just got awkward, querent looks skeptical, artist gets freaked out and blurts something vague, unintelligible or just completely unrelated.

That does sound like a "me problem", doesn't it? Well, yes. But once I recognize a pattern like that, I fall right into it.

AND WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

If anyone read this blog, I would no doubt get all kinds of responses to this...but the common zen-savvy answer goes something like:

A painting simply is meaningful if it is more than the sum of it's parts: that the whole somehow transcends the crude bits. 

Another version I've read/heard/experienced is:

The painting looks back at you.  OR The painting has a real palpable presence in a room.

So maybe now you understand why this answer is not acceptable for a lot of people. You now have a whole area of grey…a wide chasm for debate to ensue over which piece in here is meaningful. This is in contrast to the lens through which we usually view images, namely, "Do I like it?" The real reason this, "the painting has a soul" type answer is eye-roll-inducing to most people is:

1. The answer is fluid (changes even within a single viewer)
2. The answer relies on a judgement from the viewer (varies between viewers)
3. The meaning is not reliant on a single particular technique (although the meaning does arise out of the technique used). In other words, there is no hierarchy of technique aside/outside of the painting.
4. It carries the whiff of the metaphysical- and that is a polarizing whiff, believe-you-me. Yes...I suppose it is scary to think we might not know and control everything about our existence.

THE POINT

A lot of strange, new exciting experiences can develop if we fight this impulse to immediately dismiss that which doesn't immediately ring your bell. We might even...grow *gasp*

Pieces at the VMFA: Susan Rothenberg

Here's an idea:

Interviews with painters that currently have a piece up at the VMFA. Starting wiiiith....

Susan Rothenberg

Now find her piece!!! It's a ricocheted stone's throw away from weddings on any given Saturday. It'll probably be gone now that I've posted this. There's a clue at 26:26. Also, notice how at 23:35 the interviewer adeptly avoids a very illuminating quip from Rothenberg regarding her practice.

Certainty, Certainly Not

The past year in the studio has been a lot more straight-ahead than previous years. It's one thing to spend a great deal of time in there- tearing ones hair out, shamanessing all over everyone, questioning oneself to the point of paralysis but it's quite another to go in checking your insecurity at the door.

Ok, it's not that easy. I've just gotten better at maintaining the right mental state. I would compare it to meditation. When your mind wanders back to that arena that you've learned through experience isn't helpful to creation, you just return to quiet center, as one would a mantra. It's also like driving a car, constantly making minute corrections in order to keep moving forward.

None of this has helped me get my work out particularly, but that's another skill set and certainly a New Year's resolution.

There was another change that happened this year. I discovered that I was relying on painting ideas that I hadn't actually done yet as some sort of mental crutch. I would think, "Well, even if this doesn't work out, I have this other thing" without actually making any move to create this 'other thing' and thus not fully committing to what I was working on. When I realized I was doing this, it was a little embarrassing. It's as if I had to fluff myself up to stay positive. Well, there's got to be a way to stay real with yourself without tearing yourself down. There's got to be a middle road.

My solution was to do a couple of these 'other things' promising myself that I would withhold judgment. That no matter what it looked like that I would just stay above it somehow. If I wanted to continue down one of these paths, I just would- I wouldn't analyze it to death. I'm just going to let it happen, having actual faith in that thing I claim to have faith in: intuition.

Titling

Sometimes you can be so close to your work that you don't see something really obvious.        
For example, today it occurred to me just how important titling my work is to the work itself. I realized this when I decided to make a list of reoccurring phrases that I use in my songs and paintings. What I have so far is:

Radical Light (from a poem by A.R. Ammons)
Myth of Boundaries (from an AMAZING book by Wilson Harris)
Frontier (a word I use for paintings that have a really novel space)
Wilderness Surface (a phrase I use for paintings where the novel space is primarily created through texture)
Portal Pusher (break on through to the other side, baby)

SO???
Hm. I guess I'll just keep on collecting words. To live you need books, words to save and keep with you. Words trailing behind you when you walk, floating above your head when you sleep. To die, you won't need a book or prophecy. These are words you can't save, although they'll be the bridge to the next living soul who picks up your golden track.

I know that's a bit depressing, but I saw an opportunity to expound on some lyrics and I took it! "Softly, softly you fall apart. And you won't need, a book or prophecy. Words you can't save."

Without poetic thinking, language is just a crude tool and a prison.

Keeping it Snappy

As someone who is predisposed to an unhealthy amount of self-analysis, here are some of the things I consider to drive away the fear/anxiety and keep the studio practice spritely:

Joy gives you power.

My variety of painting is like any necessary human expression such as singing or dance.

Fuck it.

It's about play, so how are you getting so down about it?

I know I've made something worth saving before. It will happen again. Have faith.

You are totally freaking free!! This is your chance to make real all or any of those things bouncing through your skull.

