10:06 AM: i'm only going to have an hour in the studio today, as i have appointments the rest of the day. right now i'm going to go back into red orange & see what comes out in 45 minutes...
10:45: here's how red orange looks as i complete my very short studio day. scroll down one post to view yesterdays first stage of this painting.
red orange 38x36" acrylic, crayon & collage on canvas
2:30 PM: this morning i stretched a new 38x36" canvas, prepared a red-orange ground with acrylic and began a painting of the same name: red orange. like yesterdays painting, it rests on a drawing inspired by a few of my recent creek drawings, then collages and painted. it's unusual for me to make a painting this size in one shot, but it may actually be complete. i'll tell you tomorrow morning. i've been inspired by reading robert shorrs's interview with alex katz in artspace, to which i gave the link yesterday if you scroll down. the timing seemed to be right for his perceptive questions and katz's answers to make their way through my thinking mind and directly into my being. it's rare, but it happens. and you better act on it when it does!
“I think painting, per se, is an ideal way to criticize the work you already admire because that way you can take the best things in it and try to make your work to be the next consequential step. I mean, to me, that’s a given tradition in creative thought: to build on what you’re seeing that you love and try to bring it to new and unknown terrain.” ron gorchov
unknown terrain....think about that for a moment. what does that mean to you?
alex katz, girl with the red scarf, oil on canvas
60 by 48 in. 152.4 by 121.9 cm.
Executed in 1976.
6:35 PM: this afternoon i found a wonderful interview with painter alex katz by robert storr. it all started while i was reading a piece storr wrote in the archile gorky retrospective catalogue. Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
here's the linkhttp://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/book_report/alex-katz-robert-storr-interview-54050
here's a short excerpt:..."
De Kooning famously remarked in the 1950s that he didn’t want to “sit in style.”
That’s total baloney! I mean, it’s embarrassing! He said, “I don’t want to paint any style” and all his paintings look alike! That’s the dumbest thing this brilliant man ever said.
Okay, granted. But it expresses a certain wish to...
I know what he meant. He didn’t want to paint a stylized picture, where the artist changes subject matter and keeps the same style. “Stylized” is what he really meant. And stylized is a total failure. A stylized painting is in a coffin, really. It’s in bad taste. It’s bad art.
so that's storr, and that's katz. if you can get your hands on that gorky retrospective catalogue, read his section. i'm still reeling and i haven't yet read the entire piece. his insights are deep and incisive, and are making me re-evaluate everything i thought about 20th c. american art.
2:15 PM: i began a new painting/collage this morning, titled DŌWD. i am painting/collaging it on a siena ground i created on this 38x38" canvas. in this early stage, the collaged figure of a girl seated on a rock, looking off into the distance, contrasts with the loosely brushed creek-scape based upon recent creek drawings i've made. i'm going to leave it like this for tioday & see how it strikes me tomorrow morning.
12:43 PM: i introduced some brighter colors, some through collaging, others, like the yellow, by brushing on acrylics.
there are enough marks suggesting rocks that the painting can be seen as a creek-scape. but there are also ambiguous elements, which allow the imagination to leap in other directions, mostly connected to the natural world: critters of one sort or another; plant life; even the sky & stars.
this is bringing me closer, i'd say, to my aesthetic and visual self, and to my mentors.
lucien, 36x38" as it looked moments ago
11:15 am: as the eclipse progresses and we are enveloped in stillness, i continue work on lucien, which has now been flipped 90 degrees and is 36x38" a distinct influence is now coming form my creek drawings, two of which i'm glancing at as i work on this painting.
4:23 PM: i arrived late at the studio today due to an extended morning trail walk. i found lucien, as mikela & my friend wendy commented, way too busy, with all those reddish marks bouncing about. so now it has more coherence, but it's not htere yet. i'll dive back in tomorrow morning.
lucien 38x36" collage & acrylic on canvas
1:16 PM: so i've abandoned the idea of a minoan series, or any series! if you are reading this, then you know that my process is unusual. but not that unusual! i could pontificate and elaborate ad nauseum, so i'll cut to the chase: this IS the artistic process. and, over the past year or two, it has increasingly been MY process. and yes, the gouache & oil interiors i was doing recently are part of that picture. but after a month of that, i found myself craving my helter skelter, grab&glue reality, which has been emerging and developing roughly since 2012.
