October 2007
All of a painting is what it is. Sound redundant and ridiculous? What you see is what you get. I know, once again cliché?
Perhaps now in 2007, the human race, on Earth, is so immersed in a sea of radio waves, computer screens, movies, commercials, blaring car stereos, jet engines overhead, busy office buzz and caffeine edge, that what we see and hear is a constant rush of visual and auditory stimulation. Maybe we see things as we fly by on our way to something else, another place we must be. We have been “programmed” to operate at high rates of speed, Human version 18.8!
I will assume from personal experience there is a large portion of the population that doesn’t really deal with all of that. They live in small towns all across the world and not in metropolitan areas. They also, for the most part, experience the art world from pictures in books and TV. They see art images mostly as the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper, various angel and French Impressionist paintings, printed on coffee mugs and calendars.
This approach can also be translated into painting process. When an artist paints an image, he or she, may be “seeing” in their mind what they wish to translate onto canvas, and then begin going about the business of application of paint. When they “see” blue or purple, they paint blue or purple. They don’t really care about what may be “behind” the color, they just want the color. This is why a lot of art may at times “look” bright and thin, glaringly harsh in tone, and lacking depth. They want the finished product right out of the tube and then get frustrated when it doesn’t miraculously happen.
This is just like life. Art is the imitation of life! We’ve heard or seen this phrase before and took it to mean whatever we did. I propose my version of it’s meaning to offer up to the table. In regard to painting and life, each in their own way is an accumulation of what has preceded beforehand. If you walk up to a person and engage them in conversation, you will in a very short time, experience where they are “coming from”. Whatever has happened in their life will reveal itself in small ways, gestures, word choice, inflection and tone of voice. This holds true with paintings as well. Some paintings are squeezed right out of the tube and onto the white canvas, like a newborn baby right out of the womb. All fresh and bright eyed, but not the easiest thing to look at. You want to wipe it off and wrap a nice towel round it, then hold it and love it. In all its raw glory there is nothing left to the imagination. Now take the same infant child, grow it up through school, give it a degree in literature and psychology, some hard knocks along the way that tests his or her character, and then put them in front of a group to say something, and you’ve got something worth listening to. There is substance and wisdom to a matured and educated person, a viewpoint and message that has been formed over time and experience.
Likewise, a great painting comes from the same background. There a four things that comprise a great painting.
The first is a great composition. The placement of form is paramount to what the image conveys. That is why good photographers receive paychecks for what they do. Anyone can point a camera and take a picture, but only a few will “capture” your attention.
Second is the light, which includes the darkest of shadow as well. This is referred to as the tonal value, or light to dark throughout. When a painting has depth it is because the artist built up the tones through a process which kept this in mind.
Thirdly is color! Ah the color of it is just striking! Color is also achieved by a process. The stately hues of great paintings many times are arrived at by mixing multiple colors together, graying them down to give them reverence, then sending them off to the canvas with clean bristles so as not to muddy them down. They are full of character because they’ve been around a bit and picked up experiences and some education.
Fourth and finally, what makes a great painting is what it says. Why are you painting what you are painting? How much heart and soul does it contain? You don’t have to change the world with each painting, but even a simple image can hold true compassion or pain, light of spirit or depth of despair. An actor on stage, when in a major production with much at stake, is guided by the director's deep commitment to the motivation at hand. To be “believable” he or she must become the character with every fiber, not just walk through the lines and talk the words. Anyone can do that and most do.
August 2007
I was in a slight hurry three years ago at lunch time in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy. This would be a shame, but it wasn’t a serious hurry, only the slight quickening of pace when one has a train to catch to another part of the country and doesn’t want to deal with late night travel. I was in a suspended state of awe taking in all that was there. I took on staking out the areas of interest, to me anyways, having been through a vigorous schedule of museums and churches. Towards the end I came upon Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” I know we have all seen the image on everything from coffee mugs and personal cards, to the sides of buildings and city buses. People often exclaim the virtue of reading a book before seeing the movie, because in the process of reading one’s imagination is forced into play and the experience therefore is richer. This comparison is exalted in what I am saying here.
Boticelli’s work in this piece has a magical aura to its composition. This is the only way I can describe its impact. To this day I can remember the experience of standing in front of it, tracing the contours to cover its large size. More deeply ingrained into my memory though, is the psychological affectation it had and still has on me. It is obvious he is highly regarded for his graceful figures and their countenances and this is perhaps his crowning accomplishment. I cannot completely put into words what happened on that afternoon because it is so ethereal in nature. It wasn’t just another great painting, somehow the image became a living and glowing force with a life of its own. I fell into a trance of awe and kept going over the lines of it trying to comprehend the geometry, the math of placement that created this effect. I was at a loss. There was no easy answer.
