most of my painting involves obliterating the object. I rely on visual stimuli from nature, but then boil it long enough that only a few of the strongest ingredients remain.
but sometimes, and usually in my drawing practice, I long for representing actual objects. it could just be a reaction to all of that loose, slapdashery that is my typical painting process, but the draw is strong none the less.
yesterday, here in Astoria, we walked by this dilapidated machine part (no idea what it is or was) sitting in the river just off the bank. it is probably twenty feet tall, and it is fantastically animated. it is like a sad, tired old robot that has been left in the sea to die. it reminds me of Rouault's Old King or the moon-skiing robot from Wallace and Gromit. sad and beautiful and funny (Rouault's king isn't funny... just sad and beautiful)
anyway, I felt compelled to draw this thing this morning.
philip guston was certainly the bravest artist of the 20th century. in the 50's and 60's he was creating these fantastic abstract paintings that put him in the ring with Pollock and De Kooning. his dealer loved them, collectors loved them, and critics loved them. they were challenging and original. he was at the pinnacle of success in every way imaginable.
Philip Guston, "Dial", 1956
but then he starts painting like this.
Philip Guston, "By the Window", 1969
everyone tells him he has lost it. even his artist friends ridicule him. and yet he perseveres and continues to paint these incredible, shocking images for the next decade. critics panned the first public exhibition of these paintings in 1970. imagine what was going through his mind. imagine the conversations around the dinner table with his wife. does he go back to what was "successful" in the past? has he made a terrible error of judgement?
no.
unthinkable.
cowardly.
and thankfully, ultimately, the paintings came to be understood and embraced by many as among the best of their day.
for his bravery he is one of my heroes. i pray that i can muster the courage to be so honest in my work, in the face of everything that strives to conform it to expectations. "define success", as my friend Kurt says.
i visited the Hirshhorn museum last week and spent a bit of time in a room full of de Kooning's women. somehow he ended up coming home with me, and now he's hanging out in my studio. de Kooning has been in my studio before, along with Mitchell and Guston. they are the most frequent visitors anyway, and the hardest to get rid of. i had, through great effort, just recently gotten rid of them; but now he's back. it's going to be hard to get rid of him this time. i'll just have to paint a lot of bad paintings and then he'll get pissed off or bored, and leave. that or i'll run out of beer.
i just completed the toughest commission i have ever received. my friend and his family spent three months in hong kong this summer. their adventures and routine constantly involved the MTR (hong kong's train system) and the map is a visual reminder of their travels. he commissioned me to paint an abstract interpretation of it.
painting abstract interpretations is what i do, but the tough part was that the map already looks like one of my paintings. what i do is take a lot of visual stimuli and reduce it and simplify it. the map is already the perfectly reduced and simplified representation of land, sea, and rail lines. in fact it is a textbook abstract painting.
after many, many layers of paint, each looking too much like the original map, i let go and painted "my painting". what i tend to do is loose and fast, and the process is more like a dance than a drawing. once i started approaching the canvas in that way, and let go of the hard lines of the map, i was able to enter the consciousness (or exit the other-consciousness) necessary to paint without restraint. the colors remained true to the map, and my mantra ("white is land, blue is sea, and lines are journeys") ensured that the map was the inspiration for the painting.
wanting to present my client with two options, i was simultaneously working on another version. for a period both versions were looking too much alike, then on a trip to the beach, with typical oregon coast weather keeping us house-bound, i opened a Richard Diebenkorn book. i was instantly struck by the obvious similarity between Diebenkorn's paintings and maps. here was my inspiration and my affirmation that these simple forms, in two colors, with linear elements, could be handled in a painterly way with strong map-like familiarity.
both paintings are 35" x 56", and involve acrylic and spray paints. the lower one also includes some conte crayon.
Don't know where this is going yet. Haven't yet connected back to making marks and thinking in a visual way. But, I can't stay away anymore, even if the studio is musty and the brushes are all hard. Thankful about my blogger pals who have kept the fire burning. Miss you guys, miss making a mark that moves me. Looking forward to what could be.
I looked at a couple of paintings with a positive critical eye again today. Hopefully that means that maybe even tomorrow I'll actually work on them, in addition to seeking out ways to exhibit them if they turn out OK.
I guess being critical comes naturally, and for painters it can be even more strong. But when I look at my work I want to move straight from, "something's not working" to, "what can I strengthen to make it work."
I think it's really easy to see that a painting isn't currently successful and become bummed out, wondering what went wrong instead of what needs to go right.
i paint in a spontaneous manner. if you have five minutes to spare, the below video will illustrate what i mean. it is from a month ago or so. my friend Randall watched it and said that i paint the hardest way possible. i don't know if that's true, but i don't know any other way.
any way, my point is that by painting this way i create an environment where magic can happen. by being less dictatorial about the process, and by allowing whims and fancies to inspire me as i go, i am open to anything. don't get me wrong, much of the time this results in a disastrous muddy mess. it happened last night. frightful painting.
the painting in this video is not bad. i don't think it's done, and will most likely go through another ten rounds like it went through this time, but i feel like the process is a good one, and the results, when they are solid, are worth the effort.
tuesday i opened myself up to that opportunity and a good painting came about in less than two hours. today i was pretty tight and the painting isn't as good.
but get this. so today i'm driving around and a thought entered my head. if i thrash about on the canvas as i do, all meat-fisted and semi-conscious, am i just a thousand monkeys with paint brushes? creating mostly junk but occasionally dipping the right brushes into the right combination of buckets and getting lucky! is that all i am??
man, i tell you, i was in a panic. i had a confidence-crisis moment. that's probably why i tightened up today. i guess the proof is in the painting. in my higher state - my more evolved state, i created a less exciting painting. the other one, the hundredth-monkey painting from tuesday, is hanging upstairs in my foyer and i think it looks pretty darn good.
painting is simultaneously the most frustrating and most fun thing i have ever done. it is such a struggle to wrench a painting out of all those marks. the mental gymnastics required to jump from scene to painting, and the effort required to be master of each, and not just puppet, is exhausting and exhilarating.
today The Past was my uninvited studio guest. i got him to leave eventually, but i'm not sure the painting survived the onslaught of suggestions he made while he was here. he really wanted me to paint another Wilson River painting like "The Hollow", but I threw in these giant white rocks at the bottom to completely reconstruct the composition.
i'll probably leave it alone for a while and show it to my artist friends for criticism. i think i'm too close to it to know what to do next... time will tell.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Posts
