Questions of Time

A general dissapointment with my work is stirred only by preoccupations with what I am actually doing. Latly I've been looking at my work less as images with content and subject matter, and more as a process that triggers and twines certain parts of me. For instance, with the piece above, I noticed that I seem to be laying down far brighter colors without the intention of challenging myself, but also without the usual reflex of annoyance that would keep me from using such colors at all. Strangely I am not much interested in color as a painter as much as I am interested in my perceptions and the responses they lead to as a human. I am growing deeply convinced that our ideas and experiences of perceiving time are fundamental to being human and and insinuative of whatever evolutions are possible for us.
I started out painting with communication and the distribution of specific ideas in mind. As a process this mean sketching out an image that I believed could best communicate the idea. The painting differed little from the sketch while I ignored color, sub-conciously fashioned people as impersonal as possible, and enlarged the scale to suit the materials I had. I paid greater attention to the essays pushing the idea from which the painting stemmed, everything was subordinated the the final result. When I realized I couldn't force people to consider specific ideas I valued I also began to paint in an intuitive non-intentional manner where I would curiously watch the brush strokes move waiting to see what they would form.
I used only black and white for a long time, interested in the unknown figures that would arise to reflect a feeling I wasn't really aware of having until I was responding to it. This absence of concious intention is what has been obsessing me to date. Does one think before hand "I will create THIS" or do they just get going and then at some point realize, "huh, so it's THIS." This consideration is most crucial in starting a painting, because once you're in there both processes naturally occur on various levels in various proportions.
Two years ago I wouldn't have been able to put down bright colors, my reaction would have been fully in the present tense. My reaction and assumption that "This is IT." would have prevented me from doing so, much less doing so with hardly noticing. But something must have happened, because now when working I am somehow aware that what I am working on is not "it", my awareness has somehow included a sense of the future.
St. Augustine apparently came to the idea that the past and future only exist in our mind. Where then does the mind exist? Personally, I am under the impression that something existing not in explicit tangible form exists nonetheless, and may or may not have potential for coming to exist in a more material form. I mostly experience my mind as far more vast, interesting, and 'real' as the physical world.
Where then does art exist? It does not exist in nature. Art is a reaction to natures indifference toward humanity. It is an excessive gesture beyond the basic requirements of survival. We perceived time in a particular manner when living in the woods, which affected our optical experiences. (such as identifying a threat in a camaflauged enviroment) what is happening inside me when I am making a painting? What is happening when it is 'done' someone stands there gazing?

Infinite Plastic Knives

I don't need to sit here and write about my general sense of disconnection to faceless strangers I don't have the energy to be interested in. See that picture? There's my face. I must exist; the multitude of vantage points sends me dizzy. I'm commenting leisurely to nobody that it is too cold to paint. I now pay tribute to the folk at mid-city studio for lending me this heater that I position 4 inches from my legs and cannot detach myself from. Do I name this good samaritan carrying out the neighborly ways of ore? Do I post a link to his art so that you can look up his name and scavenge to find potential unpaid parking tickets? I do not know how to go about things now that we are living in the future. Segways and bottomless juke boxes? This is the future? The internet is getting disappointing because I can't believe people could possibly be so interested in each other. Is this really all a reaction of fear & forelornment as we anticipate being forgotten?
I want to be something profound and stable that you can turn to. Maybe I want to hide a few objects in the world that make it seem a little bit easier for you to breathe. A bunch of bastards have naively confused the nature of this exchange; When I read saul Bellow I don't need him to squeeze my shoulder and approve my understanding. The chatter argues shrilly, "Well, how do you ever understand if you really received something how the person who made it intended!?!" and that voice waves a finger and has pointed eyes, to counter and pacify another one soothes, "Ah, well everyone is different and understands things differently." But that does not soothe me! That statements is the basis of a conversation, not the conclusion of one! So, what I'm not gettin over here, is if most of our verbal communications are stunted and generalized- why are we creating multitudes of new tunnels to pass these through?
In a way it is practical for verbal exchanges to be generalizations or banalities; they are safe, and when people are face to face there is always present, though rarely acknowledged, potentiality for violence. I wonder how often bad news is being presented via phone or text message these days. In another scope verbalizing takes place in the moment, often suited for pragmatic events, which is why it's a useful novelty to be able to call someone at the grocery store and remind them to grab some milk. The written word bares a different relationship to time; it can be lasting. Images have and have not suffered the same fate. A very slight minority would assert that seeing an image on a screen or in a book is basically the same as seeing an original in person. Yet 'hand touched' giclee prints are selling for sums that could pay my rent for months.
This all makes me come to wonder if humanity has just never really come to terms with the finite. We are obsessed with replication, with the comfort that comes from knowing if something falls apart if can be almost identically replaced. We assume confidently that no two things can ever really be the same, because at the very least they are composed of different atoms and occupy different spaces in time. This is basically the paradox that everything is unique; because then what value does the 'unique' have if it doesn't differentiate and all is interchangeable? I'm really feeling like we've been building something running off a misperception for awhile now and I don't understand how it keeps going.

