Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for October, 2010

You Are Not Alone

Posted in Influences, Recent Paintings, Video, tagged , , , on October 11, 2010| 1 Comment »

Sometimes there is a coming together of influence and the end product in creating a painting.  Such is the case with this painting, a new piece that is an 18″ by 18″ canvas, that will be going to my next show, Toward Possibility, at the Kada Gallery in Erie, which opens November 6.

I watched a segment on The Colbert Report featuring a song, You Are Not Alone,  from Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy written for Mavis Staples, the legendary R & B/ gospel singer.  The two performed the song and I’ve had it in my head ever since.  During the next few days, as I was working on this canvas, the sound of that song and Mavis Staples’ voice constantly seemed to be pushing this piece along.  It affected how I viewed it as I was painting it and affected the determination of its endpoint, its completion.  It was pretty evident to me that this piece was destined to be called You Are Not Alone.

I like the ambiguity in the title.  It could represent not being alone in the obvious spiritual sense but in the human sense as well.  We all share commonalities in our travels through this life although it often feels as though we are going absolutely alone down our chosen paths.  It’s an important reminder that while our paths might be unique, the feelings that we experience are often the same as others on other journeys.  We react as humans.

This is a very simple painting but there is a lot going on within it, as far as color and texture, that give it the needed depth to carry the mood.  The feeling I carried from the song led me to keeping the composition sparse, with no distant landscape in the background and the Red Tree being the sole focus of the canvas.  I wanted that pure focus in this piece and everything in it pushes the eye to that central figure, creating an atmospheric feel that carries the weight of the painting.

Okay, I’ve said enough.  Here’s an acoustic version of the song with Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy.  Hope you’ll see what I heard…

Read Full Post »

Filling In Gaps

Posted in Early Paintings on October 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

I was reminded yesterday of a project that I’ve been putting off now for some time.  I was asked for  images of several paintings that I had sold in 1998 and 1999 and I realized that I didn’t have them, at least in any form that could be forwarded. 

 Before the time when I was digitizing my work, all the images were photographed on slides.  I was never crazy about the process.  I would set up and take the photos but would never know until the slides came back from processing if they were acceptable.  Sometimes they weren’t and the painting in question was already in the gallery, leaving me with only an image of it that was flawed in some way such as having a glare or being too dark in spots from a misplaced light. 

And when they did come back they were these tiny blocks of celluloid that you could only see by holding up to the light or dragging out a viewer.  The whole process was cumbersome and unsatisfying.  I was thrilled when I finally was introduced to the digital age as far as imaging was concerned.

Now for those several years I am left with a gap in my records of my work and a formidable stack of slide sheets, unorganized and sometimes unlabeled.  There are many pieces I would like to look at again, to revisit and rediscover.  To examine paintings that I haven’t seen in over a decade, to see how they worked in relation to what I do now.  I have been meaning to attack this as a project, scanning and putting the images in order but something always seems to distract me.

But it must be done and soon I must go ahead with it.  A winter project to fill in the gaps…

Read Full Post »

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Video, tagged on October 9, 2010| 1 Comment »

Watched the new documentary on HBO called The Promise.  It concerns itself with Bruce Springsteem and the making of his album Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1977-78.  It gives a real inside look at the creative process behind the album, highlighting the immense amount of work and effort that went into its creation.

I was intrigued by several things that were said in the film and was able to easily identify with the process that Springsteen employed in making his album.  They talked about wanting to create a cinematic feel and sweep with the music, one that evoke a visual image with the sound.  Sound pictures, they said.  I immediately understood what they meant in that I have always viewed my paintings in the reverse of this, as being visual music.  As though the message or feel he (and I) wants to get across is caught somewhere in between the two mediums.

They used the word feel often in describing how the songs came around, how Sprinsteen depended on an intuitive sense of rightness in finishing and assembling his songs.  Again, I immediately understood what they meant, even the terminology they used which surprised me because I often struggle with words to describe the process.  His obsessive-compulsive mania for his work also seemed somewhay familiar.

All in all, I found it pretty interesting and if you have an interest in the creative process or Bruce’s music, it’s well worth a watch.  There’s a lot more I could write but I’ll let the film speak for itself.

Here’s the title track from a show in Passaic, NJ right after the album came out:

Read Full Post »

Stats

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , on October 8, 2010| 8 Comments »

The Work of Hundertwasser

I’ve been doing this blog for just over two years now.  I write something every day although to be honest, there are a lot of days when content is less than I would hope.  But I try to do something everyday just to maintain the discipline.  The site recently went over a million hits and gave me cause for a little investigation of where some of those hits came from over the past two years.

By a wide margin, a post on the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser from August of 2009 has been the most popular post.  It still receives about 100 hits a day and over 21000 hits overall, a testimony to the great attraction of the late painter’s work.

Urwald Mit Tigern- Henri Rousseau

Several posts on other artists also continue to pull in substantial numbers of hits.  One on Henri Rousseau has consistently attracted a large number of views as has one on the wave paintings of Hokusai.  Another on the densely textured paintings of Ivan Albright is another consistent favorite among visitors.

