"Venus" in progress ...
my life as an artist over the past thirty plus years has been far from ordinary - as are the lives of most people if you really look at them - but aspects of daily activity do become routine, and in their repetition - mundane ...
i mentioned yesterday about not posting images of work due to a lack of significant changes. My friend Rick suggested that with the number of things going on, a snapshot wouldn't be a bad idea. My immediate response was dismissive; still trying to maintain my original position - until passing by my bookshelf and catching "Cy Twombly: Photographs" - which obviously wanted attention. It's a wonderful, slightly over-sized collection - in contrast to the intimacy and nonchalance of the images - an assembly of images that's easy to peruse - and it takes me one step closer to understanding his paintings through a visual journal of seemingly unrelated juxtapositions - often, it's the ordinary that becomes extraordinary via the artists' perspective - and even if it doesn't attain that loftiness - it's a moment in time through the artist's eyes ...
But any snapshot is that - a moment in time, framed by its taker ... and i often miss those moments here in blog-land ... every morning, I read a few of my favorite posts before traversing the news of the day, and for such a casual format, the posts often come off more formal than probably intended [or maybe too over-dressed for downtown cyber space] ...
point being, Ukiyo-e; or pictures of the fleeting and transient world - a japanese word/concept i often use to describe my own work - opens another door ...
For instance - has anybody ever seen Lally's bookshelf or kitchen table stacked with magazines and newspapers - Rick's latest keyboard configurations and notes - Cartwright's new favorite guitar and tech manuals - or Elisabeth's Australia - or Jamie's LA day - or Joel's walks through the woods - i have, but like i said at the beginning - my life is far from ordinary ... i often think how enjoyable it would be to see through their eyes once in a while ...
then i read an essay in TruthOut alluding to the big business of 'terrorist threats' and realized that i'm slipping into a cultural malaise as well - that if something isn't framed by 'significant' or 'crisis', it doesn't get ranked highly on my pertinence list - even with the simple act of documenting the subtleties of a changing painting - i begin to overlook what has become routine in my experience - forgetting that it isn't ...
