3:35 PM: now that we’re back home, i resumed work on pink branch. the last time i worked on it was september 19. it’s in transition, and while there are some sweet passages, it’s nowhere near resolution. my time in the studio will be limited until the election on november 6th, after which i should be able to find my rhythm.
re-visiting the gaze series /
2:13 PM: snowmass: just packed up to drive back to crestone, wating for mikela to return from organizing & preparing volunteers, and doing some door knocking herself. scrolling through my thumb drive images, i stopped when i came to this one, from my gaze series, shot 7/4/2016. time in the linear sense has long since been rendered meaningless in my life. so when was that? july 4th, 2016? doesn’t compute at all. if you take a look at my story page, you may conclude, as did a recent FB friend, that i am a very lucky man. i concur.
vermeer the love letter 1669-70 44x38cm.
how, i seriously ask myself, did i make this series? why? it was tsarouchis who first introduced me to the magic of vermeer. oh, i had looked over and over at his paintings in the museums. marvelled at his brushwork. but it was tsarouchis who gave me the keys. his painting inspired by vermeer’s the love letter, provided the doorway i needed. make it yours, was his message. who, exactly are we talking about? ah, there’s the rub. make it whose??
tsarouchis the letter 1974 130x110 cm.
while he substituted friends & lovers in his version, he gave us the gift of better understanding vermeer’s magic and why he stands apart in the history of western art.
looking back/looking forward /
7:36 PM, snowmass, colorado: when we’re traveling i post less frequently, and often rely on images i have on my thumb drive. today i came across this one, shot in my studio on new years day of this year. i’m at work on motion 6, one of the earliest motion series paintings. i love this phase of the series, although i don’t feel nostalgia for it. relative to the works in my current post-motion series, the rocks are still very recognizable. in roiling, BELOW, while they are still recognizable as rocks, their solidity has morphed into fragmented forms, ghost images suggesting a reality broken to bits, humming with movement. broken to bits and at the same time interconnected. not discreet individualized forms. barely forms. sharing atoms freely while bathed in a pink glow. interchangeable parts of a vast whole, caught for a millisecond writhing in harmony; roiling.
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more work on katarachtes this afternoon /
5:06 PM: i was busy this morning preparing the athens gouache painting for shipping, so i just got around to doing some more work on katarachtes later in the day than i’m used to working. it was helpful that the heavy dark clouds cleared enough to provide good natural light. BELOW is a comparative view of the painting as it looked before todays work (left) and after.
work on katarachtes /
katarachtes, 50 x 48” as it looked at 3:30pm today.
3:02 pm: just back from carbondale last night, i continued work on katarachtes today. it’s more interesting than before. less of a punch in the face, more of a journey through time & space. of course you could say that about many things: a good poem or piece of music. the whole thing is floating in a sea of pink. so far, i’m not bored looking at it, which says something i guess. the intentional marks and the accidental ones are playing well together.
i spoke with a native american friend yesterday in carbondale, and we planned a book together, about rocks. we’ll see if it comes about, but it was an exciting conversation, and great to be able to speak freely about my relationship with the rocks to someone who shares my passion and even has words and expressions for all the aspects of my communication with them, including ones i didn’t imagine or suspect. in their tradition, the rock people are higher on the order of beings than humans. much higher.
BELOW: 3 details
drawings: then & now/a healthy mexican family/a vulunteer in carbondale /
9:18 AM: currently at a friends in snowmass, driving home this afternoon. as always, i have my drawing book with me at all times and take advantage of any opportunity to draw.
as i sit and organize my thumb drives, i ran across a drawing i made years ago in california. BELOW: is one i made a few days ago in a basalt coffee shop, and next to it on the left, the one i made at a grape picking session in california, 1980. my focus seems to have shifted from more to less descriptive of the subject & his/her psychological state to an impression of the entire space & how the subject integrates with it.
at the mexican themed café bernard
at the little mexican themed restaurant in basalt, café bernard, where i made the drawing above right, opposite us there sat a mexican family of 7. there was too much movement from them and a table of people partially blocking my view to make the drawing i wanted. so what you see BELOW, is a little confusing, and does not include the little girl of 12 or so who is the focal point of my story.
to her left was her grandpa; to her right her uncle; opposite her parents & grandma, plus various other relatives, what i observed was the unconditional love being showered on the little girl from all sides and how, as a result she was expressing herslf with total joy and self confidence. it was moving to observe the interactions of a bonded extended family, and caused me to reflect on just how much we americans have lost those qualities that often produce adults who are fully developed humans.
1:48 PM: carbondale: we had meetings here with volunteers for the diane mitch bush campaign. here’s a drawing of one of them:
then and now; some thoughts on mark making /
8:39 AM: BELOW: on the left, a plein air painting in oil on canvas, 16x16” dated 10/11/12. and on the right, roiling, 36x36”, mixed media on canvas, completed just a few days ago.
DETAIL: monastiraki, 2010 oil on canvas
my plein air paintings, both in gouache on paper and oil on canvas, have been the inspiration for my recent motion and meta-motion series of larger studio paintings, most of which are mixed media on canvas, either 36x36”, 38x38” or 36x38.” in the case of plein air, they are always spontaneous and in the moment, with no changes being made after the initial session of 30-60 minutes. my relationship to the rocks, water & branches in that moment is all there is, and i am guided as much by sound and smell as i am by the visual.
in the larger paintings made in my studio, i use crayon, colored pencil & oil pastel in the beginning, working from the plein air paintings themselves as well as photographes of the creek i’ve taken and printed out on large sheets of paper. i frequently step back 20, 30 feet, sometimes the fulll length of my studio: 60 feet, to evaluate what i’ve done & where i’m headed. the marks, as a friend from santa fe observed recently, are the same in both cases. they are the same marks you will find in this detail of a 2010 painting titled monastiraki.
but it’s easier for most people to relate to monastiraki. who can’t relate to this subject matter: a woman walking her dogs; a man selling tiropites (cheese pies); a pigeon on the pavement? the work i’m creating currently challenges the viewer of engage more deeply, i think. you are not handed a familiar subject to look at. you are invited to explore and enjoy mark making in a more essential, perhaps pure form. as far as i can see, that’s the real difference. the marks an artist makes are his or her signature and usually don’t change all that much over time; they constitute his or her self portrait. they carry and convery the entire life history of the artist as well as his or her spirit & energy.
if you play10 seconds of pablo casals on cello, playing bach, you know, just from listening to those 10 seconds, that it’s him. his signature sound is evident at any point. likewise, if you isolate 6 square inches of any matisse painting or drawing, you instantly recognize his marks.
katarachtes /
kataráchtes, 48x50”, as it looked at 3:45 PM
DETAIL of kataráchtes at 3:45 pm
2:52 PM: kataráchtes in greek means waterfalls or flowing water. i started the drawing for this one a few weeks ago, & it’s been patiently sitting & waiting it’s turn. today was it’s lucky day. freshly inspired by k,’s boldness, which expressed yesterday in the work i did on roiling, i carried that inspiration over to the under-drawing for kataráchtes. i’m stopping here so that i have time to clean my brushes before sallying forth with mikela on a walk up the trail; always a delight.
roiling continued /
1:11 PM: inspired by my mentee, k., i introduced a bolder energy to roiling today. so thanks, k., i think it’s becoming a stronger painting as a result. lets see how it progresses as i continue work till 3;30, when we’ll take our walk up the creek.
more work on roiling, but not yet there /
4:58 PM: we did a lot of driving yesterday; to gunnision & back for an event with diane at the university, then beer & pizza at the brewery. got to bed at midnight & woke up achey & tired.
my mentee, k., came at 3:45 & continued work on his painting of a cello. usually when he’s here i get a lot of work done & today was no exception.roiling is getting there, but it ain’t there yet.
i’m walking a fine line lately, where if the image starting moving too far towards description, i scrape over it and work back into it. it needs to be evocative, suggestive. so that you see something different every time you come back & look.
BELOW: 3 stages in the process, with the most recent on the right:
