guess what

So. Guess what.  It turns out that they are now saying that artists can do anything they want.  They can have their personality or none at all.  But I know that is not how artists think for the most part.

You see, they are exactly like you and me.  And in art, at least for me, it is a search in the scrublands for something I lost or maybe never had.  Something I needed and misplaced or something I needed and never got.

Do you ever read people talking about stuff like the 10 qualities of strong people?  Well, I find it all garbage for the most part, and in its way very funny.

I mean first of all, who wants to have a strong personality.  It sounds like bricks and stones to me.  I would think it far preferable to have an elastic personality.  And I think I get far more from weak and damaged personalities...

And I don't have to give you examples because if you have read even just a few of my 180 or so blogs, then you know who I mean.

You know I find most of you to be troublesome in your complexity and far too bright in your intellect and immensely too delicate in your affections -for me to understand.

And I think pictures, though always too pretentious by definition, are for me at least the prettiest way to communicate.  As I look at them I think ah yes, this will do it.  Almost as if I am a master key maker (I did say pretentious didn't I?) and as I unlock a door I hang a picture which can tell me the way back as I enter the next dark room.

The picture means it is okay. It is safe here.

bowing out

I'm bowing out.  I'd like not to, but it's okay.  What else is there to do really?

You make many different sizes yet they all come out the same in the camera.  I suppose you could stick them in a room and show the different sizes.  But I don't care right now.  I'll let you guess the sizes.

It's not that hard really is it?  And it doesn't make such a big difference either does it?

And even the relative differences are compressed as you see them online.  Our brains make so many calculated compromises.

They are all from the same hand right?

And today is the last day of February.  Soon it will be March.

Sometimes you know

Sometimes you know but most of the time you know nothing.  Most of the time I go by the rule just turn them out.  Don't think about them.  Don't wonder about them. And don't ask about them.

Occasionally somebody will like one.  And that's good enough for me.

The main goal is to keep the blog somewhat consistent.  That way I know I'm painting.  I'm doing the work.  The work is getting done.

Lovers of painting and lovers of music are people who openly display their preference like a delectable ailment that isolates them and makes them proud. -Maurice Blanchot

Art must remain ernest...Art must be serious. No sarcasm no comedy.  One does not laugh at a loved one.  -Ashile Gorky

We can not express the light in nature because we have not the sun.  We can only express the light we have in ourselves. -Arthur Dove

I like the way things go on and on.  A painting is never finished.  We just walk away for a bit and work on another.  It is the only way to keep from ruining them.

I think it just impossible

So it is really impossible to paint pictures to reflect some external conditions like politics or socio-economic anythings.  Because I really don't know anything about them nor do I care about them.

All I care about is trying to make pictures.  Whatever those are.  That I don't know anything about either.  I just try to make pictures that are of something that I cannot quite think of.  I can't put my finger on it.

But it seems so close.  It feels so real.  And every so often I make a picture that I think is about this thing.  And I stare at it over and again, trying to understand it.

I really started painting right after college.  Though I certainly don't know why or what I was doing.  But I remember Laura Miner was there.  She had just got back from the Sorbonne where she got her MFA.  I was worried that all my painting looked like junk.  Scribbles that didn't match.  And still think the same thing.

But Laura was there and she looked at all my paintings and said how they immediately were identifiable as one person's work.  Well I thought well I'm glad for that.  Now of course I wish other things for my paintings.

I rather wish they could move someone somehow.  I don't know why though.  That really does seem like an odd thing.  Maybe I wish it were me they could touch.

decay and decadence

I was thinking about this quote: In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay.  And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable.  And help to change it. - Ernst Fischer...and it got me thinking about art today.

I was thinking that maybe surrealism may have had in it the first distinct expression of decay and decadence.  Now probably not because there are many individual expressions that could lay claim to this in the history of art -yet still, that R. Mutt toilet seems like it could be named as at least the first modern expression.

Now I'm sure this has all been gone over before by others much more educated than myself.  Really, I've just been thinking that this seems to be the only important function of art now.  And even then I guess there are other important statements to be made.

But I imagine the new art to be sloppy, makeshift, literally falling apart -ugly, stupid and gross in all ways possible. I'm not the one to make this art, that's not why I'm saying it, but I do collect via the mail and in the trash, free, most of the elements of my art now.

What I think is that art must always reflect the society in which it is made.  I suppose that might mean that new art will be made on, and sold on computers, traded via the internet etc.

But I'm thinking about my own stuff, which just never gets trashy enough.  When I make it, it is always too tame, to mannered, to predictable and balanced.  The new stuff must really be inbalanced,  temporary, made of junk by junk with junk.

And it should fall apart.  And rather quickly.  And have to be remade.  A new version. A better, more stylish, up to the moment version.  So in fact I guess the artist could just keep coming up with this new improved version...like one piece of art done over and over and over.

Maybe it will be an endless painting of money.  Every type.  Just hopelessly glued sloppily on paper.  That might just be the best answer.  I'll try it. See if it works.  See if it is ugly enough.

Of course I'll get bored of it I bet.  Not sure though.  But I love making these smaller postcard-size paintings with their small images, a kind of message from me to you.  And I don't feel qualified to speak for anyone other than myself.

I actually don't even like speaking about anything let alone anyone -other than me.  And even that seems phony.   And that is why I feel so happy getting any comments, good or bad.  If somehow these things can keep a modicum of conversation going, though it be about nothing, it is better as they say than nothing.