The Bending of the Twig

I'm reading Mary Shelley Jules Verne Edgar Allan Poe Fitz-James O'Brien -this anthology of many interesting Science Fiction writers as they now call them. They used to be thought of in the regular literature.  But I like this distinction as it helps identify their work and separate the work of symbolism and imagination.

I think it was Robert Motherwell who traces the modern art movement to Edgar Allan Poe.  Though I would, though it may sound pretentious, trace my work to Mary Shelley.  It is her wild romanticism and unfurled imagination that appeal to me and her narrator's constant and vain attempts to gain the reader's sympathy seem so in keeping with my own work...

And even Fitz James Obrien's certainly over-the-top and mad discoveries echo my feelings clearly.

I often feel like his mad microscopist that I am part of a small world of scientists and discoverers of this new machinery.  And I often think the each of my successive paintings fall closer in the single drop of paint.

The sort of focus this mad spirit of Leeuwennhoek and his gorgeous love of nouns as adjectives which he provides plenty of space for, ah I love it.  It just feels so natural and once obsessed what else can one do, you just follow it.

The man who dies, added Van Tricasse solemnly, without ever having decided upon anything during his life, has very nearly attained to perfection. -Jules Verne

All this reminds me of Eno and his Oblique Strategies...it was certainly then, listening to him and to Phillip Glass that I felt my painting must not have so much work in any single piece, but must be constructed of accidents and must have the ethereal alienated static of withdrawal as their imprimatur.

would I be able to create a non-art as art?  I didn't know.  I still don't to this day.

changed guitar strings today

I changed my son's guitar strings today.  And they sound a bunch better too.

They came back from camping.  New kind of butter up there.  I'm almost out of paper.

I'm gonna put the nickel strings on the electric.  They'll sound like my dad's old strings.

And I changed the light bulbs in the basement finally.  And found some decent no. 2's at Target.  They use rubber and cedar...!

Got some new cards.  The old ones went camping.

You can't take my youngest to the movies without milk duds...

We also got some double A's so he can keep making movies with his camera...

And last, not least we went to that store and bought all sorts of "strange" candy for him to try.  That was a bunch of fun...!

I know now that there is no one thing that is true.   It is all true.  -Ernest Hemingway

awake an' a'workin'

So -often really- when I'm workin' on something I will go on workin' on it the whole day.  We all do that don't we? An sometimes the next day too...an sometimes for weeks at a time... 

In a way its just a simple idea at least in one concept.  But of course the devil is in the details.

And those details can get very complex and very difficult to sort out, if in fact they actually get sorted out.

I love it when they do.  Then things just happen and it's like floating on the grass, dreaming and staring at the clouds.

Then sometimes it feels like I'm in a castle somewhere with all these bottles around me mixing up dangerous potions and testing them on some sort of responsive paper.  Can the creation be complete? 

Have I mixed the right formula?  Will the application respond today?  ...will it have the energy and movement I wish for it?

Will someone look at it and say -by god he's done it...! it has a life of its own, it can talk back to me.

It is actually flowing on the paper...! It has its movement.  The pieces of paper floating in it like trash in a stream...

I always reach for those things...I usually  have a particular base I wish to use.  So that I don't have to think about it.

In art one idea is as good as another. --Willem de Kooning

And no one knows I don't think exactly where this will ever end up.  Not with a single picture nor with a hundred of them.  I've read about as much as I can from different artists, at least the ones I admire,  and it seems they all say about the same thing.  And they couldn't be more different from each other.

I don't know how to organize thoughts.  I don't know how to have thoughts. --Jasper Johns

They are all simply people just like you and me though many of them are breath-takingly more insightful and more articulate than we could ever hope to be.  And some ain't.

  John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change.  If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing.  It's the only thing you can count on.  Because life doen't have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change. -- Robert Rauschenberg

see? black sort of

well...not this first one...its not black at all. The title is after all, black sort of...

this second one it is blackish kind of...kinda brownish with white...

Here we go...I mean this one is black in a way...and gray too...

Well now the reason these are here is because I made them and so here they are...I don't publish everything I make cause I make too much...that must be true for everybody I would think...ain't it?...well I don't really know exactly...I don't know many artists...the best ones I know around here don't make anything but they are still really good...at least I think so.

It always seems like they must make a bunch...like Josh Smith...of course now you can't see much of his work at all not anymore...he has a gallery now and that is usually the end of it...at least for most artists......take down the website please we will show them at the gallery...the best of them...and then slobs like me can't go and see the miracle of their creation...it is so sad.   Josh used to have a website that went on for miles and miles...endless pages of oceans of work...best website I ever saw...

You know I think it would be so fun to go to the Josh Smith museum...if there was one of course...and the Robert Rauschenberg and for god's sake the Motherwell  and the Rothko.   Why don't we have those?...and to be honest I want one too...small...kind of shabby looking...with boards all over the place and carboard...and egg cartons while we can still get them...and a book room in there...and a music room...for jamming...well aren't I an egotist, hey?

messy messy

really I gotta get caught up...I like this first one...I think it makes me happy for some reason...it seems interesting to me what with its contrasts and strong image...or so it appears when I see it.

Now what you see is different of that I am sure...your favorites...if indeed you may be said to have any...why they are all different...different shapes...composition...color...you know all that stuff.

And of course I'm not sure I think about that stuff....composition takes care of itself ...and colors, I don't know  I just want Indian Yellow...I'm out of it right now.

Yet it might be that certain colors demand certain treatment...like blue...now that is difficult for me...actually I don't like it with other colors...and I don't really like most of the blues...I like ocean blue that's pretty...though I never see it in the lake ever...that lake goes from brown to cement.

Now don't think I don't use blue...I do...just not right now.  I'll get to it soon.

And speaking of blue...what's happened to black?...well I have it in every one of these pieces above...of course that second one it's got smoke in it too...

Now this last one is my favorite...it just has one color...well sort of...if I were a real painter...you know dead that is...and always thinking about something, uhh serious...why I'd be happy to be Mark Rothko...though I suppose one can't do that anyway.  You can't say when I'm dead I'll be Mark Rothko...there's no room there....maybe I could just sit in the corner and watch...no that won't work either.

So that's the problem as you can see...I can only be me.  And even if none of these paintings has an iota of merit as they call it I think...they are all I got.  These images somehow keep calling me....coffee filters and all...