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Archive for the ‘Biographical’ Category

Distant Memory

Posted in Biographical, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on May 24, 2012| 3 Comments »

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

—Aldous Huxley
 
 
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I like this quote from Huxley.  I have often felt that all of our personal lives fit into some sort of mythic template on which all literature is based and that we often fail to see the connections between the tales of our own lives and those stories which have come down through history in the form of myth and legend.  We all live lifes that are often filled with tragedy , comedy and drama.  Heroic, even.  But we seldom perceive them as such, instead thinking of our personal memories as being merely mundane. 
 
And that’s probably as it should be.  Life is spent, for the most part, moving forward in small, day-to-day steps with little time left to see the larger pattern of our lives.  Who has the time to reflect backwards, to see how our lives fit into the templates of eternity?  Very few of us, to be sure.  But what if we could take that time to look back fully and see the patterns set in history and to see that our lives own patterns mesh into that pattern, that we are all indeed connected to and part of the same fabric?
 
Would it make a bit of difference?  Would it make us appreciate the fragility and rareness of  each individual’s place in this world. make us understand that our own history is the history of all and that our memory binds us to the fabric of history?
 
I don’t know.  But it’s something to think about.
 
Funny how the mind works.  I meant to write about the painting above, a new piece  called Distant Memory (  10″ by 16″ on paper) set for my Principle Gallery show early next month and suddenly find myself off on a theoretical journey.  Maybe its the way the foreground of the painting, with the converging rows of the field,  relates to the house and tree across the water in the upper half of the painting.  I get a sense of looking back from the present, taking a pause from the labor of the moment,  which is represented in the rows,  to a personal past set around that house that reminds me very much of the farmhouses of my youth, often taking me back to different points of my own life, my own connections to templates of time.  Even the overall color of this piece sets that tone of memory for me.  There is  something in that green that reminds me of the ferns that my mother dug up many years ago from the hillside above the Chemung River and planted in the shade of the old farmhouse that we lived in for much of my childhood.  That green often brings back that memory, one filled with an air of  coolness and the smell of damp, rich soil.  A good memory.
 
Okay. Enough for now.  Work and the present calls.  I have my own fields to tend to now.
 
 

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He Appears To Be An Artist/ Redux

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Opinion, tagged , , , on May 17, 2012| 2 Comments »

I’ve been running a few of my favorite posts from the past recently as I’ve been very busy in the studio.  This one from back in December of 2008 speaks a bit about our perceptions of an artist and how these views might affect the way we see their work. 

In the comments from the original post, someone made the point that the work should stand on its own regardless of the mannerisms or perception of the artist.  Of course, I agree completely with that in theory.  But I point out that sometimes the artist can affect, both positively and negatively, how their work is viewed with their words and actions.  I cite a story I’ve told innumerable times of going to a local college to hear a famous author speak.  I was seventeen years old and aspiring to be a writer at the time, armed with a legal pad filled with questions that I hoped to ask this author so that his words of wisdom might guide me along.  At the reception afterwards when I finally got a chance to speak with him, he was half in the bag drunk and a prick as well.  He rudely  dismissed me and moved on without taking a second to consider my question to him.  I was crushed and left knowing that i would never read another word that fool would write, which I haven’t to this day.  I also vowed to myself that if I was in that position I would never treat anyone dismissively.  Hopefully, I have kept that promise.

 This was written in the first few months of writing this blog so some things have obviously changed.  I was still up in the air about writing this blog, something which I have obviously reconciled with myself.  But I am still the same middle-aged guy with a thick waist and a sloppy gray beard.

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At the opening for my show at the Haen Gallery in Asheville, a young woman approached me, telling me first that she had a piece of mine and she loved the work. We talked for a bit then she came out with the inevitable.

“You’re not what I had expected. I thought you might be wearing a beret or a cape or something like that.”

I get that a lot.

People expect something much different than I appear to be. More flamboyant, I guess. Maybe more boorish. Maybe like this guy, Salvador Dali, who exemplified that stereotype of the crazy artist. But they’re faced with me- a thick-waisted, middle-aged guy with a sloppy gray beard. I used to kid with the folks at the Principle Gallery that I would show up at a show one day in a Dali-like manner, swooping in to hold court in my flowing black cape, waving my arms about in dramatic flourishes. Maybe wearing a monocle? I sometimes wonder if people would look at my work differently if I donned a cape and had a long waxed mustache. Would they find different attributes in the paintings? Would they find a different meaning in each piece?

