it has been too long and many thursdays have come and gone.
my excuse: the sun, the studio and renewal of sorts.

meh

Sometimes you think you're doing something exciting and new, only to realize that what you've painted looks like a shower curtain.

Matter doesn't matter

I read in a brand management book that a company (andtherefore I hypothesized a painter) should answer these three questions: What do you do?  Why doyou do it? And Why does it matter?

I figured that was a good exercise for constructing anartist statement.

I struggle with parts two and three exponentially.

Even part one can be tricky. I mean, I make pictures.  I make pictures of nature.  I paint. They all seem at once glib and limiting, however true.

After fueling my creativity and stewing over these ideasearly this afternoon, I thought to myself, well, do I really NEED to answer these? I mean, who cares?  Why don’t Ijust paint (part one) and have fun (part two) and leave part three to thecritics and historians and collectors. Hell, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I worry too much about the “matter” part.

Further back in my mind is an email exchange that I had sometime ago with a nice rep from Gamblin.  Ihad painted some pieces on plywood and was asking about their future stabilityand whether my work would eventually fall prey to various and sundrydeteriorative effects, and whether Gamblin had products that would waylay thatrot.  He said, in essence:  “don’t worry about it.  You are an artist, and you should CREATE –let the future generations of archivists and conservationists worry about howto preserve the thing that you made using the materials that you felt compelledto use to express your intent.” 

And so today I painted this. My God, what a thing.  It is allspray paint and wet goopy acrylic and poured and splashed and smooshed and …man it was fun!  Can I just say thiswithout sounding like a dork?: for a moment I WAS NATURE.  I know Pollock said that first, but it justfelt like for an hour or so, I don’t even know how long, I really WASnature.  I mean, I think I know what hemeant!  I was mixing up a giant petridish of goo like at the moment of creation or the big bang or whatever.  And you know what?  I have no idea what this thing will look likein ten years, or a hundred years.  Will thepaints freak out together and begin to fester and bubble and fall off?  I don’t really give a shit.  Maybe it will just become better if they doanyway!  Did God know that the ivy wasgoing to climb up my fir trees and kill them? Is that OK?

So anyway, there you go. I painted today in a high state of engagement with the materials and thesubject.  I felt like I boxed ten roundseven though it might have only been an hour. I’m not sure I breathed the entire time.

Earlier this morning I painted portraits for a commission,and as terrific an experience as that was, and it was (I may write moreabout that experience later), I needed to feel pine sap course through my veinsand lay down in the grass and look up at clouds and feel the earth spin and bea kid for a little while.

 

a friend asked me to paint a commemorative portrait of his son.  after i asked him if he was OK with my loose & fast style, and warned him that it would not be a photo-like painting, he said "loose and colorful, just like TC".  i like that.

it has been a long time since i painted the figure or a portrait, and even then i have done very little.  i am spending some time now with charcoal just getting to know TC's face, and familiarizing my hands with these kinds of marks again.

i find myself talking a lot to TC along the way.  mostly apologizing for the drawings.  "you are way more handsome than this, pal, i know.  sorry.  be patient."  i haven't done the drawing yet that captures his unique qualities.  his face is very distinct, and full of personality.  i'm a little too stiff yet to get a lively drawing, but it will come with time.

this is good.  i have no shows to worry about.  no deadlines.  this will take some time, but it's a worthy project and will be good for me.

Maupin

we drove home through Maupin today and had fog, sleet, ice pellets, and the most wonderful clouds. i took so many photos from the window as we were moving through the weather and this one captured the mood & it looks like a painting---by Kate!!

painted painting

sometimes you paint the painting, and sometimes the painting paints itself. 

John Cage talked about working long enough to expel (the presence of) everyone from your studio, even yourself in the end.  the way i work is congruous with this.  i leave myself open to spontaneity, which creates an environment in which something magical might happen.  of course that lack of structure may just as often leave you with a mess.


