Resolution

make a mark every day.  simple.  don't worry about quality.  this is about just making the effort. be quick.  don't think.  just draw.  do anything: draw on a piece of paper, drag a stick in the sand, draw on your phone, paint ... whatever, as long as you make a mark.  you ... have ... got ... to ... make ... a ... freaking ... mark.  that's why you're here, asshole.

there's Karin working on her computer across the room...

there's Warren Beatty on the cover of Esquire...

there's some dude from a magazine page...

Coalescing

after months, many months, of feeling lost in my approach to art, of feeling like i had either forgotten how to paint or maybe lost a compelling why to paint, i feel like, today, for the first time, things are coalescing.  the work from before (the creative collapse) and the work today.  literally today, not a metaphor for "recent".  walking by some old paintings in my studio just now, leaned against walls or propped on shelves, which typically get passed unnoticed, i saw or maybe felt a connection to the painting i just worked on.  this may sound kind of silly.  kind of "duh".  as in, of course there should be some recognizable connection.  thing is, i haven't felt it (or seen it) for quite some time.  whether it was missing or i just was oblivious to some organic shift in my work (euphemism for a creative slump), i don't know, but i am certain that my work of the last year or two has been terribly confused and without focus, and only rarely did i achieve a decent result.

painting

i think

i feel like, lately in the studio, i am either thinking too much or not enough...

parting the wild horse's mane

20"x20"
oil on panel

iPhone Phun

We got our scanner working again and found this drawing hanging around the studio. I have been working in charcoal again. Mostly abstract, but sometimes it is so sweet to just sit and draw something.

Looking forward to seeing you all and feeling thankful to have you all and to be a part of this creative process. Cheers!

done procrastinating

well, ok.  so i worked on a couple of frames this morning.  i donate a painting to work every christmas for an auction they do to raise money for charity, so that painting needed a frame.  then i have the CAP auction deadline, so that one needs a frame too.  then i did the laundry.  then i fiddled with the car to try to fix my wobbly steering.  i made a list of things to do today and checked off the things i had already done.  i talked to a friend on the phone for 18 minutes. 

i did all kinds of stuff to avoid this:

this is a painting from last friday.  i started it two weeks ago, but today i was faced with this... thing.  ugh.  where to go?...  it's big, too.  don't know if you can tell from this photo.  it's about five feet tall.  i don't know, but that just makes it all the more intimidating.

so, procrastination be damned.  nothing to it but to do it, right?  i mean, i am a PAINTER dammit.

so here are the marks i made today.  i had to move past that "central hub" motif i had going on.  it was choking the painting and choking me.  i think it's a better painting today than before, but only time will tell me what to do next. for now i'll just let it ferment a while.

Put some work up this weekend with my dear friend Paul Wrench. Just a few pieces, but nice to have some work out in public. Had some piano music to boot!

It does make a difference to get work out of the studio and to have others respond. Thanks Steff for looking at a piece I was stuck on, you're observations are always insightful.

sketch

another phone sketch, while sitting in the car with the cats while Karin shopped. I do love the accessibility of this medium. whatever gets you making marks, right?

Hello Friends! I am trying not to let the other parts of my life push out the visual part. I have been in the studio again, but this time of year I find the rich colors and world outside competes with my studio time.

I miss all of you and am going to insist we find a gathering before the year ends, and a show in 2014. I am going to return to posting once per week! Dave, thanks fro keeping us alive!

little drawing

trying to draw every day on the smartphone. is good exercise. challenged to make "my" marks with something other than paint.

late summer

just checking in. summer is winding down and i am back in the studio. the best few weeks in years. just enjoying the act of painting and not worrying about the outcome.

a man and his monkey

This is the story of a man and a monkey.

There was a man who had a monkey whom he kept in a cage, mostly.  No one ever knew the man had the monkey.  The monkey was quiet and happy most of the time, and didn’t mind being in the cage at all.

The man was an artist.

One day the man prepared his studio to begin a new painting.  He laid out his paints and brushes and pinned some loose canvas on the wall, as was his custom.  Then he un-caged the monkey and set him amongst the painting materials.  The monkey took right to it.  He had a grand time splashing and smearing paint all over the canvas.  He made quite a mess.  After an hour or so the monkey seemed to lose interest, and so the man cleaned him up and returned him to his cage.

Several days later, after the paint had dried, the man took the canvas off the wall and measured it and built a stretcher for it.  After stretching the canvas the man built a nice frame for it as well.  The man signed the painting.  Then he filled his pipe with tobacco and sat and had a nice long smoke.

i'm not here

further studies in not studying.  spontaneous, rapid-fire, meat-fisted.  organized chaos.  cat herding.

the paintings in my head

Like the painters who haunt my studio and tap my shoulder while I’m working, there are generally one or two paintings in my head as well.  They come in, unsolicited, as I start to assess solutions to the problems I'm facing.  They are the solutions other artists have found.  They are “moves” that I have subconsciously stored away, knowing that I would need to steal them one day.

 

As soon as I started my latest commission to paint a scene of a lake and distant mountain, I saw it like a stage set, with the lake itself being the stage and the mountain as the backdrop.  On either side were “curtains” of trees, boathouse, and dock, and in front was an iris garden / orchestra pit.   

I have no doubt that Michael Brophy’s tree & curtain paintings influenced that thought. 

 Tree Curtain, Michael Brophy

 

 New Future of Oregon Forests, Michael Brophy

Two other paintings that are influencing my latest project are The Grid and Orchestra by Raoul Dufy.  I think he always saw the world as a stage.

The Grid, Raoul Dufy

Orchestra, Raoul Dufy

Sometimes these memories intrude on and overtake the work, and sometimes they more appropriately just inform it. 

commission

started work on a commission today.  still very early in the process, but so far i'm sticking to my early sketches in which i conceived a composition like a stage and curtains.

not completely happy with my choice of orange under-painting, however i think it will be good once i cover more of it and allow only traces to peek through.  

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.