emptied my wallet

I was afraid that my seemingly irrelevant comments might be distracting.  No in fact I was hoping they would be distracting so that no one would recognize the oddly pessimistic work I presented.  

And it worked to some degree.  I mean who has time to argue on those kinds of stupid terms?  Well, not one of us.  But people are weird to me.   Yet, not the people on this blog.  Oddly enough.

Well, I have a couple of complaints to make myself.  Like, what is going on with the focus?  Come on.  You can do better than this, can you not?  I can't even read this.  And brighten up the photos.  Come on, this is the modern age.  You can do it can't you?  Or is this your glasses playing tricks on you?

Or maybe it is this rainy spring with the cloudy days messing with you eh?  But wow, what is being produced outside is wondrous.  Clematis blooming everywhere,  peonies shining out,  flowers and leaves and grasses.  Beautiful.

You'd think I'd be doing pictures inspired by these beautiful things but sometimes I work in contrary directions.  I emptied my wallet today.  I bought bathing suits for my boys.  And here we are.

contra naturum

There are some you do that look like nature, or some version of nature anyway and I love those.

I don't ever know where they come from, because honestly, whatever I do, it is not "I" who does them but some other who channels through me.  She tells me what to do and I do it I guess.

This is not uncommon but probably what happens to everyone who paints often.  That is of course the one requirement she has; to keep working to produce these pieces without wonder, without even joy, but in some concentration, like a child working on his piece, who when he gets done, comes out of it and tosses his drawing aside, or maybe shows it to his parents, who concentrate their brows and try to understand it, or often, make an undue bru hah hah and get all "happy" at the child's work.

But since I am neither the chid nor the adult, I simply go "look what he made" and move on, knowing that I cannot accept any credit nor blame for what has happened.  Just like you I may search it and name it, "huh, looks like a broken leaf" but I usually stay away from any of that sort of thing, primarily cause I don't know what anything is, what anything means, where anything goes to nor from whence it came.

Like anyone I could use them to show off my learning (which is a joke since I know really nothin bout nothin) and I could say, ostentatiously, "well from the brief two minutes he went into a kind a Jules Olitski moment..."  blah blah blah, but that is only an academic wiping his waste on a wall to clear it from their head.  And I am, admittedly, far away from any academia.

Instead, I will bow my head, and go make some more.  It is my instructions, the command of the other.  There is no good, there is no bad.

cryptoscopophilia

When you are in a neighborhood like mine it is fun to walk the mile down to town and while you do that -if its in the evening -you can check out everyone's houses through the windows, all lit up, and there are some very pretty arraignments of lamps and pictures and lighting and colors, its nice to see.

And it just doesn't happen very often, mainly because we usually only walk in the mornings before any of the fronts are lit.  Oh well, it's pretty then then too, especially this spring as it has kept cool and the flowers are blooming for a long time, beautiful happy peonies and viburnums, new healthy young hostas popping up here and there, and sweet tulips waving good morning in the gentle breeze.

Odd, this really doesn't seem to complement these paintings.   Or maybe it does, since these guys seem to want to jump in my face, and so a peaceful kind of writing may mitigate some of the wildness of these things.

It has actually been sort of hectic with school ending celebrations, obligations of varied types, yet its almost over and then it will be peaceful summer with the hot days and glowing water of the lake nearby.

Hmm, I seem to have accidentally turned on the watermark.  Oh well I'll figure that out later.

erotic and abstract part 2

I'd like to really, really talk about a painting's, or art object's, qualities.  This is an undeveloped muscle in the critical apparatus.  I think we should be looking at objects formally, while understanding that, of course, content is part of form and form is part of content, and see how objects are working with content and abstraction now and what they really are doing.  I wish there was less embarrassment, less tension around a kind of formal and poetic response, where you describe something in terms of feeling or association, or you look at how something plays, rather than how it signifies, or how it deals with the literary, marketplace or distribution systems that lie around it.  Some critical language around art may fall short, and need to be refreshed, or be dropped.  -Amy Sillman

Well I'll drop it. To be sure.  Done.

Gotta say everybody here is happy to have that burden lifted, as happy as a cat with a ball.

The opposite of abstraction -or to say it another way, its complementary color -is realism.  And realistic paintings are not that good.  I respect them, but from my point of view, they're pictures.  You look at a picture and you recognize what's in it, and more than 50 percent of the joy is over -you're pretty much going downhill from there. -Josh Smith

  

                                                   

the erotic and the abstract part 1

I'm doing a show with a friend of mine.  I didn't pick the title.  She did.  She is much younger than I am.  She grew up in Northern California and was educated there.  And she is smart anyhow.

But just to ensure you know I am honest with you I will admit I don't know what either of those words mean.  I'll have to look them up and stuff and maybe write something more or less academic.

I'll definitely put in Kandinsky and Picasso.  Hmm, and maybe Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock.

That oughta cover it.  No no no.  Put in Amy Sillman and Helen Frankenthaler too.  That oughta do it.

I've always distrusted that word, abstract.  I think what it means is something like, not done in a recognizable pictorial or photographic style, or maybe, consisting of elemental strong line, that cross a bunch of times or something like that.  Or maybe not huh?

And erotic? Jessus help me. I don't know.  I remember Cendrars talking about the erotic.  He was saying it is fundamental to fashion or something, man I gotta find that again.  But he said that fashion is always about death, that that is why we have all the skinny girls in those outrageous costumes and makeup, -to celebrate death, to imitate it's costumes, etc.  At least I think so.  Something like that anyway.

And -of course -I have to put those two words together.  Either compare and contrast, or join them like the erotic and abstract in Art....well I don't even get that.  Is that like Klimt:  make a beautiful painting, now cut a hole in it a insert a beautiful woman?

I've got an idea.  I'll get Cassy who is beautiful and smart, and a graduate student in art to write it for me.  No, wait a minute.  The smartest and most educated person in art that I know of is Laura...there you go, now I know who to call, my own personal ghostbuster.  I'm practically ready.

There are many accidents that are nothing but accidents -and forget it.  But there are some that that were brought about only because you are the person you are...you have the wherewithal, energy, and intelligence to recognize it and do something with it. -Helen Frankenthaler