This “nature” is perhaps the experience of grace. It is an esthetic experience that transcends words of description. It is what compels one to say, when describing such an event to a friend, “You had to have been there to know what I mean.” Oh what bittersweet lament to feel insufficient to the task of creating such a work. That must be the necessity for an artist, to always be striving and never reaching their “Birth of Venus.” It is what drives us on and pushes us to continue pushing ourselves to whatever concept we have of greatness. At least that is the idea.
April 2007
April showers bring May flowers. Pushing the pedals on the season cycles. The times they are a changin. We cannot simultaneously prepare for war and work towards peace. You can fight the way you feel or simply accept it. What makes a man hate another man, help me understand. All you need is love. I wish my legs were longer and I made more money. Why is there such a thing as celebrities? What will it be like when I die?
The mind rambles; it is what it does when not on track with a direction and purpose. How precarious the balancing of poetry and rhythms, utter abandon and ever faithful following of the one true voice, truth.
It has probably been thought and said by every person at some point in life, at a peak experience, “What now shall I do”?
Right at the moment of unsure doubt, in the heat of the ambitious endeavor to create for whatever reason one is holding in their mind and heart, the feeling sinks in. The feeling is in and of itself only a feeling, but what creates it is an endless sea of possibility lapping at our shore. We are walking and seeking the way to someplace only hinted at by dreams and desires wanting to be realized.
So then “What now shall I do”?
It happens in grossly inordinate amounts when one is an artist. It becomes a mantra of sorts that has to be acknowledged and reconciled. It must be given a home in the heart and mind and allowed to take the chair at the head of the conference table. Not as a tyrant or general seeking territory, rather as the wise elder statesman whom genuinely holds in good faith and conscience the needs and well being of all.
“ What now shall I do” is not a vague need to move away from where one is at but staying right there and creating the reality, or illusion of reality, by using all the necessary tools and techniques. To look at or hear or taste a great piece of art is to be transported to either a super real place, or one that “feels” super real.
Reality is only seen and experienced by the select few who have nothing in the way, nothing obscuring clear sight with an addled view. So “What now shall I do” becomes actually quite important in each moment. Sometimes it means to not do something that will obscure clear thought and sight. What that may be is obviously unique and personal to anyone, being that everyone has their own set of priorities in unison with desires.
The only way to the truth is to be able to grasp it, hold it long enough to let it sink in and take root, and become the landscape or figure it is meant to be. This is how true paintings are created.
“What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things… It is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating it’s exterior surface. - Brancusi
March 2007
How important is the medium of painting in the arts today?
Let’s face it, the movie industry has the power to draw people in and seduce them with a barrage of sensory entertainment that far exceeds the medium of painting. To sit in a theatre and have virtual universes packed with carefully crafted dramas play out to you is incredible. The amount of work by countless individuals to create this illusion is also an enormous feat. When it is done well you feel as if you are part of others minds and hearts as they travel through a lifetime of fantastical occurrences, all within a two hour period of time!
So where do all the artists go who try to mesmerize the public with their paints and brushes? Not to the bank I can assure you. There are still a few of them out there, ingratiated into the few galleries and dealers who hold desperately onto the last bastions of metropolitan high society circles. There are also the Thomas Kinkades and Corporate schlock houses pumping, or pimping out, countless tons of paper and framed products of crafted images that have been recycled and retreaded over and over to merely fill a space in some dentist’s office or small town bank.
Then there are still the art schools with their disaffected and mopey shoe gazers who are pissed off at their parents and corporate America, George Bush and the ever ubiquitous talk radio front. They are more concerned with the next Death Cab for Cutie concert and rolling with their friends, than thinking about the real reason for wanting to paint on canvas. They think graduating with the school exhibit and perhaps getting scooped up by a New York Gallery will be the consummation of their hard work and desires. But little do they know how very little that gallery will care about their desires and expression, or even to pay them for their time and skills. They will more than likely sign some contract that restricts their ability to promote and sell their work individually as well, then stick the artists two or three canvasses in a rack in the back broom closet.
