Thursday, July 30, 2009
Lucky to be able to post this.
Wasting. Wondering.Dazed.
Waiting the last few days for my wonderful, overtaxed, unappreciated car to be repaired.
Getting it-finally tomorrow!
Here's the amazing part- Driving home from Cooper Union on Tuesday night after teaching and having fun working on an "exquisite corpse" while watching Pablo and Alannah ( upstate NY(er) and loves BURCHFIELD!) photograph students artwork while listening to JETHRO TULL!!!
Only a few miles from my home my car suddenly gave up. Going through an intersection the engine literally died-stopped running completely.
The mechanics ALL said it was a miracle that the engine did not die while driving at highway speeds. I'm still not able to contemplate the full extent of that horror.
They all said I was lucky to be alive.
Laugh if you must but I am VERY clear that the NUMINA of my Camry saved me.
Seriously
Waiting the last few days for my wonderful, overtaxed, unappreciated car to be repaired.
Getting it-finally tomorrow!
Here's the amazing part- Driving home from Cooper Union on Tuesday night after teaching and having fun working on an "exquisite corpse" while watching Pablo and Alannah ( upstate NY(er) and loves BURCHFIELD!) photograph students artwork while listening to JETHRO TULL!!!
Only a few miles from my home my car suddenly gave up. Going through an intersection the engine literally died-stopped running completely.
The mechanics ALL said it was a miracle that the engine did not die while driving at highway speeds. I'm still not able to contemplate the full extent of that horror.
They all said I was lucky to be alive.
Laugh if you must but I am VERY clear that the NUMINA of my Camry saved me.
Seriously
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
The studio
It wasn’t only that you didn’t see him anymore, meet him anymore. You saw his absence and encountered it as something tangible. His not being there was like the sharply outlined emptiness of a photo with a figure cut out precisely with scissors and now the missing figure is more important, more dominant than all the others."
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The studio
As certain as color
Passes from the petal,
Irrevocable as flesh
The gazing eye falls through the world
Passes from the petal,
Irrevocable as flesh
The gazing eye falls through the world
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
OK, I tried to keep my mouth shut
- Just imagine.
If Jackson Pollock were alive today which graduate program do you think he'd be chairman of? Yale? Columbia? Cal Arts?
Of course not.
Can you imagine?
Do you even think he'd want to share what he did?!
-Arts education is an Oxymoron, with emphasis on the moronic.
The perversity of thinking you could teach painting, or worse yet make it an academic subject and grade it is an obscenity.
The establishment of the BFA degree, during I think the nineteen fifty's in this country, was to turn the most painfully individualistic creative discipline into a predictable and quantifiable endeavour.
How can you expose yourself,which is what the creative process requires, when your thinking constantly of the receiving end of the process? Your academic peers.
-Why are there so many art students today? Is it the "look"? The fashionableness of the art schools; The underlying "sexy" business of it all?
Then.Grad-School
Followed by...
Get a show.
Any show.
As long as it's viable, fashionable
Get a good position somewhere.
A school people in the know will respect. Be identified by where you teach or study.
-Or. How bout this ridiculousness.
Remember the Eighties? All those raw "Graffiti Artists". The sheer illegal anarchy of it.
Now the art schools have absorbed the purity of this true cultural expression and Incorporated it into the mainstream curriculum.
Much like Picasso and his gang "discovering" the "primitive". Yes?
Now you have countless undergrads acting as if they came "up from the streets".
How do you critique that? Much less grade it.
What a farce.
-Do you really need a degree to paint?
Go to the Met.
Paint houses.
The only way to paint is to not "paint". No one knows what that looks like.
Until they do.
If Jackson Pollock were alive today which graduate program do you think he'd be chairman of? Yale? Columbia? Cal Arts?
Of course not.
Can you imagine?
Do you even think he'd want to share what he did?!
-Arts education is an Oxymoron, with emphasis on the moronic.
The perversity of thinking you could teach painting, or worse yet make it an academic subject and grade it is an obscenity.
The establishment of the BFA degree, during I think the nineteen fifty's in this country, was to turn the most painfully individualistic creative discipline into a predictable and quantifiable endeavour.
How can you expose yourself,which is what the creative process requires, when your thinking constantly of the receiving end of the process? Your academic peers.
-Why are there so many art students today? Is it the "look"? The fashionableness of the art schools; The underlying "sexy" business of it all?
The cycle is attractive.
Four years of self. Four years of "profound decoration"?Then.Grad-School
Followed by...
Get a show.
Any show.
As long as it's viable, fashionable
Get a good position somewhere.
A school people in the know will respect. Be identified by where you teach or study.
-Or. How bout this ridiculousness.
Remember the Eighties? All those raw "Graffiti Artists". The sheer illegal anarchy of it.
Now the art schools have absorbed the purity of this true cultural expression and Incorporated it into the mainstream curriculum.
Much like Picasso and his gang "discovering" the "primitive". Yes?
Now you have countless undergrads acting as if they came "up from the streets".
How do you critique that? Much less grade it.
What a farce.
-Do you really need a degree to paint?
Go to the Met.
Paint houses.
The only way to paint is to not "paint". No one knows what that looks like.