Cage also talked about separating the process of analysis from creation.  i am conscious of that, having experienced the negative effects of performing both simultaneously.  i may be overly conscious of it in fact, often minimizing the analysis part.  today; this painting, i think, was the result of the right amount of everything.  i did paint long enough to vacate.  i moved past the point where the marks were precious and got to where i was free to work the whole painting without fear or hesitation.  i got De Kooning out of here.  i worked, then analyzed, then worked some more.  not too much of either, but the necessary amount.

will i love this painting on monday?  i might.  it's craploads better than what is underneath it.  (this is painted over the last painting i posted, below)

now it's time to let it ferment for the weekend.  see it on monday with new, critical eyes.

what the?

what a funny little painting i made today.  at least i think so.  i doubt it will have a long shelf life. a weekend away from it will be good. 

i resisted the temptation to mop the paint all over to gray it out - hoping there might be something there to work with next week.  or maybe i'll fall in love with it next time i see it.  too close to it now, and still too fresh.

A couple of mondays passed by

I keep trying to live my visual life and the other, boring life seems to intrude.

We got to Seattle this weekend to see one, perfect, beautiful, Sean Scully painting. Now I remember why I want to paint and I am sitting in the studio looking at this

It needs more history, I think I will sand down the blue some more and even out the bottom color. Hmmm.

We will see where it goes...

It was sunny in Seattle and for the first time we saw the James Turrell piece in the sunshine, spectacular it filled me with hope.

urggg

having lots of emotional crud going on in my life right now.

who woulda thunk it?

but as they say, we must suffer for our art.

or perhaps we make art because we suffer

yeah, that's it

Muse

M...m...m.m.m.m.mad mad mad

So now you know I'm going crazy, but tuned in to what the middle-aged kids are listening to these days. There can be no better combination of attributes for a Portlander. But I digress.

Went down into the studio for a little art making, with two things to work on.

I should hang curtains so I'm not always jumpy thinking my upstairs neighbors are going to leap in and start doing laundry. I should get rid of the pile of what looks like burnt debris by the water heater.

But it's more funner to paint, so I did that instead.


It was one big burst or strokes and arcs and pigment and lead.

Way more 'automatic' than usual, by which I mean the work took over and asked to be worked fast.

here i am, it's thursday

another turn of the wheel, and here i am, it's thursday again!
i can hardly wait to get home and back to the studio. i have colors, and images waiting to be unleashed. the jungle greens, the ocean blues, the hits of red and orange. 
we visited pearl harbor yesterday and i wasn't that interested in going, but had a huge visceral response when i was there. history and sadness permeate the site. war and friendship and loss.
i have loved getting your messages and having kurt signing in. kate, kirsten, dave, kurt, we will get together soon to look at work.

gray matter

i made gray paint yesterday.  through repeated steps of paint / scrape, paint / scrape, i ended up with a yogurt container of gray paint and one gray painting.

in retrospect i think i know what went wrong. 

when i was younger, my brother always used to say "you gotta want it".  playing sports: you gotta want it!  bridge jumping: you gotta want iiiiitttt!  skipping stones: you gotta want it!  it was an adolescent phase of glomming onto a phrase for a period, but for some reason that one stuck with me. 

for painting i would add "you gotta SEE it".

typically i see something before i start putting paint on canvas.  i visualize the completed painting, even though what i end up with is almost never the same thing; still, i start out with a formed idea of what it's going to look like.  i often move my hands over the canvas before beginning to paint, as i think about what the various parts will look like (up here some thin pink, down here a thick patch of dark green and black, etc).  it's not a conscious thing, but more like stretching before a run, it just seems natural.

for whatever reason i didn't to that yesterday.  i just lept into the painting brushes a-blazing.  i had no idea what i wanted it to look like.  (if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there...)  so i ended up painting one bad painting after another.  in fact they just kept getting worse.  i got into such a state that i felt as though i had forgotten how to paint at all.

i don't mind making bad paintings.  i understand that is part of the process.  i think what bothered me about yesterday's session though, was that the bad paintings weren't borne of challenging myself, or of experimentation.  they were borne of poor work habits.

at least i got some good gray paint out of it...