Don't be impatient. Let the painting reveal itself to you through the ACT of painting, not just in THINKING about it.

Judgements you make don't need to carry so much positive or negative weight. This is from a part of you concerned with illusory ideas of success/failure. As long as you're thinking of those ideas, you certainly won't make a good painting!

Productivity

In regards to the last post-- Periods of rapid expansion can really take a toll on that 'protective' part of the identity. Rapid expansion also including paradigm shifts, large influxes of new information, new surroundings, new risks, basically-- change. I can say I've been through a lot of that lately and I've been doing a lot of really dingy things. I have felt amazing, but just really forgetful (more than usual) and a little scattered. It's not a totally unfamiliar feeling, but I can say that it's been awhile.

The problem is at the intersection of that expanding sphere of your creation-mind and your daily life. The rapid growth of one seems to render you childlike or even infantile as you're trying to digest the new information. Not only that, but the call of the growing creation-mind is so strong that many daily responsibilities seem pretty much irrelevant. Well, they might be irrelevant but it sure it nice to have gas, water and power. Plus you just become exhausted. Time to rest up and build back that adaptive, shock-absorbing part of one's identity.

Clarity?

I feel a much clearer sense of how to proceed in the studio right now. Much clearer than ever, actually. There's no doubt that finding other avenues of expression has facilitated this clarity. Anxiety that one clings to ("I'm incapable of ....") outside the studio MUST inhibit creation within the studio. These self-imposed boundaries we all create serve to keep us comfortable (and in some cases focused, I guess) but also forever restricted.

It seems like an artist's identity has to be simultaneously focused and fluid to manage some kind of productive sanity. The focused part is... fairly untouchable, nearly indescribable. I imagine this like a hidden engine room where crazy amounts of fuel are being consumed. Then around that I imagine so much protective layering: adaptive, gel-like, seemingly casual and very absorbent. Anyone ever seen that old Kung-fu movie, The Drunken Master?? Yeah, like that.

Artist's Statement

Here I go, at it again. I swear I've really nailed it this time. Before I edited, first I made a catalogue of all the paintings I consider "my best". Thankfully, they all made sense together AND erased a lot of the anxiety I tend to feel when the lesser paintings are included. This is the benefit to being brutal. So I'm not going to post the statement but I do think it's interesting to look at the keywords in it. This list could probably stand on its own as a statement.

Chasing, earnest, wonder, natural, frivolous, dark, brutal, power, nature, horrible, ridiculous, consumption, whipping, playground, mania, awe, clarity, humor, frolic, process, mastication, landscape, playful, stripping, abstraction, freedom, new, strange, specific, novelty, absurdly, project, discovery, painting, impossible, color, seduces, confounds, unseen, terrain, explore.

Fixing a hole where the rain gets in

When Hurricane Irene's rains hit Richmond, they caused a minor leak where the newly installed Sean Scully painting was hanging and so it was temporarily removed. Today, I went to check on it and found it returned to the wall. I spent about 20 minutes looking at it and felt the time fly by.

I think it's important to have more conversations about what we think about when we look at art. What actually goes through your mind? I have a suspicion that a lot of folks project a great deal onto the work without letting it impact them too greatly. I also suspect that when I see or hear people get frustrated with a piece, that's them just beginning to allow the piece of art into their consciousness. You can look at a painting and get a sense that it's really offering something to you but maybe you try to put that emotion into words too quickly and it shuts down. And you get angry. I bring all of this up because I have had some trouble talking off the cuff about art despite my studies. And because I see such a disconnect between the people I know who have studied art (or who know someone closely who has) and people who have not.

It's like a language barrier. I find it so frustrating! Not against anyone, but frustrating due to my own inability to communicate the gravity of what I'm looking at. Paintings like the one I looked at today are....like an escape hatch to a place where you can look back out at the world, so not exactly escaping....but...see? Stupid, words. In other words, it would make sense to me if Sean Scully and other contemporary artists were revered in a more populist way. I imagined running out behind the art museum to the first person I saw, grabbing their hand and saying, "Come quickly, you have to see this". Not just because that would be hilarious, but because really, it deserves this kind of treatment.