Until they do.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The studio
...paint is very much like waste. That is so in both senses of the word "waste": some paint is like the refuse of the studio, and some is like human waste. In the studio it can feel as if paint is not just reminiscent of shit, but it is shit. The alchemists realized that excrement cannot be denied, that it has to be used. It is hopeless to pretend that oil painting does not continuously recall the worst miscarriages of digestion. Circulation is the esoteric discipline of recycling substances, especially the body's products, but also whatever is despised and overlooked, including the dusty waste material of the studio. Circulation is a metaphor, as well, for recycling the waste products of the mind, and somehow going on when nothing new can be found. Old discarded thoughts become new ones, and the work starts again.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Finally
Looking and imagining. Staring.
Smoking a ridiculous amount of cigars lately to fill the frustrating, anxious boredom between preparing the surface (over two weeks ago! Thank god for sketchbooks) and the choice of subject and the drawing.
Today it finally began!
The drawing.
My fourth of July celebration-like most of my holidays (with the exception of Christmas and occasionally Thanksgiving) are, for some god forsaking reason very
productive.
Granted I realize just how pathetic my family and social life must seem to you when being alone in the studio puffing away could possibly be a proper and emotionally healthy way to observe the holidays.
Seems right and proper to me. Do you actually think I'd go to a barbecue or some such instead?!
I have "religiously" gone to the studio each day( since teaching ended) in hopes of starting. Leaving after an average eight hours of
Reading.
Looking.
Reading.
Looking.
Nap.
Drawing.
Looking again.
Reading again.
Finally, the drawing.
The whole time (except for the napping) smoking an endless stream of intense, cheap Italian cigars made in Scranton Pennsylvania and adoringly hating every moment.
Back at it tomorrow. Until I get that digital camera I will describe to you as best I can what and how I'm working.
A hint
A pair of female legs.
Pose derived from a late Medieval painting.
Just the legs.
Six feet tall.
Smoking a ridiculous amount of cigars lately to fill the frustrating, anxious boredom between preparing the surface (over two weeks ago! Thank god for sketchbooks) and the choice of subject and the drawing.
Today it finally began!
The drawing.
My fourth of July celebration-like most of my holidays (with the exception of Christmas and occasionally Thanksgiving) are, for some god forsaking reason very
productive.
Granted I realize just how pathetic my family and social life must seem to you when being alone in the studio puffing away could possibly be a proper and emotionally healthy way to observe the holidays.
Seems right and proper to me. Do you actually think I'd go to a barbecue or some such instead?!
I have "religiously" gone to the studio each day( since teaching ended) in hopes of starting. Leaving after an average eight hours of
Reading.
Looking.
Reading.
Looking.
Nap.
Drawing.
Looking again.
Reading again.
Finally, the drawing.
The whole time (except for the napping) smoking an endless stream of intense, cheap Italian cigars made in Scranton Pennsylvania and adoringly hating every moment.
Back at it tomorrow. Until I get that digital camera I will describe to you as best I can what and how I'm working.
A hint
A pair of female legs.
Pose derived from a late Medieval painting.
Just the legs.
Six feet tall.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Home
My lack of caloric intake is getting the better of me, I think.
Also the scotch.
Melancholy when I should be doing pirouettes!
About to take on the rental of the adjacent apartment this week. Combining the two spaces will give me the ability to convert my present living room and kitchen into drawing and painting studios; Giving me for the moment, along with my present studio, three spaces to work in.
The absolute plus of these new spaces is two fold . They’ll be where I live and I have always dreamed of a space solely devoted to drawing.
In the past I have spent so much of my time (life) away from the studio. Turning it into a second tier interest. A hobby really. Haven’t lived with my work since the nineties. Finally admitting how “un-moored” I’ve been since then. If I can’t work daily I take on the persona of the disgruntled, stuck walking dead man. Going through the motions of living and being “interesting”. Engaging.
Instead I compensate; With reading and films and food and of course teaching,
Teaching. A tour guide through creativity.
Thinking. Thinking and more thinking. Thinking, as if that could possibly make up for not making art. The pornography of disengagement.
Well that shits over. It’s now or the inevitable never. If I don’t bring my work to the center of my being again I’m not sure how any of this will play out.
When I'm focused-Without the fear of hubris I know how good I can be.
So. My loves. I mean that by the way. You honor me by your interest . Wish me luck.
I promise soon, within the next few weeks to have a decent digital camera to show my work as I make it.
Also the scotch.
Melancholy when I should be doing pirouettes!
About to take on the rental of the adjacent apartment this week. Combining the two spaces will give me the ability to convert my present living room and kitchen into drawing and painting studios; Giving me for the moment, along with my present studio, three spaces to work in.
The absolute plus of these new spaces is two fold . They’ll be where I live and I have always dreamed of a space solely devoted to drawing.
In the past I have spent so much of my time (life) away from the studio. Turning it into a second tier interest. A hobby really. Haven’t lived with my work since the nineties. Finally admitting how “un-moored” I’ve been since then. If I can’t work daily I take on the persona of the disgruntled, stuck walking dead man. Going through the motions of living and being “interesting”. Engaging.
Instead I compensate; With reading and films and food and of course teaching,
Teaching. A tour guide through creativity.
Thinking. Thinking and more thinking. Thinking, as if that could possibly make up for not making art. The pornography of disengagement.
Well that shits over. It’s now or the inevitable never. If I don’t bring my work to the center of my being again I’m not sure how any of this will play out.
When I'm focused-Without the fear of hubris I know how good I can be.
So. My loves. I mean that by the way. You honor me by your interest . Wish me luck.
I promise soon, within the next few weeks to have a decent digital camera to show my work as I make it.
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