see what I mean

I'm sure you can see what I mean.  An artist gets an idea, or maybe it would be more accurate to say an idea gets an artist, and it won't let go.  And go where?  One cannot go anywhere while you're trying to understand the idea.  You just get one finished and then you begin looking at it.  

It doesn't really have much complexity, or even many layers.  I think what it has is a certain rhythm, and it has a bit of movement, not a great deal of either though.  What might be its appealing factor, if we decide to credit it with any, may be that it seems to be reminiscing about some other time, some memory, not an active one.

Of course I did these yesterday and the day before that and each night I had the worst dreams.  Last night I simply relived an event from my youth.  It scared the hell out of me when it actually happened.  And again each time I happen to think of it.

You see, when I was a kid we had a long pool.  I also had a three year old brother.  Well I was standing in the house behind a glass door.  I was watching my brother trying to climb under the diving board.  He slipped and fell into the pool and sank immediately to the bottom.  Twelve feet.

I instantly opened the door, tore out to the pool and dived in the shallow end.  I just kept to the bottom.  And I got to him I think a few seconds later though it has always felt like when you are running in a dream and huge hunks of soil stick to your feet or you begin to sink into the ground until only your head is left.

I picked him up and pushed to the surface and this was the hardest part.  Getting to the surface using only one hand.   God I hated it.  But finally we got close to the surface and my dad took my hand and pulled us up.  I looked at my little brother.  He didn't look scared, he was breathing normally, he wasn't crying, everything looked weirdly alright.  Yet everything was so strange around me.  I could hardly breathe myself.  I felt shaken and frightened and I almost started crying.

Later I asked him what he was feeling down there.  And he said,  Well I knew your were coming.

I wasn't really feeling anything.  I just held my breath and waited.  Three years old.

Kingsley Amis

This is part  of my studio.  It is the kitchen counter.  I like it because it is contiguous with the water and I always need water for spraying them or mixing colors into that little white jar you see in the back there.  It used to be for cooking.  I forget what those are called. And I need water to clean tubes of paint and to wash my hands too.

I appreciate it when I can let myself make really simple things.  I'm not quite sure what they can do but they give me more time to look and less time to have to paint.  And looking is probably the key to painting most of the time anyway.

I especially like it when I just use a little acrylic and some ink.  They are easy to do.  Just take a minute.  Done.  And really, every single thing I do I could be happy just doing it over and over.  A thousand identical paintings.  I would like that.

I suppose somewhere in this vast land, somebody has a job like that.  He's been doing it for forty years so far.  He checks to make sure the label is one it and puts his initials there.  That is the job for me.  At the end of the day he crosses the street and gets a cup of coffee.  Sits and reads whatever has been left there by other people.  

I have a friend who left an interesting Angela Carter book at one of those places.  Wouldn't that be fun to sit and read at the end of the day while it is still light outside.  You've put your signature on all those jars of paint or strawberry jam or labels on baseball bats.  Now your are done.  You go across the street and whadda know here is a copy of Nine Profane Pieces.  Sweet.

I went to this little fish and chips shop in Ann Arbor once run by what I thought was a very beautiful girl.  I was looking at the books lined up in the window, all Kingsley Amis books.  I told her sincerely that she should move the books because they were all signed first editions.  She said -Yes I know, I was married to him.

I didn't say anything else.  I just thought, gosh why would someone let a beautiful and pleasant girl go?  I was very young, about ten years younger than my actual age I think.   But they were superb fish and chips.

The end of winter

Once the present system of exploitation crumbles, and it is crumbling hourly, the powers of imagination, heretofore stifled and fettered, will run riot. The face of the earth can be changed utterly overnight once we have the courage to concretize the dreams of our inventive geniuses. -Henry Miller

Never was there such a plentitude of inventors as in this age of destruction -and there is one thing to bear in mind about the man of genius -even the inventor -usually they are on the side of humanity, not the devil. It has been the crowning shame of this age to exploit the man of genius for sinister ends.  But such a procedure acts as a boomerang: ultimately the man of genius always has his revenge. -HM

The individual simply does his work turning over each painting looking for bugs underneath, trying to discover why this is the case.  But in the thousands of years he has created in this way, he has not yet found the answer:  but he now suspects it.

I'm not sure the meaning can be clear to the one who creates a piece, but only to others, to someone who at it and immediately says ah yes, this is the one.  And I don't think the piece itself has any power, the power is in the mind of the onlooker, the one who takes the time to look and to discover what must be obvious -when they see it.

Myself I cannot see the persistence of the artist type.  I see no reason for the man of genius in such an order.  I see no need for martyrs.  I see no need for vicarious atonement.  I see no need for the fierce preservation of beauty by a few. -HM

Beauty and truth do not need defenders, nor even expounders.  No one will ever have a lien on beauty and truth; they are creations in which all participate. -HM

And last and may be not least is this big fat one.  He got lost at the near bottom of the pile.  But last night I heard him calling out "I am here, I too am in this pile." - Well welcome come out show yourself join with your brothers.

Tzara again

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself.  A comprehensible work is the product of a journalist...we need works that are strong, straight precise...and forever beyond understanding. -Tristan Tzara

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.  _Andre Breton

And it's odd how much I steal, primarily from myself, in order to try a produce a painting.  I am happy though when I find an artist who reminds me of myself...for then I go, ah I am on to something.

I feel like he is looking for the same thing I am looking for...like a lost memory or maybe a comprehension of an old old memory, an understanding of what this could mean.  There is a road there.  It leads to something I must understand, must learn to understand, to appreciate.

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable. -Andre Breton

And now my little boy has become an unimaginably good guitar player and song writer...we are always busy now thinking up lyrics and polishing chord sequences.

as they were meant to be

Great paintings -people flock to see them, they draw crowds, they're reproduced on coffee mugs and mouse pads and anything you like.  And, I count myself in the following, you can have a lifetime of perfectly sincere museum going where you traipse around enjoying everything and then go out and have some lunch. -Donna Tartt

But if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think  "oh I love this painting because it's universal.  I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind."  That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art.  Its a secret whisper from an alleyway...an individual heart-shock Your dream. -Donna Tartt

And when you're the one painting them, you're involved in their calculus, you have to sort through the detritus and the wavering sense of color and sense and balance, you have to say this is done.  And you can never ask yourself is this any good, because of course not, none of them are any good what-so-ever.  They just are. As they were meant to be.

And when someone steals them, comes in your house and walks out with six hundred of them, and you watch the police secretly smile at one another and quietly roll their eyes, and they look for them "for a couple of weeks" but they have to get on to "real" crime, and the FBI let you know with their pronunciation and informative short lecture on "real crime" (wait I've heard this before) that they will have nothing to do with this, well you get dog-tired.

Sorry my posts have been somewhat lax, but i'm painting some in odd sizes, mostly much bigger, and I've been reading books, and once that starts you are in for it.  All these new paintings I think of as books, old books, though most of the books I'm reading are new...

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed.  And that's a hard lesson of reality. -Donna Tartt