But I've gotten off-track. Here's my best to describe what went through my head while looking at the monumental Sean Scully painting. Not because I am enlightened in any way but as an act of disclosure:

Giant painting! Then I noticed the triptych format, all three butted together. There are some weird spatial things happening at the top and bottom of the middle piece. They recede. I thought about the word, "impasse". Then I thought about the sky and landscapes. And how the top part could easily stand as it's own as a muted horizon. An American landscape of a distant sleepy town. I noticed the scale of the brush marks. All about 3". How he worked back into colors so there was a glowing effect to some parts. Especially the "white/grey" set. Then I thought about yellow ochre and how it does something very peculiar to me. Grounded, energetic, satiated. I thought about the three parts and how they had different temperaments and how if my mom were there I'd ask her which one reflected the most how she felt. I decided the right one was most like me at the moment. There was a lot of vertical pressure at the top. I imagined the middle piece as a stage persona. And the different expressions of black, some very bluish and I got lost in those for a while. Then I focused on this weird brushstroke in the middle of the painting and another in the upper right. How did that mark get made??? Then they receded. Some people walked in and I got self-conscious. I spent a lot of time finding groupings and patterns and letting them wash over me. And kept returning to the glowing blue around some of the stripes. I felt a certain intimidation from the red and black stripes in the very middle (stage persona) and noticed how they seemed figurative or at least sculptural. I thought about signs and why those longer thinner stripes seemed to signify a passage of some kind. The vertical ones and the horizontal ones would mean passage through different aspects, like one for time and one for space. I inwardly rolled my eyes at myself for thinking that way. I feel a connection to whoever created this- I feel so relieved to see the evidence not only of the hand but of a brain working around this space in the same way. Just moving around the space, considering color, considering marks. Painting reflects the world in a way that's neither high nor low. I imagined being surrounded by an encompassing wall of Sean Scully painting. Then I reminded myself that's not what I'm looking at, THIS is what the artist gave me. THIS is what I'm looking at. I couldn't stop thinking about the word "abutment". Because that was one thing that seemed to carry a great deal of meaning but I couldn't put into words why. I didn't really like any of the answers I could come up with. They seemed too definite. Too located. Too separate from the painting, such as: the sudden dramatic change of form and mark evokes the kind manner in which change affects our own lives. Barf, I thought. But still it is meaningful despite my inability to build a sentence around it. Don't push so hard. Just keep looking. Despite my reminder to myself, I thought about faith and how in abstraction there is so often this density, this 'hahaha' fluctuation of foreground and background. Faith, in the sense you know the answer to everything is probably right there but you can never quite reach it. A deliberate withholding. Every so often I would just become overwhelmed by the overall presence of the piece again but I could never hold onto that idea for very long. It was almost an animal or hormonal feeling, like I got startled by it all over again. I let it wash over me for a moment longer and then left.

There are dozens of fragmentary thoughts stuck in there too like: tapestry, earthiness, ground, sense of flight but stable- what the hell, passing through or looking down??, prison bars, contained but not trapped, and on and on.

That's all. Just do it! I suggest everyone go find a painting that makes you raise an eyebrow and spend at least 20 minutes looking at it.

Boom, shaka...laka?

When I speak their language I fail

See me drift mid-sentence

Know where I am headed:

Between pages, between glances (how geometry was born)

Past that blinding light, there must be something to see

once your eyes adjust

The energy within and the energy around

Places your waking life has stolen

Something inside, something that must be freed

A rotten edifice that must be destroyed

A celebration hall, festooned but uninhabited

An abandoned house, deep within the woods

The flickering of light on the leaves

dancing, almost mocking

as they obscure but become your vision

A bed of many fabrics, an array of elixirs

Make-believe, a silly place, a sudden place

a realization, a recognition

a premonition, a pattern writ

A space destroyed with a wave

of an indelicate hand

A radical light, a power

A skeptic searching for a potent spell

Where any object can take on this living quality

this breathing color

This THING, this thing that sneaks up on me

This strange beauty that lurks around the corner

This shape-shifter of meaning, this house of lunatic potentials

and renegade spectrums and spectral renegades

You and I, the only eyes

You and I, the spark, the source

You and I, so patient, so HUNGRY

Picasso at the VMFA, notes, thoughts, etc part 2

So I tried to approach the Picasso show with fresh eyes. I ignored most of the biographical content in order to simply look and respond to the work. The first piece that I felt a deeper engagement with was a painting of 2 bubbly abstracted figures copulating on what appeared to be a desolate seashore. The copulation wasn't sensual it was more violent, like they were attacking each other. What was so striking to me was the transformation of the scene. The background is simplified but not abstracted in the same sense as the figures. To me, this created a dissonance that was both exciting and melancholy. That doesn't seem to translate at all in this little jpeg. That dissonance really traps the figures in time in a way that seemed eerily familiar and somewhat ugly.

Two other pieces affected me in a similar way: there was a painting of a light in a wine bottle juxtaposed with a goat skull figure. He painted the emanating light from the candle in the wine bottle. Next to the painting was a sculpture of the same scene but with the rays of light made into physical brutal spikes. This represented to me another brutal transformation of the known physical, experienced world into limbo. I distinctly got the impression with these pieces that I was seeing a wholly realized, if terrifying, alternative reality. Not just the idea of an alternative reality, the actual thing. Like I had a portal to it.

