I’m sitting in my studio looking at an empty canvas. It wasn’t empty not too long ago. No, I spent the better part of the afternoon yesterday working on this canvas, a 36″ square that was prepped beforehand with gesso and a first layer of black paint. Several hours spent and not a minute of it felt smooth or in rhythm. The paint didn’t come off the brush in the way that I expected or desired. The composition seemed to just go nowhere ,leaving bland and lifeless bits of nothing littered all over the canvas. I never felt a flow, that quality I have described before where one mark leads to the next as though you are reading the lines and strokes on the canvas like they were revelatory tea leaves.
No tea leaves here yesterday. Everything led to nothing. After a few hours, I was exasperated and I knew deep down inside that I had betrayed my own words and had tried to force the work rather than let it flow out organically. That was the lesson and I knew what had to be done. I laid the canvas flat on the floor and broke out the black paint, covering the offensive marks that had been there moments before.
It felt good, actually.
Time reveals many things and after tens of thousands of hours spent in the studio I have learned that failure is no big deal. It’s like the weather– temporary. It comes and goes. A failure like yesterday doesn’t make me happy but knowing that sometimes things just don’t work out makes me take such a temporary failure with a philosophical shrug. And instead of struggling ahead with this horror show that was unfurling before me, trying to somehow cobble it back to life, my experience has taught me that it would be best to retreat and start anew.
Tabula rasa, so to speak.told
So here I sit this morning, a new day, with a fresh canvas waiting for me and there is a new air of anticipation around it. Yesterday is but a lesson and there’s no telling what the time spent today will reveal. Can’t wait.
Here’s one of my all-time favorites which sort of ties in with today’s post. It’s Time (The Revelator) from Gillian Welch.
There was a now little known band called The Treniers that began performing in the 1940’s. Led by twin brothers, Cliff and Claude, they were known for their raucous live shows that featured their considerable talents as musicians, dancers and comedians. They were simply entertainers.
I was flipping around the channels last night, the final Christmas specials winding down as the holiday came to an end. I ended up on an old Christmas episode of The Monkees from around 1967. It was a show that I had loved as a kid of 8 or 9 and it had Butch Patrick, the kid who played Eddie Munster on the also adored The Munsters TV show, as a guest. How bad could it be?
I don’t think I’ve ever featured any music from NRBQ on this blog which is surprising because they are always rock solid. Consistency is a trait I really appreciate and NRBQ has been just that for over 46 years now, which seems like a crazy amount of time for a group that has went kind of under the radar of the pop charts for most of that time but has built a cult following that counts some of the biggest names in music as fans. They were even on TV as the house band on The Simpsons for a couple of seasons ( see Matt Groening’s drawing of the band above.) They are known as musician’s musicians with a real sense of humor and a huge playlist that enables them to pretty much play anything. I don’t know if they still do this but they used to have a milk crate with question marks painted on it that leader Terry Adams would stand on to take requests from the audience.
I am slowly trying to get back into some sort of rhythm in the studio after getting back from what for me was an extended absence while traveling out to California for my show there. It was only a week or so but it was enough to disrupt that fragile balance and set me a bit off kilter. I can sense it in getting back into my painting rhythm as well as writing this blog. Just a bit more of a struggle at the moment. I don’t fret over this as I once might have because I’ve been through this more than a few times. If I put my head down and forge forward, it returns after a bit.
Redtree Times 