green machine

One can rarely understand what they have done in painting nor why they have done it.  It is kind of interesting.  James Whistler said there has never been an age of art nor has there ever been a nation of art.  People just make it for themselves.

And I think for a few friends.  And that is it.  What can a picture mean to others?  How can they find their way into it?

I have no idea how or even if they can.  Someone asked Duke Ellington where his musical influences come from and he said, "from dreaming, I dream all the time".  And the interviewer said, but that's playing the piano and Ellington said "no that's dreaming".

And when I paint, I'm just dreaming'. That's all I do.  Just dream and dream.

instantaneous pictures

instantaneous pictures.  Now I don't know why, but they seem important to me. I just want to touch the paper and see them happen.  And once in a while they do.  But more often I've gotta go back and do a few little corrections to them.

And even then. Or maybe no matter what. But anyway, when I get done for the day, a bunch of hours will be crumpled up, thrown in the trash.  I never quite know how.  I'm not sure what happens.

Or why.  I don't know. It just does. Especially if I start writing in them.  It seems like its just a note.

Maybe it's just one thick one or something like that.  I must pause. Then freeze. Then there it comes.  Slowly drying while I watch.  Me and the paper.

Or maybe it's the layers.

Or picking out a piece of paper. Trying it.  

Or making a cup of coffee. Or both.

expression

Really, I think all of it is about individual expression, everything is, and that sort of expression doesn't happen with study nor with a certain talent, but simply with the need to express, whatever shape that is.

And the form it takes is just the shape of the human heart, the proclivity toward a certain view, the need to show certain things.  Jasper Johns said something like "things that can't be located or are so nicely located they can't survive…"

It doesn't really matter what the medium is. -it can be painting, or music, or writing -or it can be all three or any number of other arts -other forms of expression.  The need to express often shows up simultaneously in several areas.

I like watercolor and gouache and ink and found papers.  It all dries quickly, flows nicely, and it seems to blend nicely with each other.  But someone else will say something else.  It is inevitable.

And all these expressions can and are done differently to match each person.  Each one has a different personality to it, and they all seem organic to that person who puts them on paper.

haven't we seen these again already?

When you go back and retake all these pictures you get a bit dizzy, it's the computer, drives me a bit bonkers, I don't have any idea which of these I may already have posted, but oh well, here they are, once again, the fabulous paintings…!

broken color

Green is the color of the sparkling corn in the morning when we rise…-Donovan

They'll  sell you thousands of greens; veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like.  But that particular green never. -Pablo Picasso

Well green is one of my favorites, though I have a hard time saying what shade or hue I'm really in love with, except that it's green.  That I know.  I know it weaves around and is sometimes thick and often thin and transparent.  I think I see it outside but not usually on leaves.

But when its down and dried on a painting then I think I may have seen it in a leaf.  But I'm not sure exactly. These colors, especially green, can be confusing.

I have observed a number of works which actually lead one to assume certain people's eyes show them things differently than the way they really are…who perceive…or as they would doubtless say "experience"-the meadows as blue and the sky as green -the clouds as sulphurous yellow and so on.  I wish to prohibit such unfortunates, who clearly suffer from defective vision, from trying to foist the products of their faulty vision on their fellow men as though they were realities, or indeed from dishing them up as art.  -Adolf Hitler

The craving for color is a natural necessity just as water and fire.  Color is a raw material indispensable to life.  At every era of his moment and his history, each human being has associated color with his joys, his actions and his pleasures. - Fernand Leger

These colors sure do different things.  When I look back at these I almost always think, how did I do that?  Why didn't I do a hundred of those?

I feel like a goldfish swimming in a dirty tank.  When we were in Ann Arbor, I put a bunch of carp in our small pond out back.  But in some magical way they almost all, except two, disappeared.  The next day I looked outside and there by the pond stood a giant Blue Heron.  He looked a bit sad, a bit hungry.

You think you understand nature, but you never really do.  Once my little boy was walking in the woods out back when a rabbit shot by him.  He and his friend were laughing when suddenly they were knocked flat by a coyote coming after that rabbit.