and continue.

I need to get a bit better about updating this. One post a month shouldn't be too much. Suddenly it seems..I am comfortable working with oils. All the things I've been talking to myself about relentlessly aren't coming to mind right now. I may as well not be writing anything. But it's something in....writing to yourself, while allowing eaves droppers, not holding things off because of that, perhaps I am incoherent or perhaps that idea is just comforting. I've gotten really into shading, and believe that in the same way if you just draw anatomy from life over and over again it gets stuck in you well enough to produce- not from memory- but from knowledge- it's not recollecting HOW something looked, but WHY it looked that way and being able to use those coordinates for my own means. I know I did want to write; to tell other people, as though anyone would be interested in these constant often repetitive dialogues I carry on with myself- That in painting I am not interested in documentation. I do not care really to show you what I have seen, literally or visually. I want to paint things that I cannot see- but I can see people- but I paint people primarily probably because it is what I understand the least. I do not know what it is to be human, and I am tired and slightly panicy that people constantly throw down such passionate, convicted statements as regaurds it. But then I rise up too there, to be human is to be limited- but I do not always want to be human. I wonder why do my paintings look old, probably for some credential that the past owns and the present and the future must prove...but I do not feel I am doing something particularly new or that I care to- I cannot help but do something new, since I have not existed before, though I am doing this all again, it is also for the first time. I do want people to look at them and feel something that is presently living inside of themselves- this is just a communication- not me turning something on or implanting anything- it is relation and the viewer is the other necessary 1/2 of that process. It is a process we're involved with, and time probably doesn't even function as we experience it, so to freeze something, such as an image is, is actually a false comfort, that perhaps comforts in one area so that things may happen in another. The process of my work and the form (or the end result) must bare direct relationship with one another. I love the spontenaity of finding people in random brush strokes- it is almost like recognizing my self as a bag of flesh- as any other indistinguishable clump of matter sitting around- and this recognition becomes a distinction, but then right after that I again feel unfamiliar, that I again do not know what I am, how I am with others that apparently form a species and assumedly bare commonalities- and so defining these people, sitting with them after they have arrived, and possibly giving it time- maybe that is where layering comes in, or working on a painting with time in between- so that it is not all contained within an immediate reaction....or so that the immediate reaction may be combined with a prolonged and hesitant reconsideration. Hm, I'm not sure what I wrote exactly, but I put something down here and I guess I'll leave it as such. and continue.

Considerations and doubts

Every time I look at my work, I'm not sure if I like looking at it or not. Sometimes it looks so close...and other times, so god damned far off from where I want to go. While I keep telling myself I'm working towards it, I can't beat away the million doubts that rush me. I mean- how do I know? Maybe I'm driving myself in circles again. If I look towards human history to account for my own, I really have to question whether progress is possible at all. My mind scrambles to account for a million different things, between materials and subject matter... some areas are limited and forced into ultimatum; do I start a piece with a 'plan' and allow that to go into disarray or do I start with the usual familiar chaotic strokes? Right now I lead more toward the latter; I want not only my images, but my paintings, to follow the same patterns that life does. While the movement of the stroke is chaos (just like the initial conception of children- all those sperm going for the egg) once that stroke is put down it can't be revoked, and the dna starts to meld- and that's what one has to work with. But then I think of scale, and am I useing a direct or indirect method? There seem to be so many directions, that sometimes its hard to move at all.