Picasso at the VMFA, notes, thoughts, etc

First of all, I'm not entirely sure Virginia is ready for 1910 based on the conversations I overheard. For example: "Well, TO ME, that just doesn't look like it should be in a museum". To me, that just shows that you're completely unaware of what it is an artist is trying to do. Drawing is thinking through the hand. Picasso's drawings are of interest because you can see that thought process in a stripped down form. Also, *BACKHAND*.

This is not to say I don't have questions, concerns, preoccupations with the show also. Unfortunately, I can't seem to separate my personal studio preoccupations with what I'm seeing at the museum. So let me get that out of the way and come back around to the show....

It's a problem of purity, a problem of everything's permitted so therefore nothing seems to matter in particular. This feeling is not limited to the studio. Within the studio, this is translating into a problem differentiating art from fashion. The general distinction is simple and well-understood: art carries meaning where fashion carries superficial contemporary aesthetics. But the specific is tricky, as always.

I'm craving a method, a recipe. I'm tired of what feels like random achievement. At the same time I am wary of abstraction with a system behind it. I'm also feeling very seduced by contemporary fashion. It just happens to reflect back my own sensibilities. In 5 years I'll be out of fashion, it's just coincidence, the wheel turning. Unfortunately, my own yearning for meaning manifests as an urge to mythologize. It's very hard for me not to jump straight from that urge into primitivism and symbolism. I keep hovering around the native american and Ife exhibits at the museum like some kind of nerdy ghost. Of course, this sort of thing happens to be in fashion right now. Are you feeling my frustration yet?? It does seem important not to be reactionary also.

Part 2 after work...where I will bring this all around to Picasso, I swear.

Disciplinarian

So awkward trials gave way to a return to order, or a return to the need to organize thoughts, palettes, methods and the studio. I feel good about this- or I should say, I feel that intuitive pinch that tells me that this is correct. I think there can be this push to throw the baby out with the bath water in studio practice, when things aren't adding up, to keep asking 'why, why, why??' and continually redefining oneself unnecessarily.

Perhaps we do this in an attempt to hide our weaknesses from ourselves or in an effort to get somewhere quickly. Usually it drives us into increasingly tighter circles.

In either case, I'm glad to mix a wonderfully traditional palette with a full range, rediscovering some subtle colors that I appreciate in nature but haven't mixed specifically in a long time. Mmmm...purple. Yellow. And everything in between....

Awkward trials not awkward enough

Letters- not words, he says. And although it did finish with one legible word, he's right. And why it took me 2+ years to try something I wanted to do, I don't know. I only know it has to be a lesson and a command to OPEN up. Yes, it's a mediocre painting but it offers up some possibilities. 

First of all, the world didn't implode. When you go most of your life pinging from thing to thing and then find some measure of focus, it can be scary to throw something new in the mix. In fact, fear has trickled into everything and it is indeed the enemy. 

So, there are some letters in the painting. I guess my fear was masked as an assumption. An assumption that 'why bother it's going to be too declarative, pin it down too much, too grounded, be a red herring, etc' was made. It turned out to be mostly correct. But I forgot all the things you learn on the way- it had been so long since I threw a wrench in my work on purpose (having to dodge incidental wrenches from outside).

I learned that it will be possible for me to work with letters but that it's going to take more time/trials. I learned that using letters could offer yet another tool, another dimension in the painting. If I play with signifiers of space, is it so off-base to play with signifiers of language/sound? And if it is, I need to learn that the hard way. In fact, this painting isn't awkward enough, it's just crap. Really. Garage sale $5. 

Jessica Stockholder

Stockholder!!!!

Here's one image to get you going. I like that she doesn't let people back her into a "junk art" corner and that she's not ashamed of formalism. And that her work seems like it's mad as a hatter but it has such an inner strength/logic that it almost laughs at you if you think, dismissively, "eh, mad as a hatter". It's going to start following you around, forming little clusters in your own home......

Bombastic Fantastic

Just got done writing new artist's statement. It's a delicate balance between sounding like a goober and totally not getting your point across. I have to stop myself from getting sucked into the writing and making some huge arc in my explanation. I always think, "this time I got it just right, more direct and too the point" and then I come back later and read it. Yeesh. It's not that I ever get it wrong, per se...I just always want to roll my eyes at the language just a little. First sentence from my last one:

My paintings are born out of the friction between the epic and the absurd, the

grand and the mundane.

new one:

Through abstraction, I bring dimension to impossible combinations of color and form.

I really do just have to breathe a little before I write and not try to cram it all in one sentence. "Born out of the friction" though...how can you fight a phrase like that when it comes to you? for real though...nobody gets to use epic, grand, absurd and mundane in the first sentence of their artist's statement. Nobody.

Durr

1. Radical Light.

2. In-deep color. 

3. Weirdo sub-reality, sub-consciousness forms.

4. (or maybe =) The possibility for infinite engagement.

What the hell else is so important???

Durr