DETAIL
that summer, i underwent proton beam therapy in houston for prostate cancer. our dear friends chris & anne invited us to stay at their guest house during those 2 months, which made all the difference in our experience during that time. we became part of the family, often eating together with the kids or simply hanging out. i became close with chris's dad louis. when he learned of my love for watches, he began, after our return to colorado, sending me large envelopes containing articles about watches and art. after reading them, many found their way into the collages i was making.
those collages began in that little above-garage apartment in houston. I got some supplies and began fooling around at the small desk in the front room, overlooking the main house. my playful child emerged as i worked every day on those collages, which combined painted shapes and marks with pieces of newspaper and other scraps i found laying about.
jump forward 5 years and here we are. so why lucien? this morning i was perusing my beautifully produced freud catalogue, from the 2012 exhibition: lucien freud portraits. my admiration and love for him and his work was rekindled. i was fortunate to have met him briefly in london in the '70's, and the intensity of his gaze is imprinted in my mind. and so, in keeping with my desire to be as much as possible in present time and have my work reflect what's going on in the moment, i re-titled the painting lucien.
2 PM: the image has once again shifted in keeping with my process of layering images and collaged elements until she sings. the head of the bull, so central to ancient minoan iconoggraphy has once again come to the fore. in this case, the original was a late minoan vase, made in about 1450 BC and said to be from attica, in the collection of the metropolitan museum, nyc.
picasso, modigliani and henry moore are but a few of the artists inspired by the art of the minoan civilization. and it's easy to see why: the fluidity and boldness of the forms they created, the colors they employed......
STAGE 6: minoan 1 38x36"
1:13 PM: i have to stop early today because we're heading over to saguache to help with organizing a get out the vote campaign so they can get the grant for their proposed, badly needed new school.
i knew i'd be scrumbling over yesterday's fifth stage of minoan 1. and this is where it's now at. i won't know till the morning whether this is a final version or there will be more layers. i was accompanied today by the extraordinary voice of maria callas. at her best, i believe she is an unsurpassed opera singer.
this figure, which is actually cycladic and not minoan, appears in stage 4 of the painting, as you can see in the photo below of all 6 stages thus far. clearly, by the faintly indicated breasts and vagina, this is a woman. but barely. the origins of this aesthetic, unique in the history of art, can only be guessed at. but if you've been fortunate enough to visit some of the cycladic islands, you may recognize the underlying energy. spare, timeless, quietly sensual. like vermeer, about whom i've spoken often during my gaze series blogs, cycladic art transcends it's time & is strikingly contemporary.
6 stages of minoan 1, with the earliest, may 29, on the left
1:14 PM: this morning we went on a magnificent, stunning trail walk. the aspens were very clearly presenting as interacting families. i was chanting the mourners kaddish in my head. sounds sombre, but the mourners kaddish is a profound and joyful affirmation of what is, and especially what we don't know is. of course we don't know 99.9% if it, really.
i entered the studio still vibrating from our walk, made my matcha tea and promptly went to work in a way only possible in those rare and unpredictable moments of ἄγνοια (ancient greek for "not knowing." it's the non-place where all is possible. all potential.
so from that space i altered yesterday's minoan image from a cycladic sculpture to a minoan bull. the minoan bull is sexy, irreverent, rhythmic. and innocent.
the bull is partially framed by clippings of 6 year old's paintings. he may well disappear tomorrow when, as i am wont to do, i scrumble over this image with something else minoan-inspired. or maybe not......
noon: i returned this morning to gaze 37, which has been re-named to minoan 1. whereas the gaze series portrayed large heads filling the canvas space, this new series will be focused on minoan art.
the surface of the painting, as with my gaze series is what one might call distressed. it consists of many layers of collage and painting, allowing snippets of newspaper articles, maps and other stray bits of paper to peek through, along with brush marks from earlier iterations. the viewer is presented with an ever morphing image , anchored by a dominant theme, in this case emerging from the ancient minoan world, where art and daily life melded in one stunningly beautiful, sensual reality.