Slow building

Slowly it gets less frustrating. Finishing off a recent group of paintings, I felt myself breath, feeling like much like a farmer whose been working the ground and finally seeing what may be something sprouting. Over the past year I'm realizing what I've been doing with myself by upturning this comfortable, habitual painting process I had- and finding a way to progress but integrate this. The 'this' is imagination, working from the suggestions of a random brush stroke. Attempting to combine this with intentional imagery, or even working from life has been overwhelming. I'm finding it wise to set a plan with the understanding from the outset that the plan is vague and there is plenty of room to move and change within it. I suppose I see the same things I go through in painting reflected in various areas of life, and perhaps I even believe this to be one of the essential aspects of painting.
Painters primarily concerned with the final result baffle me. Though their methods do appear too methodical for me, mostly I just don't understand that. I've said and thought- I don't want to paint what I see- I want to paint what I can't see so that I get to see it. Layering the paint has been the biggest change... but jesus, I would much like to rest in an area of change for awhile and have the steady satisfaction I once did. Slow and steady..

Just to keep working

In a rush right now...got about ten minutes before I got to the place where I haul people in and out and then move their dirty dishes. I'm starting to sicken of my perpetual self-righteousness- that I see so much work and my reaction is, "What am I looking at?" and I think, jesus, people are putting out such careless crap that I could put a little of my efforts into something and in comparison it would still be something more. More what? More genuine. More well-constructed. But that is comparison and that is not the point. I remind myself now- I need to work privately, and people don't need to know my woes or deep gouging frustrations- and if I show work that I personally find to be sub-par, I am dropping down to that level myself, to compete and be seen- when what I know I need to work for is to see for myself and translate this in a comprehensive enough fashion that I can stand by my work and firmly know that this is the best I'm doing and it ought to be seen. Just to keep working, when there is no promise of some far off sense of completion.

Pre-Appocolyptic Painting?

Wondering lately what the difference is between practice and a finished piece. The ideas my mind is quick to fetch are obvious and don't explain what I'm thinking about. Mostly, I'm thinking that for now my focus needs to lie in just making my work, and selling and showing need to ask less attention. Back before Katrina I felt like I knew exactly what I was doing; I was pulling up these dark little pieces of life and bringing them out where people would pass by or stop and squint to remark, "Oh- that's a part of me." Then they would buy it, the money seeming so incidental, just a trademark or formality for this process to carry out its purpose. But now- I'm no longer clear on what I want to communicate- and if what I want is what actually needs to be said. I can see that just for myself, this inclincation towards order and pre-conception has meaning for me. Outwardly, as goes the world at large- it seems like we're heading for the appocolypse.

"Are you Suffering?"

It's raining. It's going well. A nervous energy courses through me. I sat last night with some five or six recently finished paintings hanging from my aged wall and just looked for awhile. I feel that I finally have a hand hold, that I'm just begining on something that will be expanded upon. Endlessly I peer and ask, what choices are being made to bring a painting into being? What's worth noticing? Do I start from a sketch, a photograph, a memory? It's so often heard, the prompting- go experiment! And it always sounds so fanciful to me, I picture some empty-nested housewife, someone with a life more secure than my own, and after staring at their 90th attempt at some flowers in a vase they rip the bun out and throw some loose canvas on the floor and attack it. They 'experiment' the way adolescents do with sex or drugs, they run wild, they foget to wash their hair for weeks in this mad dionysian frenzy of creativity. Their usual reserve is rejuvinated by spontanity. But I rarely brush my hair, not for behomienism but out of laziness. I used to scatter the paper all over the floor and hunch down with it and get into it and this was the natural way. But since I noticed something, a dissatisfaction rose in me, maybe I just grew some. And so my experimentation is quite the opposite, methodical and pre-thought. I'm still going through a laundrey list of new experiences- and I still get quite excited over some of them- but mostly they would bore the laymen. I found a thrill in experiencing what viscisouty & adhesion meant after staring uncomprehending at all those art store catalogues. I'm seeing light in gradations, but it is more an experience of unveiling, de-mystifying, finding explanation in the place of revelation. I'm doing so much work I'm pissed I've had to get a regular job, that my camera broke so I can't share the latest paintings here. I've fallen into rich hours of resentment, where I spite any artist who shows a light hearted concern for their craft. It's not fair to them, but it's not fair for any of us. Lately when i meet someone who tells me their an artist or introduces me to one, I want to ask with all this accumulated accusation, "Are you suffering?" or just say, "Oh, I'm so sorry." While my moments of discovery are jubulent and this new found determination is strange and new to me, it gives me a quiet internal pride, a soft sense voice whispering, "You might get there, you'll keep going.." Equally far down I know there is no where to get, and so I can enjoy just being in this place of knowing what I want. The frustration is more outwardly directed and though unfelt in this moment (an untraceable anxiety seems to have replaced all else) it's been showing up enough lately to be fit for mention. This is all to be said for this moment.

