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Archive for January, 2019

The Circle Comes Closer

Posted in Current Events, Quote, tagged , , , , on January 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »

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Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin?

– Joseph Addison, Cato, 1713

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As much as I want to, I am not going to comment on the ridiculous speech, if you want to use that word for this thing that aired on our nation’s airwaves last night. The speech and the “crisis” to which it referred were nothing more than a calculated distraction from the constant flow of emerging information that is providing more and more clarity in the investigation into the current squatter who resides in our White House.

Yesterday, a clerical error by the lawyers for Paul Manafort, the onetime campaign manager for this squatter, provided yet another puzzle piece, one that filled out the overall picture a bit more, letting us see that we may indeed be dealing with actions that are truly traitorous to this nation.

It is now well beyond anything we have dealt with at this level of our government at any point in our history. We are in uncharted territory.

Treacherous territory.

I wrote about the possibility of this type of treasonous behavior here a few weeks back in a post called Circle of Traitors. The painting at the top, which reflects the subject of that post, Dante and Virgil in the Ninth Level of Hell, is from Gustave Dore who is better known for his popular engravings.

I am not going to go on anymore this morning. I just want you to consider the actions of traitors and how they have been viewed through history. The line at the top from Joseph Addison has Cato, the noble defender of the Roman republic and its people, railing against the coming tyranny of Julius Caesar, whose actions ultimately led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.

The person who would willingly betray the interests of the people they have sworn to serve in order to fulfill their own egotistical desires does not fare well in the end.

Nor does the country or empire that allows such a creature rise to power.

Keep your eyes open, folks. The circle is coming closer.

 

 

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Sleepwalk

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , on January 8, 2019| 2 Comments »

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My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‘light’ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

–Charles Bukowski

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This is a painting, Sleepwalk, from back in 2002. It is part of what I call my Dark Work which was when I first began working on a black painted surface. The idea was to make the blackness part of the painting, to give the painting the darkness against which I could set the contrast of the light.

Like the poet Charles Bukowski says above, I felt that in order to be honest as an artist I had to incorporate my own darkness in my work. Utilizing the darkness kept the perceived optimism of the work from wandering into the territory of cockeyed Pollyanna-ism. It provided contrast in the form of a sense of reality, a basis for validating the optimism of the light and the color.

Light needs dark, plain and simple.

The Dark Work was very important for me and I continue to paint using the same process and techniques I developed in that time. This particular piece has lived with me for many years now and I love pulling it out to study it from time to time. There always seems to be something new to focus on. A brushstroke. A section of the texture. The transition of one color into another.

It provides lessons that memory has long forgotten as I continue my own sleepwalk through this life.

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Dinah/ Rockin’ Good Way

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , on January 6, 2019| 1 Comment »

Under the weather this morning but stumbled across this song that I featured here back in 2011. It’s been 7 or 8 years so I guess that’s not too repetitive. Plus, it’s just such a great song from an artist that deserves a lot more attention. Enjoy and have a good Sunday.

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This song is That’s a Rockin’ Good Way sung by Dinah Washington and Brook Benton which made it to #7 on the Pop charts and #1 on the R&B charts in 1959. I heard this song on the radio yesterday for the first time in a long time and it made me think about Washington’s career and legacy.

Known as both the Queen of the Jukeboxes and Queen of the Blues, Washington was one of the biggest recording stars of the 1950’s, singing jazz, blues and pop songs with her earthy delivery.  Her body of work is impressive yet she is seldom mentioned alongside the other jazz greats such as Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday. In fact, she is little known today which is a shame not only because so many are missing out on her vast talent but because her story is such a compelling story.

There are all the elements of great drama in her biography, her rise from a poor girl in Alabama to her great success as a major recording artist being only one aspect. There were all the men in her lives including 8 or 9 marriages, depending on which source you believe, and a number of other lovers. There was her battle with drugs and alcohol as well as a struggle with her weight which led to emotional swings that found her fighting with everyone around her, including her fans at times. There was the constant struggle with her record company for the respect she deserved. She had a big, big personality and finally seemed to be coming into her own as an artist when an accidental overdose brought her life to a close in 1963.

She was only 39.

So, here’s just a small sample of her talent. Hopefully, her legacy will continue to grow…

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Chagall/Work to Live

Posted in Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , on January 4, 2019| 1 Comment »

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Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.

–Marc Chagall

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Whenever I am feeling frazzled or creatively blocked, there is always comfort in turning to Marc Chagall. Both his work and his words work wonders for me. I can’t speak for other artists but making using money as an incentive to create never turns out well for me. The work must validate my existence, give me a reason for being. Otherwise, it is hollow and lifeless.

Art is life and life is art.

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Henry Moore/ Disicpline

Posted in Favorite Things, Motivation, tagged , , on January 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »

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Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing.

–Henry Moore

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First day of work in 2019 and I am looking to the great sculptor Henry Moore for some guidance. I understand his idea that discipline in art comes with the need to understand oneself, as though the image or object created reveals as much about the artist’s inner self as it does about whatever it supposedly represents. The discipline to continue bringing oneself to that act of self-revelation is certainly a fundamental struggle, one where the artist is constantly presented with diversions, most of their own making, to keep them from the task.

Today I return to that discipline.

Figures in Settings & Sculptural Ideas 1949 Henry Moore OM, CH 1898-1986 Presented by the artist 1976 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P02354

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Time Has Come Today –2019

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , on January 1, 2019| 4 Comments »

It’s 2019. Hard to believe we’re in the last year of the second decade of the 21st century. It definitely has lost its new millennium smell.

When you’re young, time feels like a boulder that you’re pushing up a hill. It seems like a long, slow slog to get to certain days or reach ages where the world supposedly opens up for you. Take for example, how long the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas used to feel when you were a kid. Everyday felt like a week. Or how long that year from 15 to 16, the age when you could get you driver’s license, seemed to drag on.

Time seemed to almost go backwards at certain points back then.

But there comes an age when that boulder reaches the apex and begins rolling down the other side of the hill. Not so slow anymore. In fact, it quickly picks up speed and, try as you might, there’s no way to slow this monster down now. That month between Thanksgiving and Christmas? It begins to feel like five or six days.

And a year? Seemingly gone in the blink of an eye, racing away down that hill and dragging you along for the ride.

That is certainly how the last two decades have felt for me– a boulder rushing down a hill. It hasn’t run over me yet so guess so long as I can avoid it and can’t see the bottom there shouldn’t be any complaints.

The concern should be not where it takes you but how that fleeting time is spent. Want to use my time well because think this coming year, 2019, is going to be a doozy in may ways.

Just not sure if those are good or bad doozies.

Walking over to the studio this morning in the dark, it was very windy and I heard the thunderous crash of tree tumbling over a ways up in the woods. I stopped and stared up into the blackness of the forest waiting for any more sounds. A slightly smaller crack and crash followed a moment later. Then nothing but the blackness and the sound of the wind’s fury through the still standing trees.

All I could think was that there was some symbolism in that falling tree and the arrival of the new year. There is little doubt that something big is going to happen, great changes are going to come in some way, good or bad.

It’s like that boulder of time is rolling through a forest.

Welcome to 2019, kids. Hope you’re ready for the ride because, like the old Chambers Brothers’ song said, time has come today. It could be pivotal, a defining year in many ways.

So make good use of your time. And look out for boulders.

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