I don’t know. I hope not. But I do know there is an illusion behind each person’s impression of a piece of art, that it is a delicate web that supports how they value a piece and that can be affected by my words or actions or even appearance. That is one of the reasons I’m a little reticent to do this blog. I could write something off the cuff, something that I might soon realize was a product of flawed logic, and quickly destroy someone’s whole interpretation of my work.

Perhaps that is not giving the work enough credit for its own strength and life. Perhaps this is the flawed logic I mentioned. Whatever the case, it’s something I bear in mind. But for the time being, I will keep the cape in storage and stick with the credo of my childhood hero, Popeye: “I yam what I yam.”

And that’s all that I am…

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Abstracted

Posted in Biographical, Painting, tagged on April 27, 2012| 7 Comments »

Yesterday was one of those odd days in the studio.  I have been extremely busy at work recently and, as a result, have found a nice deep groove, one of those creative rhythms where each new effort inspires the next and new ideas are shooting out all over the place.  Everything comes easily and is done without questioning, all with the confidence that the instinct driving this surge will carry me in the right direction.   It’s a great feeling and I find it hard to pull myself away when this happens, fearful that a break of any sort will disrupt this vibrant but sometimes fragile rhythm.

But sometimes the rhythm just goes a bit haywire for awhile.  Like a seemingly healthy heart that suddenly goes into fibrillation without warning.  That was how it felt yesterday .

I can’t explain why or when or  even what caused this episode.  It was as though everything suddenly became  abstract and I could find no semblance of direction or purpose in what I was doing.  The whole concept of pushing paint around sheets of heavy paper and canvas seemed absolutely ridiculous.  The work in front of me made no sense and when I turned away from it, hoping that I could simply pick up in something new, there was nothing.  I suddenly felt totally empty and the confidence that had been so ample in recent days was gone in a flash, replaced by old fears. 

It’s quite disconcerting  and even a little panic creeps in at first.  But this isn’t my first rodeo.  I’ve been here before and know that it’s a matter of just pushing through this temporary fog and that it will soon subside. Sometimes it goes quickly and sometimes it lingers for days and weeks but eventually the fears will fade into the background and purpose returns. 

Luckily for me, yesterday was just a short episode and within a few hours I had regained equilibrium.  My world seemed less abstract and I once again believed in what I was doing and felt a vitality in my efforts.  The rhythm was regained. 

It made me realize how fortunate I was to only have to face what amount to relatively  minor demons when several friends are going through much more true hardships in their lives.  I hope they can endure through these periods of darkness and abstraction and soon find their own rhythm again.   It’s out there waiting for them if they can just struggle through.

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The Coney Island Coaster of David Levine

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , on January 23, 2012| 2 Comments »

I’ve written here before about the work of David Levine, the late artist best known for his wonderful caricatures of public figures and politicos that graced many magazines for several decades, writing once about a caricature of composer Richard Wagner and another time about a painting of a pig’s head .   Despite his fame as a pen-and-ink caricaturist,  Levine was also a fabulous painter, executing  many works beautifully in oil and watercolor.  Though not as famous as his caricature work, his work is very seriously collected and respected.  A series of pieces he painted depicting the landscapes and people of Coney Island is among his best work and one of my favorites.

I particularly love his images of the Thunderbolt roller coaster of Coney Island.  There’s a monumental quality in the way Levine depicts the coaster, it’s skeletal framework towering above the boardwalk like the remnants of a long gone and enormous dinosaur.  In fact, he shows the coaster in varying states of decay before its demolition in 2000.  I still remember vividly riding the fabled Cyclone at Coney Island with my Dad and feeling that same sense of awe that I feel in these pieces.  I think that Levine understood that child’s sense of awe and I think that might be why he turned to Coney Island again and again as a subject.  There is a real sense of  affection in this work which I think enhances its power, inspiring the same in the viewer. 

You can see more of Levine’s  paintings, including the Coney Island series,  at a site that  represents his work, D. Levine Ink.  Though there only a small handful of his original paintings available on the market, they still make his work available through limited-edition prints.  Just plain good stuff.

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Bookshelf Porn

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, tagged on January 17, 2012| 6 Comments »

Some might think a website called Bookshelf Porn is something other than what it really is.  But if you’re like me, you probably understood at once what the name implied.   It’s the thrill of a bookcase filled with multi-colored tomes, their spines tantalizing and promising unknown pleasures if you would only take them from the shelf.   The desire to reach out and run one’s fingers over the leatherbound cover of an old book.  To smell the dustiness of the  pages as the book opens.

It may not be sexual but it certainly is sensual.