Now the International collectors market, that’s where the real money is to be found! Unfortunately one must be dead for some time and in history books to be of any value. These are the real investments with the real buyers. Why, because time, my friend, waits for no one. It is the evolution of the human race and technology. Once upon a time, man and society wished to preserve either their personal heritage with portraits, or their religious beliefs with the glorification of the Roman Catholic Church. In the East they chronicled their deities and sexual positions for spiritual enlightenment. Cavemen, before all of these expressions, simply scrawled the historical events of their lives onto cave walls. Why, I would imagine, all of these people found importance in the scrawled image, was simply because it was the only medium with which to express it.
The first is to decorate their wall because that is what we do. It completes the space with a designer aesthetic that makes for an instant and affordable notion of culture.
Second, people buy art to support someone who thinks they are an artist. It is what friends and family do, you know, help each other out.
Thirdly, people buy art because it is an investment. They are securing the item under the advertised premise that it is a recognized and catalogued piece of real estate whose value will only increase through time. It is not of question simply because it is stated so. Only under rare circumstances do these catalogued pieces diminish in value. The whole market here has been built by the museums and printed publications to tell us who is of value. It is quite unfortunate, for we the living artists, have to “measure up” to history.
This brings me to this point. I suppose the best an artist can do is their best. In doing their best, they must also market their best, and in marketing their best, not fall out of the delicate balance of one’s vision and into the worlds. The world’s current vision is a bit blurred from too much media and expectations, and the tastes of contemporary art consultants are subject to many factors. The most unfortunate of these is the art market and all of its trappings. I apologize for ending here without listing them for it is like discussing Faith, one has to see and experience it for oneself.
February 2007
We are now in the year 2007. Do you ever stop and look back through your personal history to reflect on moments and events that remain posited in your memory? Perhaps collect them into a bundle that is then flipped back and forth like a mental rolodex? It can create a flood of thoughts and emotions. We have different reasons for this action. Sometimes it is a moment of crisis that forces us to see once again the cause and effect of our actions; to be reviewed in a new light for personal growth and understanding. Other times it is in moments of repose from engagement in our lives to reassess what is truly important. These images captured in thoughts resonate for very real and material reasons. They are the chronicles and articles of past issues that have reported the progress of our lives. This internal psychological and spiritual database is actually the primary physicality of our being ness. When I say physicality, I refer to physical movements and creations; the cause and effects of our lives that we must live through. Having said this, I attempt to extrapolate this concept onto Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa”, or perhaps to Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus”. In all of current history, as far as Western Culture is primarily concerned, these are two works of art among many others that continue to “resonate” and hold importance to millions of people. They move and intrigue us with their sensibilities into a state of both curiosity and grace. Why? What makes their actions( physicality into creation) 500 years ago, of placing pigment onto canvas, into form derived solely from their hands and minds, stand up against world wars, mass devastations, countless natural disasters and billions of lives that have come and gone? People from all over the planet spend billions of dollars every year to travel and stand before these images! Why? If the answer is elusive or unfathomable to you, perhaps it would be wise to sit quietly until you came upon your own realization. Our lives are so complex and multifaceted with such emphasis on things that at times are quite meaningless and abstract. I wonder what makes us stop to look at the creations of others from 500 years ago. How on earth do they command such reverence and attention, and more importantly, where are the DaVincis and Boticellis of today? Perhaps the aesthetic meaning of existence has been manufactured into sound bytes and sales pitches for capitalist gain and political victory. Why is religious belief such a political forum? When did the “Hand of God” guiding a divinely proportioned painting, capturing the grace and glory of a higher thought, become a relic in a museum? Why does “Modern Art” for the most part really just look like unfathomable tripe? When did people start to think that a blue stripe or orange square warranted millions of dollars in recognition and fanfare? There are reasons for everything, on some level, of both conscious and subconscious thought. Is the subconscious mind of man subverting its true potential, path, and beauty in some archaic and belligerent act of defiance? When a musical composer becomes famous for sitting at a symphony hall for 22 min. of silence as an act of performance art, my mind thinks of both the farce and the fall. When I view a Roy Lichtenstein or Willem DeKooning, as uneventful of an artist I am in my own right, I cringe at having to have put up with their ‘art’ for the past 20 yrs. of my life and try to come to terms with their expression. I believe I will spend the rest of my life endeavoring to create beautiful and poetic religious art, the magnificent and glorious transcendence of the human soul, undeservingly reaching the vault of the heavens through rich layers of luminous movement and grace. To epitomize the “reason” and the “will” which drives anyone to pick up a brush in the first place and create an image to share with the world. Perhaps in this I can find my own way out of my defiance and ugliness and be more beautiful. After all, is not the act of creating art only the vain attempt to mimic creation itself? Why not then create something meaningful and beautiful to show where we could be, not where we are at.