-------Order-------

The second guess gets tiresome. I'm pleased with myself to have cultivated some discipline, I am painting just about every day. In earlier conversation with a friend I told my dissatisfaction with what I view as polar inclinations of our culture- the drive to progress forward and the yearning to go back. I want to cash in my ticket with the latter ideal, seeing it in ways as the less harmful of two impossibilities, but I don't really believe in it. It's impossible to erase what we've already experienced, but I feel it in my bones that were just going too quickly, we were anxious to forget where we've been, resourceful and fast paced in the construction of industry & technology. I learned about the painters who worked in classical style to an uncommon result. I'm going in a different way- slowly considering traditional methods and results, but without the old structure, without apprenticeship I'm picking up tools randomly and learning at the cost of my comfort & habits. Right now I want to end up with traditional feeling paintings that are arrived at through basically untraditional means. Tradition chained us so long, even in me, I feel the resentment that leads to a break away. But we've had that, right? Numerous time, and we'll have plenty more. I want to present images that are unchanging, that are spiritual and human, industrious & uncertain, but not 'out there' or seperate from the world we live in.
These matters can be questioned intricately forever, because I wonder now and often times if the world I'm experiencing is common to the one your experiencing. Most fine art I encounter I feel repulsed by in it's haughtiness of individual expression and what appears to me as absence of meaning, and then worse a ring around the rosy song and dance that praises itself for this. But Who decides what is true? Why, we all do, with our lives in every act, thought, feeling & moment. I don't believe we 'create' truth, to me life is the experience of getting reduced to what we are. We guess and throw ourselves at various ideals but what is lasting has always been lasting, except perhaps after it has done its part. The artist is the middle man who works in private, steps out into the public glare, stares with fright at the mass, and then out of that, one person steps out, they receive the sign they are ready for, and they take it with them back to the private. So art should not just be someone expressing themselves & it should not just be a reflection of communal life, but an individual expressing themselves in such a way that someone else may look over and recognize themselves within it.

The Usual; The Intense

I am amazed that I've done such a poor job in updating this. Once a month doesn't seem too lofty of a time frame, so from today I'll attempt for that. The struggles going on in me over why and how to work have come to a lull, where work feels more approachable though less climatic. It's funny because as I explore order and have really kept my eyes open for it, most of the people I mention this to dissuade me and seem to hint that as a general rule there is freedom 'outside of the box' and little more than oppression in tradition and rules. Of course my own perceptions color this, and though fascinated and transfixed, order does not yet feel natural or even necessary.
Wait, I contradict. Recently with getting into oils I saw the reasons behind different rules, and I suppose the more we can view rules as suggestions the more options we are left with. And what is more frightening than options? For all our cries of freedom, in most cases, when you leave a man to his own devices he does nothing trecherous and nothing glorious. Most of our lives are spent taking care of things that continue our lives. The climatic moments of bravery or vengence are gaped at in awe until life simply resumes, continues rolling on and we have to wonder what will be for breakfast.