From my earliest age I have been drawn to bookshelves, from the beautiful reading rooms of our old local library to bookstores of all shapes and sizes.  It was like a portal to an outer world or an altar of worship to knowledge. The silence of the places only punctuated this feeling of sacredness. 

When I was working at jobs where I was often in people’s homes, I would always first look to see if they displayed their books or even had books at all.  I was always disappointed at the number of places that had no evidence of books.   If there were bookshelves, they had videotapes and knick-knacks.   Perhaps they kept their books in a bedroom or in the basement.  Or maybe they just didn;t have books.  I don’t know. 

But when I would come into a home and there were filled shelves, I would be almost giddy.  I would scan the spines hungrily, taking in the titles, ascertaining in a moment what I thought might be the primary interest of the owners.  Sometimes they were filled with professional journals or textbooks from their college days.  Sometimes romance novels or the popular bestsellers of the day. 

But once in a while, they were jammed with an eclectic mix of literature and art books, poetry and philosophy.  They were book and knowledge  lovers. Those were always the most exciting visits and I usually had the best rapport with the owners of these shelves.  We could usually find something interesting to talk about while I did what I had to do and we often spoke in terms we both understood, the bookshelf providing a sort of common ground. 

So, if you’re drawn to the bookshelf as I am, if you are excited by the thought of libraries or bookstores,  take a moment and check out the Bookshelf Porn site.

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Early Piece, Early Voice

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Influences, Technique/History, tagged on January 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I think I’ve mentioned here that there is some of my early work where my documentation is a bit sketchy.  There is a handful of pieces of which I have no images, which bothers me a bit now.  The rest of the work from that time is from iffy slides, photos and simple photocopies where the work was small enough to fit on a copier bed.  I was trying to organize some of these old images recently and came across one of those photocopies.

It was the piece shown here. This was a 7″ by 9″ image on paper.   I’m still trying to locate it’s title which is a bit embarassing for me, mainly because this painting rekindles so many memories when I see it.  I remember distinctly how this piece came about.  I had been looking at a framing magazine ( this was a time when I was still uncertain of how I would present my work and hadn’t settled on my own framing which I’ve used for about 14 years now) and came across an ad featuring a painting that caught my eye.

I don’t remember who painted that particular painting but it didn’t really matter.  The painting itself did nothing for me.  I wasn’t crazy about the color or tone of the image.  I wasn’t interested in its texture of atmosphere or all of the detail that painter had used in the fields and trees.  But the composition screamed out at me and in my mind I was immediately transforming the composition into my own work, with my own simple forms and lines.  We’re talking a matter of seconds here.

It was like the composition was merely a sculptural armature, a framework underneath, that served as a foundation but could be transformed on its surface.  While I used the armature of that painting in the magazine, it would be hard to see the similarities between my piece and that original image.  That tranformation and how quickly it happened in my mind always remains in my memory, permanently attached to this painting.  I felt like I was really finding my own voice in that moment, where I could synthesize influences in a very distinct  individual manner. 

I wish I could see this piece again in person, to see if it holds that same feeling for me.  To see how the person who owns it now sees it and to let them know how strongly it remains in my own memory.

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Prophet Royal Robertson

Posted in Biographical, Neat Stuff, tagged on November 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve written here about a number of self-taught artists who create their work from some hidden inner core that demands expression.  Some have suffered through forms of mental illness en route to their creations but perhaps none show the depth of their illness so readily as Royal Robertson, shown here in front of his home before his death in 1997.

 

Robertson was born in 1936 in Louisiana and trained as a sign painter.  He married his wife Adell in 1955 and they produced 11 children in 19 years of  marriage  until Adell left Royal for another man , taking the 11 children with them.  Already in the midst of his paranoid schizophrenia, this departure sent him reeling into an angry pit of despair fueling a misogynistic rage that saw him create numerous pieces featuring Adell in various forms, mostly as a whore and sometimes in a very explicit manner.

Adell- Prophet Royal Robertson

There’s a lot more than can be written about Robertson’s life and illness– the visions and alien visitations he claimed, for example– but I want to just talk about his work a bit.  It’s a bit different from most self-taught or outsider artists that I have looked at in that it doesn’t settle into a recognizable self-vocabulary for him.  His work seems to dart all over the place in different styles and looks , never really finding that singular voice, probably a result of the unsettled nature of his mind.  It sometimes looks like comic books, sometimes like pastoral scenes that just happen to have alien crafts hovering through and sometimes just crude drawings of a naked Adell.  And sometimes it will coalesce into a piece that is quite graceful.  It’s difficult work of which  to get a grasp, to say that it easily attracts or repels me. 

