movie

No one is a jerk in this movie...! I like a movie where no one is a jerk.  -Nick L. 

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listen

When you talk you are only repeating what you already know.   But if you listen -you may learn something new.  -Dali Lama

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ink  bfk rives 11x15

great to be here

It's great to be here.  It's great to be anywhere.  -Keith richards

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ink  bfk rives 11x15

seashells and art

I have the world's biggest seashell collection. You may have seen it, I keep it spread out on beaches all over the world.  -Stephen Wright

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does this happen?

all the time...cause I make one like this then I work on some tedious collage...those often take the entire morning...or I work on a large one downstairs.  So by the time I get back to this one it is the evening and this one has dried...so then I change the palate and work on the next one here.

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let's get started

If its in the morning and usually is the first thing I do is make a cup of coffee and eat some oatmeal...

whadda we gonna call it...?

Sometimes like today I can't think of anything to say.   I had for a minute like an idea but it faded away...just sorta melted...

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kinda bright

I went to see this artist talk about her work, what she's trying to achieve to say to put on paper...and it just blew me away.  She is so articulate, so deep immersed in this stuff...you know I feel like the guy who had his brain removed...he takes it out when he works, he thinks nothing, he achieves nothing, he adds nothing, he is nothing...a happy nothing...

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ink bfk rives 11x15

the present

...and the present...! perception. -it's like a two dimensional object.  Step to the side and try to see how deep it is...it simply blinks out of existence. -Nick Kostalas

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ink  bfk rives 11x15

beauty

...beauty doesn't come from within an object -it comes from within us. We imbue the world with beauty that is born inside of us, woven out of hope and memories and love... -Nick Kostalas 

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animus facet nobilem

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collage once more

Someone I think asked me why I make these or maybe they asked how do these come about or maybe they didn't express any interest at all...-I just don't remember.  Which may answer one of those questions. 

 I find them interesting because they are made from trash from things I normally would just throw away and they are made from things I find on the ground like smooshed beer cans crushed under the weight of parking cars.  And every image I find I think of as time passed.  The papers will no longer be made the beer cans also as well as the stickers.  They are all gone forever soon...and I find them as sort of beautiful artifacts of a present that is already gone.

And I think that may be their meaning -that the present is already gone forever, that it cannot be remembered in any real sense, the details are already blurry, the future rushes toward us, and promises nothing real, only more present to be ground under and thrown away.

I don't think that sad.  I think it is only a kind of reminder to hold the past in memory.  To think to find some way to fill in an emptiness that exists for and in all of us...that the instant of the future is forever crushing anything and everything we have made.

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liberation

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.  It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to flow downhill. -Somerset Maugham

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for sarah and lisa

-for my friends who understand the insides and the outsides both of which are integral to life...

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in the end

...in the end there doesn't have to be anyone who understands you.  -there only has to be someone who wants to. -Robert Brault

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because

...because what else are we going to do?...say no?...say no to an opportunity that may be slightly out of our comfort zone?...quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect?... -Amy Poehler

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Mondrian at work

I say that because this of course was one of his favorite colors: cadmium red.  It has me thinking that ti might be fun to paint using everyones favorite pallet...you could do Mondrian, Van Gogh, Motherwell, de Kooning, whoever.  It might be fun...

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necessary

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless but necessary all the same... -Gunter Grass

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ink   bfk rives 11x15

do not apologize for the truth

Never apologize for showing feeling.  When you do so, you apologize for the truth.  -Benjamin Disraeli

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The Scarlet Pimpernel

Of course you know I have been reading this...I doubt the title would get me to use scarlet any more than Mondrian would get me to use cadmium red...but they are such dramatic colors...almost as if I have something to say with them...

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we took a little trip

My youngest boy and I took a short trip to Ann Arbor Michigan this weekend to visit friends...and we saw friends we hadn't seen for more than ten years.  It always makes me happy to see old friends.  I can find out what they have been pursuing...where their interests have lead them and what they have been creating...

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it is weird

...it weird mostly because I go through these phases when I make these that takes me to various color worlds, with various spins and movement and different kinds of emotions...and yet, at the end, they all dump me in a pool of lousy washed out colors.  Watch.  ...at the end, it will be the end.

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ink  bfk rives 11x15

passing time

That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don't notice the time passes.  -Albert Einstein

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failure

Our business in this world is not to succeed but to continue to fail in good spirits.  -Robert Louis Stevenson

After his death Stevenson was left out of the Oxford guide to literature published in 1973 and was not included in the Norton Anthology of Literature from 1968 until the year 2000.  In other words, he did not count, was not considered literate, was insignificant and unimportant for that time...

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if it be one of them

sometimes you say up late reading Baroness Emmuska Orczy or sorting through Ferlinghetti's literary history of San Francisco...or maybe you just accidentally get up early...too early really.  And then feel a weird kinda compulsion or something and have what we will call an "idea"...not an idea really but more like a space...and you suddenly make a painting...

woke up the mornin'

woke up this morning' in the grip of a nightmare...and of all things it was simply that I was in that horrid huge room taking the SATs...dumb but true.  I am glad it is over and happy to speak to you.  Howdy friend.

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anent these paintings

and I do mean all of them...I wake up ofttimes and hates 'em all -all the swampy gook and nonsense that goes into them...the lack of intelligence...the lack of concentration.  And yet, that said I think of the removal of my brain as the least of my concerns, in fact it is the best thing one can do as a painter I think...and the rest of it is a sort of committed accident, a deliberate insouciance so to speak...

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