In the Thick of It

Lately I've been writing a lot of notes to myself about painting. I'm at some indefinet place with the work that has me uneasy. I can't rest in the chaos and mystery that I lived in until now. I still feel these elements are necessary to present in order to counter balance what feels like an impending insanity to convince ourselves that 'everything is under controle' and the universe will be catergorized and explained soon enough. I can't explain it. But it's looking more necessary to study and grasp these inclinations of controle, linear processing and goal oriented function. It's always looked so futile to me, because if there is no static goal in living why would there be one in painting? I can only guess that it's a way of learning to live better within time. The whole human method of setting about on a path with the idea that you're going to get where you think you're going has seemed absurd to me. It now appears approachable. Is it even possible to anticipate where or what something is REALLY going to be? (How could we even develop expectations when we haven't experienced it yet?) In this consideration it seems outlandish that we do this, but I assume tomorrow that when I go to brush my teeth, when I turn the faucet that water will come out. I'm even assuming that I'll wake up in the morning. Life makes no false promise of assuring us anything. This general assurance that we concoct for ourselves is a necessary illusion. While I'm in this experimental floundering I'm going to attempt exploring this. A related conundrum I've been asking myself is- does a painting show itself more through the process or the final piece? (Say the subject is 'grief' does one paint an image of someone grieving, or do they paint a work that will invoke the experience of grief from the viewer?) (And how can anyone presume what will affect another person, a stranger for that matter?) Somehow I believe the ends and the means can be synthesized. Art, like science and philosophy, are not about accepting or condemning but extending the question. Rather than saying, "Ah, it is a necessary illusion, I'll just keep living on!" or "Ah! It is an illusion, it's false, let's do away with it!" I can study both what makes it necessary and it's illusory properties.

Life in General

My days have grown structured. I don't believe I like writing in this manner. It's unnerving. I've thought to update this for awhile, through days in wind and passivity the thoughts stream, I try to grab at little bits and preserve them..but I'm just here with a fistful of dirt. The references to nature could very well be because I am presently working on a farm. I'm trying to understand and communicate how things connect, disconnect and move about, how the alteration in environment or temperment changes the work- but it just seems trivial. Earlier I thought about how it is a common thought to regaurd ourselves as seperate from our environment but in the most literal of lights have we known anything but this earth? Plants continue prodding their way into my work. The most prominent element that has affected my work as of late I've noticed actually is not material or imagined. It's time. I'm working routine days. The time for working (on painting) is scarce. I often don't even want to begin because I know I'll only be torn away, interrupted by sleep or the end of break. How often do we decide not to engage something because we know how quickly it will end? Rather a new approach has appeared. I'm working a bit more with layers. It's interesting how bluntly the manners of painting provide analogy for life in general. When I say layering, I mean that due to time restraints I have to leave a painting unfinished, sometimes for days, and return to it. The old paint dries and won't budge. The newer areas are open for any possibility, but they must be somehow resigned with what it already present and less open to change. This is like people. We get older, things, characteristics, habits, beliefs, they begin to harden and stick, and as much as new information can be welcomed, it must somehow be manipulated to fit with all that has come before it. I think about time a lot. About life progression. Like why hasn't anyone told me what age I'll be when I'll begin to loose my teeth. Didn't things like this used to get passed down? I used some berries from the farm for a warm reddish tone and painted with it. I like the idea of using elements from the surrounding. But how seperate are we from it?

Waning desperation

Painting is my only connection to the world. This is an exaggerated form of phrasing, but carries the genuine sense of desperateness I feel in it. Within nearly everything else I sense parts of myself constantly needing to be hidden or restrained; otherwise they interfere with functioning. Maybe because art has no clearly defined function these parts are allowed to be utterly exposed since there is no function to disrupt- being what they are is their function. Form and function being one thing, that's an interesting thought.
While my desperation is waning it is only because I have seen that understanding is not instintaneous and cannot be forced. The urgency I have had in wanting others to see what I have seen has become introverted where I am wanting to know what I have seen, how I have seen anything at all, how life in one turn is so remarkably provokative and interesting, and in the next, desolate and tiresome.
When I say painting is my only connection it is because much of my identity us tied up in abstractions- in matters so small and specific, like a leaf falling in autumn, they are of no consequence and in matters so large and general, like mortality or time, that I cannot locate myself within them.
I noticed recently in my paintings that the people have been floating less, existing less in undefined segments of color. They've been on the ground, in fields, floating in small boats through the water. I take this to mean that I am associating more with environment. That's a nice thought.
NY is tiring me. I do not know when I'll go or where to, but I'll keep painting.

A good reason for reason

In my tendency to divide everything up and then re-tie it all together, the desire to witness every variant of ourselves contrasted or combined, I'm going back and forth with oil paints and water soluble oils (closer to acrylics) and am still amazed at how the materials and working with them is so symbolic of different ways of going about life. I've been wanting to exercise my 'left brain' (the logical, technical, how to part). Oil paints seem to make logic and order of more necessity- they can be toxic, mixed w/ various chemicals, have the potential for many different manners of application, allow for layering, and take a hell of a long time to dry. They require time, patience and study. With oil painting I'm suddenly allowed an overwhelming amount of possibilities, stemming from a surprising cause; limitation. Painting in my usual method of intuition doesn't quite seem to work, I get going and then realize I have to let this thing dry and this is quite frustrating and unnatural to me. Yet it also offers a new option; deliberation. Because of all the time needed, and some kind of order, I can now consider WHAT I am going to paint prior to painting. Right past the limitation is a dizzying array of options, which require a left brain function- decision making or deduction. I can work from photos, from life, sketch out ideas, or anything. Usually we associate risk taking with emotion, whether it's the harm of recklessness or the glee of spontinaity, but I'm finding the opposite. With my usual work produced in the more chaotic fashion I actually take far less risk; each stroke is an immediate reaction to the last and there is a sense of urgency that only what is happening NOW matters. I believe this requires less risk because I'm rarely aware of what could be lost. With the oil painting I can go over layer after layer and though there's a consolation in knowing I can re-paint areas, sometimes I do that and lose what I was going after. It also allows for more risk and experimentation because while painting I understand that I will approach a piece days or weeks later and that what I am doing in a present moment will become the past and will affect the future.
Our reasoning allows us contemplation and retrospection. Romanticism is whatever it is we care enough about to contemplate and remember.
Good night.

Attempt at communcating

I just used this turpentine varnish stuff for the first time and I think I may be gradually asphyxiating myself; in addition I'm smoking, which opens my possibilities for cancer and spontaneous combustion. Now may be the moment to rush and buy up all my work, the investment value would spike.
* * * *
I have been wanting to speak with you. I'll try to work out the matter, right here, without preparation. That is just it...preparation, forethought and the desire to have oneself in some kind of order before presentation. The more I've been studying this in myself the more I think our attempts at perfection may be our biggest mistake of all. We want to see ourselves, our world, our lives as meaningful, and in this earnest desire, we construct ideas for ourselves to live up to, and then later disown these same ideas, having it appear that it was something outside ourselves which set the course.
To present a clear depiction of what it means to live would be a limited and exclusive contrivance, because I don't know what it means to live, nor how to live. But I do believe there is something outside & inside ourselves which 'sets the course' (or IS the course) and that our desire for control is what inspires our projections of how life 'ought' to be.
...This is not what I wanted to say. (and I hang my head in frustration.)

A Haphazard Introduction

I decided to use this area to work out my thoughts about painting, art & life in general. Why am I so tentative right now? When I speak & paint I am almost completely without discretion (often to my disadvantage) but I'm writing this and I'm already imagining you reading it and I have no idea who you are or how you are...well, how are you? Who are you?
Wait- perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. I made an alarming discovery a few nights ago. Coffee in my system does not assist me in painting, and this is a terrible thing for me to learn because I am very happy with my addiction. I pour coffee into me until my brain feels light (and um, stimulated) and then my eyes are roaming all around and I know I am ready to begin something. But it's hard to keep a steady hand. It's hard to keep a steady train of thought regardless of what's in my system or where I am going with this.
My paintings have begun to pile up like bodies. This is really what they look like to me. I feel like they have an existence independent of me, and keeping them here in my hole of a dwelling is almost like keeping them tied up in my basement. I don't think they belong to me, when I bring them out to sell it seems like I'm just waiting for whoever they belong to to show up and claim them.
The paintings are not what are important to me. The process of painting is my involvement. Internal monologues streams through me, in words and in shapes and diagrams. I carry on somewhat fictional conversations with flat two dimensional peoples of whose existence I am in much of question of as my own. I think these people were alive, are alive, and that death is a part of their life that they know much more of than I do.