One thing that did attract me was his practice of filling the backs of his work with the words of his prophecy.  It reminded me very much of a piece of paper that I have around here somewhere.  It was done by a man who used to come into the restaurant where I worked when I first began painting.  His name was Sam and he would come in and sit at a table for hours, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.  He was always disheveled and muttering, obviously possessing a disturbed mind.  He was eventually barred from the restaurant for yelling at the other patrons.

Royal Robertson- reverse side of drawing

But while he was there he often  would have a sheet of paper on which he would make lists in a beautifully graceful manner.  One day he left one and I made sure to grab it before it hit the trash.  It was a  wonderful piece of work.  It had lists of government officials, Hollywood starlets, PGA golfers and characaters from the Godfather movies.  He often called a young server, whose name was Mary, Tina Brazzi, saying that she was the daughter of Luca Brazzi, the character in the film who eventually slept with the fishes.  Mary was a little uneasy about being recognized as Tina.  But the sheet itself was beautiful, with lovely calligraphy and an order that belied Sam’s own mind.  It’s a piece that always brings me both joy and sadness when I see it, a reminder of how fine that line often is between beauty and madness, something to which the work of Royal Robertson also attests.

 

 

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In the Blood

Posted in Biographical, Recent Paintings, tagged , on November 21, 2011| 4 Comments »

This is  a very small painting, just a  3″ by 5″ canvas, that I call In the Blood.   The title may in some way relate to the subject of yesterday’s post where I discussed why someone stays in their hometown even though its flaws and inadequacies become more and more evident, more glaring in the light of other seemingly better places. 

I wrote about having an attachment to this area through my family’s history, even though it is still relatively new to me.  By that I mean that it was never a part of my early life, never really known in any detail by my father’s generation and was only uncovered through the access afforded by the availability of  the many records and data online.  There I discovered the history of my family here that had always eluded me and left me feeling as though I was unconnected to any place.  I discovered relatives and names that were new to me, most interwoven with the history of this region of the country.

This past week, I went to our local historical society, the Chemung Valley History Museum, looking for a piece of furniture that a friend of my sister had seen there , made around 1860 by a man with our family name.  Our family is not one for artifacts handed down through generations.  I envy people who can hold something tangible in their hands that was part of their ancestor’s lives, can literally feel that connection to their past.  I can’t think of any such thing that exists in our family so the idea of an object made by an ancestor intrigued me.

Going into the recent exhibit of items made in this county, the first piece that caught my eye was a chest of drawers with nice dimensions and a lovely reddish golden tone in its finish.  I looked at the placard on it and sure enough, it was made by a man named George Myers.  This was the connecting artifact I sought. He was my great- grand uncle a man who came with his brother ( my great-gr-grandfather) and his parents from Eastern Pennsylvania in the 1830’s and settled here.  He was a furniture finisher who worked at a local furniture company, Hubbell’s,  for nearly 50 years.  His first son had fought in the Civil War, an event that was  recalled in the 1940’s in an obituary of a younger son who told of remembering his older brother marching down Water Street in his Union Army uniform, heading out of town in a parade to the battles in the South.

I was pleased to see this artifact, pleased to see it in a place where it would be cared for and kept.  I was also pleased that it was a nice piece of work.  It reminded me of the things I want in my own work.  It was solid in construction, simple in design yet graceful. 

I sought out someone who might be able to tell me more and found the archivist, Rachel Dworkin.  She didn’t have a lot of history on the chest but informed me that it was signed.  She delicately took out the top drawer and on the back side there was a bold signature and date, 1861,  in pencil, looking as fresh as though it had been written that very morning.

  But the thing that excited me was that after the signature he had drawn a face, a simple drawing of the side of what looked to be a young woman’s face.  The lines, like the chest, were simple but confident and strong,  drawn very much in the way I would draw a face, even now, and this thrilled me.  I laughed out loud and tried to explain to Ms. Dworkin but I don’t think I could really fully explain what that little drawing meant to me, how it gave me a deeper connection to this place and person and made me feel as though he had that same need for expression that I feel.

Maybe it was in the blood, after all.

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Hitching with Kerouac

Posted in Biographical, Influences, Quote, tagged on November 2, 2011| 10 Comments »

“I’d go out to my snowfield and dig out my jar of purple Jello and look at the white moon through it. I could feel the world rolling toward the moon.”

-Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

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This line from the Jack Kerouac novel was sent to me yesterday by my friend Miescha who had thought of my paintings when she had come across it.  I really liked the association she found in those words and my work and especially the connection she found with it in Kerouac.  When I read the line I was immediately transported back in time to a trip I made with my brother when I was fourteen years old to the Adirondacks to hike around Mt. Marcy.  Kerouac’s On the Road was in my backpack.

It was in the midst of a very hot summer and we hitchhiked, first from the horse track in Canandaigua to Syracuse then from there up through the mountains.  It was a different time, obviously, to see a fourteen year old to be hitching with his older brother and not think it completely out of the ordinary. Probably not something many parents would even consider letting their kids today but for me it fostered a real sense of independence.

 I remember distinctly so much of that trip, especially the people who gave us rides.  The older guy who was commuting northward, drinking canned beer which he shared with my brother.  I politely turned him down when he offered me one.  Whenever we passed a female of any sort he would stick his arm out the window and pound the side of this car as he let out a wolf-like howl.  Then there were a couple of young gypsy housepainters from Lubbock, Texas who played an eight-track of the Doobie Brothers and offered us beer and pot, both of which I again declined.  After they let us out, my brother told me to take the beer and pot and simply hold it for him for later.

Then there was a couple of Italian tourists with their  son who was only a couple of years younger than me.  They didn’t offer any beer or drugs which was fine with me.  I remember the awe of the father as we climbed through a pass in the mountains where the highway had been carved through the stone, leaving shere walls of stone on either side of the wide road.  He spoke in Italian to his son as he pointed at the  stone in admiration.  I had the feeling he was some sort of engineer.

I also remember a long day coming out of the mountains and being at the Thruway entrance near Albany, trying to get a ride through to Syracuse on a Sunday evening, a tough get for a young man and a boy together.  We sat there for about six hours and I finally fell asleep in exhaustion, laying on the road shoulder against the guardrail until a kind soul gave us a ride all the way home, smoking pot with my brother as I slumbered in the back seat.  We walked the last few blocks in the early morning heat through  the streets and I remember a feeling of great contentedness.

The trip and the Kerouac novel’s depiction of the frantic pace of that early Beat generation made the idea of the open road seem irresistible in the mind of a young teenager, a feeling that haunted me for years until it finally faded into the past as my aspirations of being Dean Moriarty turned to the quieter. stabler reality of my current life.  I was never cut out to be that nomadic figure.  I know that now.  But the inspiration it provided those many years ago has remained with me and I still carry that memory of that feeling of being young and alive and on the road.

Funny how a few simple lines can bring back so much memory.  Thanks, Miescha.

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Hidden Pasts

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Personal Mythology, tagged on October 24, 2011| 4 Comments »

I’ve written here before about the joys of digging through one’s genealogy and finding little bits about your family that have been hidden for generations.  Before I started, I knew next to nothing about my family’s history.  There had been practically nothing handed down and there seemed to be little interest in its past.  For all I knew, we had crawled from under a rock about a hundred years ago and were suddenly just here.  There were times when that seemed like a logical explanation.

But over time, I have uncovered a great depth of material, the sort of things that all families certainly have in their own pasts, that have been really gratifying and have made me feel much more connected to this world and this country than I felt at times before.  I’ve found descendents who fought on both sides of the Revolutionary War, the British Loyalist side being pushed up into Canada before coming back here generations later.  I’ve had many who fought in the Civil War, including a gr-gr-great grandfather who emigrated here from Scotland and fought for the Union  and was a captive at Andersonville.  Another was a nearly 60 year old Canadian who had settled in the northern Adirondacks and enlisted and served with his son, my great-grand uncle.

All folks of which I was unaware of growing up.  The ease of researching today makes this connection to one’s past so much simpler that I, like so many others, can easily fill in the black voids of our own history.

One of my favorites was another gr-gr-great grandfather, someone of who I knew absolutely nothing.  His name was Joseph Harris and when he died, the local newspaper, the Wellsboro Agitator ( I love the name of that paper!), ran a headline for his obit that stated  Well Known Musician Dies.  It went on to say that he had been the US banjo champion at one point in his life.  I have to say that I was pleased by this, even though I had never even heard of this man before my research and his musical talent didn’t trickle down through the generations to me. 

Again, my stories are not exceptional.  We all have this rich fabric in our past that binds us to history and ultimately together if we only choose to look beyond what we see in the present.  Perhaps we can discover more about who we are as a people by examining our families’ pasts.  I know that I feel more invested in my life and my country than I did before doing this research.  And I guess that is a good thing.

 

 

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