One of the posts that also draws a large number of views on a consistent but sporadic basis is one that I did on the ridiculous uproar over Barack Obama’s birth certificate.  It will mosey along pulling in a few hits here and there for months then suddenly get 70 or 80 hits a day for a week or so, shadowing the activityof the birther movement at the moment.  This amazes me.  I still occasionally get comments  from some loonies who want to argue the point, almost 18 months after its initial appearance on the blog.  I moderate most of them out now, not wanting to continue this absurd argument and refusing to give it credence by engaging in heated debate.  I guess it’s just another example that shows how intensely these people refuse to believe that Obama is our president.

It’s always interesting to examine what triggers response in readers and viewers.  Whether it’s just a matter of curiosity or whether I will use the info in some way in the future is debatable.  I’m just glad folks continue to stop in.

Thanks.

Read Full Post »

What You Are…

Posted in Influences, Television, Video, tagged , , , , on October 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A few weeks ago, at the gallery talk at the Principle Gallery, I was trying to explain my process and how my work comes around to being what it is and why there is often a repetition of form and subject.  It’s a difficult thing to describe and has always evaded the limit of my words.  In doing so that day I used an example of an apt description that I had seen once on televison and had written of in this blog.

It was from a segment on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery series called Wallander: Sidetracked starring Kenneth Branagh as a Swedish police detective involved in solving a series of murders.  There is a point at the end where he is forced to shoot and kill the killer who is a disturbed and abused young man.  Wallander (Branagh) is deeply affected by this and goes to see his father, played by the great British character actor David Warner (I’ll always remember him best as Evil in the film Time Bandits from  Terry Gilliam) who is shown above.  He is a painter of landscapes and is struggling with the onset of Alzheimer’s.

While trying to find a way to comfort his distraught son, the father reminds him of the times when Wallander as a child would ask why he painted what he did, why they were always the same.  He gives an answer that struck me deeply when I first heard it because it was so near to the heart of what I do as a painter.

 I used this example that day and as I describing the scene to the folks there at the talk, I was wishing I could just show them the scene to better illustrate what I had meant.  Anyway, I was able to find the scene which is definitely enhanced by camerawork and background music. I hope it gets the point across as well as I think it does.

Read Full Post »

Play Ball

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on October 6, 2010| 7 Comments »

I woke up early this morning, even by my standards, and the first thing in my mind as I laid there in the dark was the thought that there was baseball today.  The first day of the baseball playoffs.  Baseball’s always been a link to childhood for me (and many, many others) but this morning there was the reawakened feelings of childish anticipation on Christmas morning at the prospect of watching baseball in the studio. 

My appreciation of baseball has regrown over the years back to the thrill it provided as a kid.  I had lost interest in it in the 1980’s as I was busy trying to make a living and find my own niche in the world.  But as I began to find who and what I was, I rediscovered the game.  Oh, there’s a lot to be cynical about in the game– ludicrous salaries that make greedy corporate types look like pikers, performance enhancing drugs and such.  Things that have driven away some longtime fans such as my father. 

 But, for me, I look past those  trappings and see only the game and its pace and geometry.  Nuance and history.  The way it raises emotion with a game both simple and complex.  A game where a player is not judged by sheer size or strength or pure physical ability but by skill level and intangibles such as grittiness, hustle and gamesmanship.  A game where losing and failing are built into the game and those who aren’t afraid to fail succeed.  A game that is celebrated with poetry and romance.

So, today is a day for baseball.  A day of childish wonder.  A day of joy here in Mudville.

***************************************

The image at the top is a little experiment from when I was first starting to paint.  I call it Casey at the Bat.  It’s hard to explain what I was going for and how close I came to reaching it with this little piece.  I know it doesn’t look like much but it is pretty much what I wanted from it.

In honor of the first day of the playoffs, here’s a 1908 Edison recording of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. 

Read Full Post »

Dreaming

Posted in Biographical, Personal Mythology, tagged on October 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Woke up late this morning, tired from a night filled with irritating dreams.  Not horrifying.  Not filled with tension.  Just irritating.  Many, many fast-paced scenarios of things that just bugged me but were of no consequence, like trying to rake leaves with a rake whose handle keeps coming loose.   I woke once after one such episode and was angry for having been disturbed from my sleep for such an irksome little nothing.

As a result, I find myself here this morning with little to say but still a little peeved about my dreams of last night.  I wish I had experienced better dreams, even scary ones, so my mind would be at least somewhat sparked.  I’ve had some great dreams over the years but I can’t share them.  Too personal and in some cases, too startling  and a bit disturbing.

