i don't have a problem...

someone said "art is what sells, everything else is a storage problem".

admitting you have a problem is the first step toward healing.

me? i don't have a problem.

palette as painting

maybe it's just a reflection of the quality of my last couple of paintings, but i actually like this canvas that i used as a palette more than the painting it was used for. it has a fresh and modern look, whereas the painting had a stuffy, overworked appearance.

Back home

Hey blogger pals,

I am back from 2 weeks in beautiful Oregon, a much needed rest, time to look. I thought a lot about space and how to find it in life. I have been visualizing a daily calendar where the the block of time for painting is the biggest block, well, at least bigger than it has been.

Here are some things I saw while I was away....

I have been reading Resistance and Persistence by Sean Sculley. He says "I was always looking at the horizon line, at the way the end of the sea touches the beginnings of the sky, the way the sky presses down on to the sea, the way that line is painted...I think of land, sea, sky and they make a massive connection. I try to paint this...coming together of land and sea, sky and land. Stacked in horizon lines endlessly beginning and ending, the way the blocks of the world hug each other and brush up against each other, their weight, their air, their colour and the soft uncertain space between them."

When I was young and I drew pictures, there was always a gap between the land and the sky. The sky was at the top of the page and the land at the bottom. I wonder now, what was that mysterious space in between?

first exhibition

the organ players unleash themselves on portland!

thanks to the generous folks at Cascade Aids Project, who have dedicated their comfortable and welcoming PIVOT space (formerly Mens Wellness Center) to our group, we have hung our first exhibition since our inception.

i love seeing our work together, and seeing threads of commonality in the pieces. it doesn't matter that some of us play organs and some tell stories, or that some work figuratively, or representationally, or abstract - there is something about the pieces that relate. at the core, we all love marks. gestural marks. and simplification and reduction.

i also like showing pieces in a space that resembles a real human space, like a living room. we were going to put labels on the wall next to the pieces, and it just looked ridiculous; completely destroyed the experience of just being with the art.

Pictures?

Some day, some day.

I wonder how many other abstract painters consistently have a 'dump' painting going on. A painting that doesn't work, and you keep trying to save it, and ultimately just start trying whatever-the-hell, truly whacked out ideas, just to see if something sticks. Ultimately, the painting looks truly horrible, but maybe an interesting direction comes from it.

showtime

Getting new work ready for Thursday August 5th reminds me of the Inertia Twins who follow me around at such times. As the date nears parallel paths of slacking and activity race onward, finding me sweating with the effort of not doing anything up until a couple of nights before when I then have to do everything all at once.

Just sayin'.

jerry, the colonel, and me

i went out to sauvie island to paint on monday, with my pal jerry. we pulled the colonel up onto this grassy knoll, one of my favorite spots, and i worked on a couple of canvases, one large and one medium sized, while jerry continued his study of watercolor, which he is trying to master before a coming vacation in which he wants to paint with the most travel friendly of media. the morning was gray, and even drizzled a bit on the way out, but after lunch the sun broke through and the skies were blue.

this was my second large scale canvas in the past couple of weeks, and while i don't think this one was as successful as the last, still, it is so much more appropriate for me to work in this scale. at least it is much more fun.

after a couple of hours of painting we ran into our friends jane and catherine, who had been painting up the road a bit under a grove of giant oak trees. small world; but then, it's not so strange to come across a fellow plein air painter on sauvie island in the summer. it is, after all, about the most beautiful place on earth.


that's jerry there, manning his water color station. we were on opposite sides of the colonel, jerry facing east overlooking a pond, sweeping fields, and a small clump of evergreens. i was looking west over an inlet the name of which i am too lazy to look up, on oak island. at lunch we sat and watched osprey dive for fish in jerry's pond. we drank beers and shared our thoughts about art and life.

nature is my studio

over the last several months i have focused my attention on drawing and a very few very small paintings, due to a change in my environment. ordinarily i prefer to paint pretty large format pictures, three to four feet in any one direction. yesterday i had a few hours free and hauled my gear to the backyard and laid a large piece of canvas on the ground and went to town. this is about three feet by four feet; not huge, but it felt so after the little eight inch pieces i've been painting lately.

it felt good to use my whole body to paint again; to walk around a canvas, to reach far across it to the other side with a long dripping brush in my hand, to kick some dirt on it, to have ants walk across it, to squeeze liberal amounts of paint onto it from the tube and then smash the paint around to mix it with the other colors. it is a process that simply can not be replicated on a small scale.

i wasn't sure what this first, large painting would look like after my self imposed hiatus. my drawing, and even my small paintings employ much more structure and representational marks than my typical large scale paintings do, and i thought that maybe this would influence what came out, but it didn't. it's not uncommon for me to start with one thing in mind and finish with something completely different. the process takes over and one mark influences the next. this painting is evidence of that.

inside looking out

i am at the beach, sitting by the fire with four of my friends. it is raining & i am reading a book, "color", a history of the palette. and taking photos through window glass and drink glass, and daydreaming of about blood beetles and lapis stones.

Save The Date!

Organ Players and Storytellers will be exhibiting at the Cascade Aids Project's Men's Wellness Center in August. (OK, don't save the date yet, since I'm too lazy to look up what date First Thursday falls on in August.)

You should come! I plan on debuting no less than three new pieces of work. Or will I? Will the battle between my rehabilitating-the-basement project (wherein lies my art 'studio') and actually finishing some artwork claim me as a victim?

Is this:

More important than crafting a painting. Yes and no. One thing's for sure, getting down to the nitty gritty in the basement has given me a new level of intimacy with my house. Terrifying intimacy.

Nothing says terror better than an unidentified pod in the basement.

back in the saddle

the last two mondays have offered a couple of hours where i could get away and paint. it has been ages since i have painted, and while it felt good - from the preparation of packing up my gear and loading up the van with paints and canvas to the actual process of making a picture - it also felt awkward. like seeing your summer friends after a year at school. i felt like the canvas and i were strangers. my lines were timid, and my colors amateurish. i think i may have forgotten how to paint, as i had feared.

i have been thinking about painting for months and months, and envisioning this day when i would get back on the horse and how triumphant the occassion would be. how great the paintings would be after months of fasting. my brain, scrubbed clean of the cobwebs that had developed over time, would be fresh and lucid for the creation of new canvases that would encompass all of the theories i have about the new modern painting. that is what i thought, but actually like an injured athlete fresh out of a cast, my first steps have been painful and slow. i am barely walking, much less running and jumping over hurdles. i feel like i am making mistakes and paintings that i made several years ago. my brain has gone to mush, even after all of the introspection.

i can only hope that these are simply the first unsure steps on newly mended legs. i heard an interview the other day of a business leader who said "if you want GOOD ideas, you need a LOT of ideas". i think right now i need a lot of paintings.

forward thinking

i painted this as the spring colors were just pushing forward, and before the maples outside my studio had come out, and now, today, every window is framed in green.