pieces ...

4/30/08
7:26 AM

though my mentors warn against it,

here’s hoping ...
that heaven has a corner serving coffee and double-bag green tea
where you can smoke some decent tobacco without disapproving looks
in the company of so many people whose views i’ve come to miss
since their departure joins the growing list ...

hoping that they save a large leather chair with arms
where i can comfortably slouch and spend more time listening
to the subtlety of formed thought and words
and bask in the beauty of their spirit
which i only allowed myself to glimpse
through preoccupation ...

that i might see through the paintings and surfaces
to the fires that formed them
and the flavors of passion ...

that heaven isn’t politics ...

small painting - a response ...

4/30/08
6:58 AM

i was concerned by last friday’s ny times article on ‘small paintings’ by respected arts writer, roberta smith - good writing, astute observations, and ‘b.s.’ will usually do that for me ...

the theme of the article/review didn’t really say much except draw attention to a trend of making small work as if it were heralding something new, and though i’m not really familiar with the artists’ cited, i can’t help think that it’s little more than coincidence, an inadvertent reaction to diminishing opportunities and creative discourse, or a desperate strategy to survive in a global culture preoccupied with banality ...

this isn’t an argument for ‘big is better’ because some some of my top ten favorites out of the thousands of paintings i love are small [van eyck’s ‘st. francis’, gorky’s inks, picasso’s ‘barbizons’, and jasper johns’ inks from the ‘70s], and some of the most exciting shows i’ve seen featured small work in the cubicle galleries of the east village, the barnes foundation, market street in venice-ca, and the malibu getty ...

no, this is really about the artists’ motive, the media’s sensationalizing or conciliatory response to a tragedy, and the despicable results of years of playing in the key of ‘w’ ...

keeping with that analogy, there’s a distinct difference between a symphony, a chamber orchestra, and a string quartet - the music is written differently with the expectation of eliciting different responses ... though they share similar musical characteristics, their intentions differ ...

is the artists’ proclivity to small work spawned by a legitimate pursuit of trying to reconcile the precepts of what contemporary painting has evolved into, or are the painterly ‘issues’ and philosophical debate so devoid of articulation that the ‘smallness’ is more representative of the level of discourse, or is it simply an ‘easier’ venue to market in a flat screen, limited resolution culture ...either way, the artist has a responsibility to art and a ‘league of giants’ that have preceded them - and ‘easy’ isn’t part of the by-laws ...

or could it be, given the turbulence of our political/social/economic restructuring over the past eight years, that repression/suppression of the individual is being reflected by retentive fetishes, or the cost of materials, studio space, commuting, and shipping have escalated to a level of unsustainability since the day gigs, galleries, and buyers are fewer and paying less, or is it a futures’ scheme to appeal to the wealthy’s secondary domicile or the economically stricken’s fixed income or downsizing, or is it the result of diminishing expectations from educational institutions that cared less about the quality of learning than the procreation of their own establishments, or is it the gallery/media/museum machine that fosters its’ own brand of nepotism for survival that have reduced the ‘idealism of art’ to amusement park attractions ...

don’t know, but it seems worthy of questions ... and answers ...

and that ‘smallness’ doesn’t only have to do with the size of art - lets look at what and how much is being written in the few publications that claim support for the arts - what used to take weeks to pour over in reviews and essays now takes only days - and that doesn’t reflect my capacity to understand anything any better - there’s just less substance, fewer writers of merit, and only a handful of credible publications ...

and i know we’ve been conditioned to live in a time where confrontation is best saved for fox news, hollywood hype, wrestlemania, and personal angst - where tolerance and acceptance of the unacceptable has evolved to the limits of political/social ‘correctness’, but being ‘wrong’ just isn’t alright anymore ... ‘small’ doesn’t resonate the depth of human suffering , global political injustice, entropic expansion, depletion of resources, and disregard for life and spirit - whispers in a crowd have little impact, and i guess that’s what drove me to respond to roberta’s article ...

it’s not so much that its being done - its the condoning, or even encouraging the issue in media that saddens me in light of all that could be said about art and its possibilities ...

coming soon ...

in the midst of all this chaos, change, and bloomin' stuff my allergies escalate to sinus and lung infections which curb my enthusiasm toward hovering over a new 8' x 8' painting outside ...
accept and adjust ...

so i had a bunch of compositions i recorded over the past few years that had to be mixed and mastered - that kind of work is more about patience, decisions, and good ears with minimal physical exertion ... perfect, otherwise it would have been another project shelved ...

more importantly, it was a fun learning experience - in terms of technical proficiency on the roland vs-1880 - and clarification of my own techniques or 'style' when it comes to layering and editing ...

i'm surprised by how much the music sounds the way the paintings look ...

'unmade movies' will be available online as soon as i clean up a few legals - i'll be posting a few on 'utube' as well ...

more on this later ...

abloom ...

someone once said: 'color is its' own reward ...'

starting over ...

4/18/08
7:18 AM
i love the predawn here near the delaware river where my morning meditation space and office window looks south and east across a small ravine to bougher hill and upper bucks county - where the slightly budding trees appear like broccoli florets against the early morning whispers of light ...
signs of life everywhere, and soon too much to recognize individually ...
there’s so much time to make up for and so much hay to make ...
soon [as overnight temperatures stabilize above 40], the new crop of large paintings will begin to grow ...
ideas have now reached flood levels and are beginning to keep me up at nights ...
here’s hoping you join me for the ride ...