The one dream that still lingers in my memory is one that occurred many years ago when I was a child, perhaps 8 or 9 years old.  It was an odd dream, very calm and quiet but filled with a tension I couldn’t identify.  It was a short scene that took place in a very narrow space, perhaps only 4 foot wide,  with a wall on the right hand side from the viewpoint I had in the dream and  windows with sheer curtains on the left that let in bright, almost white sunlight.  In this little space there was a small girl, bathed pale in the white light, who looked at me curiously but without fright.  At this point, my viewpoint in the dream shifted from the person looking at the girl to that of the girl looking at me.  From her viewpoint I saw myself as a Nazi soldier with that distinct helmet and winter coat.  There was a feeling that I, now the girl, had been discovered in my hiding place but that the soldier was not the threat.

It was an odd dream and one that has haunted me for several decades.  I wonder if I was indeed the girl or the soldier and what the circumstances were meant to signify.   I had the dream at a point when I didn’t have a tremendous store of knowledge about World War II or Nazis or the ways that Jewish families hid in the war so as time passed the dream evolved from one of pure scene and feeling to one filled with more symbology.  Yet, I still wonder about that Nazi soldier and see that light-filled space as clearly I did over forty years ago.

I doubt that I will remember any of last night’s pain-in-the -ass dreams forty minutes from now.

Dreams!

Read Full Post »

Pearl

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged on October 4, 2010| 2 Comments »

I see that Janis Joplin died forty years ago on this date, back in 1970.  Her final album, Pearl, was released several months after her death, in early 1971, and was a transcendent album for me when I first heard it as a 12-year old.

It was a great group of songs.  My favorites at the time were the great Kris Krisofferson song  Me and Bobby McGee and Mercedes Benz but soon Cry Baby and Get It While You Can joined them.  These songs were bluesy and raw but with a certain vulnerability that made the power of the music expand.  Just a great album, one that is a testament to its own time and has a continuing life even today, nearly forty years later.

I should be be highlighting a song from this album today but instead in honor of Janis’ death I will play a wonderful version of her take on the classic Summertime.  It’s from 1969, filmed in Stockholm, Sweden.  It just seems right, now that summer is now in the past and the first inklings of autumn are upon us.

Read Full Post »

Folly of Resentment

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , on October 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Well, Rick Sanchez has moved on from what seemed to be a pretty good gig at CNN hosting his own show for a couple of hours every afternoon.  The man who has made a name for himself being tasered, as is happening in the photo shown here, fell prey to the folly of resentment. 

When asked about The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart on a Sirius Radio program, Sanchez chose to let his own personal insecurities overtake him.  He chose to attack Stewart’s success as being a product of something other than talent and hard work, inferring that Stewart was merely there because he was buddy-buddy with all the people like him who run all media– the so-called liberal elite and the Jews.  Of course.

What a fool.  In a few short moments Sanchez showed why he is considered “second-tier”, as he described, among newspeople.  It has nothing to do with his own ethnicity.  It has to do with performance.

It probably galled him that Stewart, a comedian and self-proclaimed fake journalist, is ridng a wave of popularity and now wears the mantle of  “most trusted newsman in America” that once belonged to Cronkite and other serious journalists.  Okay.  I understand that.  But instead of letting this resentment make you envious and prejudicial in your own thoughts and words, turn it into the impetus for making yourself a better journalist and a better person. 

 Rick, if you must ask yourself why Stewart is more popular and respected than you and the only answer that comes to mind is that it is because of him being favored by the perceived Jewish overlords who run all media, you’ve still got some work to do.

This story saddens me.  I was never a big Rick Sanchez fan but to see someone let their own feelings of inadequacy ruin all they’ve worked for is a sad thing.  And this event will probably only reinforce the resentment he was already feeling.

Sad.

Read Full Post »

Prendergast

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, tagged on October 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

People are sometimes surprised by the names artists give as influences because they can’t see any obvious connection between the works of the two.  My citing of Maurice Prendergast as an influence and a favorite might be such an example. 

Painting at around the turn of the 20th century, Prendergast’s paintings in oil and watercolor were dense compositions usually filled with figures and motion.  There is a busy, swirling feeling to his work that seems the antithesis of the quiet I seek in my work.  Even his skies are usually churning and filled with multiple colors.  Yet for me there is a great harmony in the compositions that creates a sense of stillness for me. 

I’ve wanted to show his work for some time on this blog but I could never find images online that capture the brilliance and visceral impact of his work when seen in person.  The captured image doesn’t capture the depth or texture of his pieces, the luster of the surfaces.  And while they are still lovely and interesting, they don’t have that same oomph as when seen on  a wall before you.  The work of some artists suffer from this and I’ve often wondered how many artists have had their widespread popularity hindered by this factor. 

But, for me, how an artist is ranked by anyone doesn’t counter the sheer imapct of their work on my gut.  There is something in Prendergast’s work that is pure brilliance, something I would like to see in my own work.  But what that is in his work cannot emerge the same from my hand, my mind.  It can only come out in my own vocabulary of imagery, color and texture and whether anyone would ever see anything that suggests Prendergast to them is doubtful.  Even though it might be there.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »