“Trinity: Sky, Land and Man” — At the Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA
One minute was enough, Tyler said, “A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Yesterday was probably the best day I have had in the studio in some time. Easily the best this year , the one we call 2021. Things just went well all the way around. A new painting I was working on came to completion and far exceeded the expectations that I had when first beginning it.
I could feel the momentum from it and knew that it would carry me forward for awhile. And just that bit of knowledge creates its own momentum which carries over into other aspects of my life. I am not going to get into them because for the most part they are mundane and small insignificant things. Personal stuff that doesn’t make a bit of difference in anyone’s world but my own.
But it’s those little things, those little pangs of happiness and satisfaction, that make up a good day. Not every good day is made up of earthshaking events. In fact, almost none are. Big events usually have so many ramifications that their weight sometimes takes away from the joy they might otherwise bring.
Well, that’s my take. I might be a little cynical in that respect.
But it was a good day. I would say perfect but I don’t truly believe in perfect as a state of being. At least, one that lasts for more than a singular moment on the rarest of occasions. There are just too many contributing factors in our lives that would have to come into alignment for it to occur more than once in a great while.
I do believe in pretty damn good as a descriptive term though. Even that takes hard work and perseverance. And if in getting to that, a perfect moment pops up like a purple unicorn every so often, all the better. If there are perfect moments they most likely show up on pretty damn good days.
I think the words from Chuck Palahniuk and his novel Fight Club at the top sum it up pretty well.
So, let’s call yesterday a pretty damn good day. I am not sure there was any perfection involved in the day but then again, I was never expecting it. But its absence didn’t diminish it in any way.
Maybe it will show up today. Who knows? I think I will get to work and find out.
Hope you have a pretty damn good day. Here’s a favorite song from the late great Lou Reed. It’s called Perfect Day. Most likely that Pretty Damn Good Day just didn’t carry the same weight or simply didn’t fit the meter of the song. Doesn’t matter– it’s a pretty damn good song.
Every time I start a picture… I feel the same fear, the same self-doubts… and I have only one source on which I can draw, because it comes from within me.
–Federico Fellini
I know that Fellini was talking about starting a film production in the quote above but it translates pretty neatly to the beginning of almost every painting for me.
There is always some level of self-doubt involved. I find myself doubting my abilities, my imagination, my drive, my vision, and even the quality of my paint or the amount of light in my studio, among a hundred other things.
Anything that gives me some sort of reason me to not do what I know I need to do.
And like Fellini points out, the only answer to this doubt is within myself. I can look to other creators and see how they have overcome their own doubts but, like so many things in art, every artist has a truly unique set of circumstances. The only thing all have in common is the desire and need to create, to express their vision and voice.
So, you learn to trust that desire and need. Trust that you are good enough. Trust that what you will do next will move you closer to realizing that vision and voice. Trust that there is real emotion and feeling behind what you are attempting.
That last one is a big one for me.
I have found that when I put concept before feeling, my attempts most often fail miserably. By that I mean if I start a painting with a strong visual idea in mind but one that is not formed in emotion or doesn’t have some real personal feeling attached to it, sometimes it fails to take on real life. It might carry out the concept but it just lies there like a dead fish.
I have some of those dead fish here in the studio. I look at them and remember the original idea that I had when I first embarked on them. I also remember the feeling of deflation when I realized that I had no emotional attachment to them, sometimes early in the process. Things just don;t come together in the way I thought they might. There is flatness and shallow where I saw richness and depth in my mind.
Dead fish.
However, there is a caveat. Sometimes, when starting on a concept piece, things fall into place and momentum and feeling build. Attributes that were not seen in the original thought process appear and those I hoped for emerge stronger and more vibrant than envisioned.
The excitement of creation transforms into real feeling and the fish that looked like it might be dead begins to come to life on the surface of the painting.
The feeling of seeing your work come to life, or at least the prospect of it, might be enough to overcome that initial doubt for me. The words and advice from other artists might offer comfort but my own need to do what I do and to experience that thrill of creation are what get me past the hesitancy and dreadful doubt I face each time I stand before my easel or painting table.
Okay, got to go. There are dead fish waiting for me. I think I might be able to put a little life in them if I just can get started.
The other day, I wrote about a new piece, Shadow of the Red Eye. I wrote that the feeling I was getting from the painting was very much like the tone of my recent dreams. Almost like a premonition of some sort.
This prompted a response from a friend who wrote about how his work in construction often has him having strange and troubling dreams that take place in worksite settings, often dealing with huge problems arising in the middle of a building project. He said he would wake in a panic then go back to sleep only to reenter the same dream. He said he usually could shake them off after finally fully waking but this very morning of the post about dreaming premonitions he had such a dream, one that had him rattled, one that he couldn’t just shrug off.
He wanted to know if I had such dreams about my painting, Maybe one where everything goes awry, where nothing works. It made me think.
I certainly know the kind of dreams he was experiencing. I think anyone who has waited tables has had those recurring nightmares of waiting on an ever expanding section of a full restaurant where you don’t know where anything is located or how anything there works, all the time more and more tables being seated in your station. I hated those dreams. I actually had one several months ago and in the middle of the actual dream I found myself saying that I I wasn’t a waiter anymore, that I didn’t have to put up with this. I woke up and laughed then went on to sleep soundly.
I am sure I had them but don’t remember my dreams, good or bad, when I ran my swimming pool business. Any nightmares I would have had most likely paled to the reality I was living. I was working 100+ hours a week and was usually so exhausted and frazzled by the time I went to be that dreams of any sort didn’t register much.
There have been other freaky, scary dreams through the years, many that lingered with me for decades– most of my life, actually– and reside within me even now.
But painting dreams?
There have been painting dreams but few have been of that frantic, things-going-wildly-wrong sort that he was having. The closest thing was a dream I had abut a year before I went fulltime as a painter. The dream even had a name– the Van Gogh Spiral. Set in a darkened museum-like space, I came in the dream to a doorway at the center of the space. I was warned not to enter it by a person who I couldn’t make out. They warned that behind the door was the Van Gogh Spiral. As I entered, there were these bursts of rich, deep colors that all came together in the form of a downward spiral, and I descended the spiral as one might go down a large spiral staircase. As I came around the bend in each new layer, imagery would flash before my eyes becoming stranger and stranger the further I descended. I saw it as a sort of symbolic descent into some sort of madness, some nether region, perhaps an place that had drawn Van Gogh in his final days.
It was a strange and troubling dream that felt like a warning of some sort. Still don’t know what to do with this but it remains pretty vibrant with me even nearly 25 years later.
But for the most part, my painting dreams are usually somewhat good dreams, showing me paintings that I feel I need to paint, paintings that feel perfect to me. The problem is that usually the moment I awaken, that image is gone. The memory of dreaming it and responding to it is still there but the image itself is absent. Frustrating, to say the least. But it makes me feel like it is still in there if I can somehow work it out.
Some painting dreams have to do with showing my work. Some are positive, with the work there beyond what I have done to this point. Again, images gone when I wake up. Some are not as good, with me struggling to get people to look at my work on the wall as they walk by with total indifference. I guess that would be as close to a bad work dream as I get.
Now, the painting at the top, Not Quite an Island, from 2013, was the result of a dream. It came to me one night and I woke up a little before 4 AM with its image in my head. One of the rare times when the image lingered. Instead of going back to sleep, I headed over to the studio and was soon working on it in the early morning darkness. It actually came out very much as I dreamed it which in itself is an oddity as any pre-visions I have of a painting seldom match up with the final work.
The conscious mind usually edits the subconscious. It’s sometimes good, sometimes not. I am trying to stop this process.
In this case, the subconscious persisted.
That, along with its symbolic implications, might be why this painting holds a lot of meaning for me. Plus, the folks who gave it a home are some of the best people I know.
If all my painting dreams could be like this one, then would be very happy.
Okay, got to work on a non-dream painting now. Wish me luck and have a good day.
“What appears to be definite and precise does not belong to any acceptable reality. It is only the experiences, the queer previsions, the fleeting premonitions, that are real. Vague and insubstantial though they may appear to be, compared with anything else in the mists and shifting lights of Time theory, they loom up like mountains of iron ore.”
― J.B. Priestley, Man and Time
This painting is titled Shadow of the Red Eye and is part of the current Little Gems show at the West End Gallery. It’s a painting that really spoke to me when I was working on it, as well as after. It just seemed to have something to say to me the whole time.
It’s been out there in the ether for weeks now and I am still wrestling with its meaning. Some pieces are like that. Some immediately let me know what part of me, what part of my psyche and internal world, they are displaying. Positive emotions usually show themselves quickly.
Others take awhile.
They are usually darker in tone. And while their meanings may not jump out, there is a sense of certainty and reality in them. I may subconsciously try to avoid putting meaning to these pieces, not wanting to face the possible darker realities they may represent.
Maybe realities is not the right word. Or maybe I should include the word possibilities as an accomplice to realities. That would align well with the Priestley quote above which I read as being about how each of our personal realities is not just a timeline of facts and tangible data. It is not black and white. No, our reality is in shades of grays and subtle tones of black and white. It is a compilation of personal emotions and feelings in the present, interpretations and reactions to our past, and premonitions of our future. That is the reality in which we reside.
And that might be where this paintings fits in. It coincides with darker dreams I have been experiencing in my sleep lately, dreams that are a bit uncomfortable and worrisome. I wake in the morning with pangs of anxiety from them, fearful that they are some sort of premonition. Perhaps, a call out to my outer self from my inner self to pay heed to the clues it has taken notice of in the patterns and movements of the outer world.
I am still taking this piece in so I am not really sure what it means. I hope it is not a pure premonition but is maybe more of a simple reflection of my own worries for the future. But it has a real attraction for me and maybe that comes because it feels real to me, that is has something of true meaning in it for me.
Even with my own personal uncertainty, it seems to have certainty.
If you only had brain in your head you would be as good as man as any of them, and a better man than some of them. Brains are the only things worth having in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man.
― L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz
Watched the end of the impeachment trial yesterday. Sad day for this country and for every American as the former president* was acquitted.
Acquitted but not exonerated in any way.
It was actually more of an embarrassing day for republican voters who see themselves as being American first then republican. I believe there are a few still remaining out there. These folks witnessed and understood the criminality– which their party leader readily admitted was present in the words and actions of the president– that put our democracy in peril, knew that it went against everything that our country once claimed as virtues. But they saw the majority of their craven senators say that it didn’t matter, that their partisanship and short term self-interest was more important than doing what was right for the future of our nation.
These senators seem intent on following the road to disgrace to its bitter end.
Their votes to acquit made this political in a proceeding that, at its heart, was not apolitical. It was necessary and for the majority party to have not went down this path would have been betraying their sworn oaths to the Constitution and to the future generations of this country. The House Managers laid out a compelling and convincing evidentiary argument that won the day.
57-43 is a victory in a way. It was an acquittal but, as I said, not an exoneration. No innocence was implied or proven. The majority of the country recognizes and approves of the guilt attached to this vote. I say majority because the 57 senators who voted to convict represent 76.7 MILLION MORE Americans than the 43 dissenting senators.
The people know.
Let’s move on now to the Sunday morning music for this week. I was working on the small painting at the top the page yesterday while listening to the impeachment proceedings. I don’t know what made the idea of a person standing in the field as scarecrow come to mind but it appeared around the time the voting was taking place. I can’t quite put my finger on the feeling I get from it or its origin but it seemed to fit the moment.
Maybe it cam from the quote at the top from L. Frank Baum’sWizard of Oz? If they only had a brain…
The piece itself reminded me of the old John Cougar Mellencamp song, Rain on the Scarecrow, from 1985. He started his career with the cheesy stage name of Johnny Cougar before attaching his actual Mellencamp last name and eventually getting rid of the Cougar altogether.
In 1985, he was still John Cougar Mellencamp. He had a great trio of albums in the late 1980’s starting with this album, Scarecrow, followed byThe Lonesome Jubilee and Big Daddy. They were all strong. complete albums. This song has been a favorite from when I first heard it back then. I also want to note that John Mellencamp is a talented painter as well.
But here’s Rain on the Scarecrow to go along with the new piece at the top which is simply called Scarecrow.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.
-W.C. Fields
I wanted to play another song, I Don’t Mind Failing, from the late folksinger Malvina Reynolds and thought a replay of this post from a decade ago would fit well with it. Not much has changed in these past ten years from the standpoint of failure. The post below, from 2011, was titled Failure, of course
In response to yesterday’s post concerning a very large blank canvas that is waiting patiently for me, I received several very interesting questions from my friend, Tom Seltz, concerning the role that failure and the fear of failure plays in my work. He posed a number of great questions, some pragmatic and some esoteric, that I’ll try to address.
On the pragmatic side, he asked if there is a financial risk when I take on large projects like the 4 1/2′ by 7′ canvas of which I wrote. Actually, it’s not something I think about much because every piece, even the smallest, has a certain cost in producing it that, after these many years, I don’t stop to consider. But a project such as this is costlier as a larger canvas is more expensive right from the beginning simply due to the sheer size of it. The canvas is heavier and more expensive and more of it is used. I use a lot more gesso and paint. The framing is much more expensive and the logistics of shipping and transporting become more involved and costly. It’s larger size and price means the audience of potential buyers is much more limited which means more time trucking it around or storing it.
And while these cost of materials and handling are the larger cost, the biggest financial risk comes in the time spent on such a project. It takes longer to prepare such a large canvas, longer to paint and, if it works out, longer to finish and frame. This is time not spent on other projects. Wasted time is by far the biggest risk in facing such a project and that is something I have to take into consideration before embarking on large projects.
He also asked whether I can reuse the materials if I don’t like what I’ve painted. Sure, for the most part. Especially canvasses. Actually, the piece shown here on the right was once such a piece. There’s a failure lingering still beneath its present surface.
I had a concept in my head that floated around for months and I finally started putting it down on this 30″ square canvas. I spent probably a day and a half worth of time and got quite far into it before I realized that it was a flawed concept, that I was down a path that was way off the route I had envisioned. It was dull and lifeless, even at an early stage.
It was crap and I knew that there was no hope for it. I immediately painted it over, mainly to keep me from wasting even more time by trying to resuscitate it, and the piece shown here emerged, happily for me.
Tom also asked if I ever “crashed and burned” on a piece or if the worst sort of failure was that a piece was simply mediocre. Well, I guess the last few paragraphs say a bit about the “crashed and burned” aspect, although that is a rarer event than one might suspect. The beauty of painting is that it’s results are always subjective. There is almost never total failure.
It’s not like sky-diving and if your parachute doesn’t open you die. At least, that hasn’t been my experience thus far. I’m still here.
Mediocrity is a different story. That is the one thing I probably fear most for my work and would consider a piece a failure if I judged it to be mediocre. I have any number of examples I could show you in the nooks and crannies of my studio but I won’t. Even flawed and mediocre, these pieces have a purpose for me and some have remaining promise. The purpose is in the lessons learned from painting them. I usually glean some information from each painting, even something tiny but useful for the future. Each is a rehearsal in a way. But most times, the mediocre pieces teach me what I don’t want to repeat in the future. A wrong line or form here. A flatness of color there. Just simple dullness everywhere.
But, being art, there are few total failures, and many of these somewhat mediocre pieces sit unfinished because there are still stirs of promise in them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come to what I felt was a dead end for a painting, feeling that it was dull and lifeless, and set it aside. Months and months might pass and one day I might pick it up and suddenly see something new in it. A new way to move in it that brings it new life. These paintings often bring the greatest satisfaction when they leave the gallery with a new owner.
Sometimes failure is simply a momentary perception that requires a new perspective.
Sometimes you need to fail in order to succeed later.
Okay, that’s it for now. I’m sure I have more to say about failure but it will have to wait until a later date. I’ve got work waiting for me that doesn’t know the meaning of the word failure and I don’t want to take the risk that it might learn it.
Tom, thanks again for the great questions. I’m always eager for good questions so keep it up!
Now here’s I Don’t Mind Failing from Malvina Reynolds. It’s from around 1965 and was written after hearing a sermon called The Fine Art of Failing. Lot of great lines in this one:
I don’t mind failing in this world, I don’t mind failing in this world, Somebody else’s definition Isn’t going to measure my soul’s condition, I don’t mind failing in this world.
Give a listen and if you fail today, don’t worry about it. You’re in good company.
“All there is, is fragments, because a man, even the loneliest of the species, is divided among several persons, animals, worlds. To know a man more than slightly it would be necessary to gather him together from all those quarters, each last scrap of him, and this done after he is safely dead.”
[Been running some older posts this week — and maybe next week, as well– as I attempt to recalibrate. Or better yet, as the post below says, gather the fragments and try to reassemble them in some workable form. This post features a favorite painting here in the studio as well as a favorite song.]
It’s been hard finding footing lately in the studio. It’s been hard to just get started on most days. There are plenty of factors that play in to this, some external and some internal, some that I can control and some I cannot. But the end result is the same: left feeling fragmented, broken into shards that don’t want to reassemble easily in the form of my work.
I am not worried however. This is not the first time I’ve felt so fragmented nor will it be the last. I know that I come apart at times and have to bide my time, just continuing to try to put myself back together so that I may uncover what I know is waiting there for me.
It’s there. It may seem an awfully long way away but I can see it and I know that while it may take time and much effort, I shall be together with it again.
The painting above is a piece that has been with me for a while now. One of the orphans that come home to reside for a bit. I wrote about it last year when I thought I might change its name to Dimming of the Daybut it still remains under its original title, Fragments, in my mind. And I suspect it will stay that way.
This painting is based very much on this feeling that I am experiencing at this moment and when this feeling emerges, I often think of this painting. There is darkness and distance here. The space between the Red Chair and the house has a certain weight that makes me feel as though there is something more than physical distance at play here. The sky, a confetti-like blend of thousands of little fragments of brushstrokes that gave the painting its title originally, represents, for me at least in this piece, the world falling out of harmony.
Dark, distant and coming apart.
Yet despite that I find this painting very comforting. I think that goes back to what I said above, that I know this place well from past experience. I know how to navigate it and know that the distance is not so great nor the darkness too deep. And I know that the parts are still in place to come together again in the future if I simply exercise patience and don’t give in.
It’s funny how that works. I walk by this painting several times a day in the studio and it’s often without a thought as my mind is preoccupied with something else. But every so often I stop before it and suddenly all of these feelings flood back on me when I look closer. I’m glad it works that way, actually.
Here’s the song, Dimming of the Day, which made me think about renaming this painting. It’s from one of my favorites, Richard Thompson. This is a great acoustic version. Have a good day…
Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.
–Eric Maisel
This painting below sits on a shelf directly in front of my desk. I was looking at it early this morning and wondered if I had put anything about it here on the blog. I came across the entry below from about four years ago which really spoke to the doubts I endure every year at this time as I begin to gear up for my annual shows.
This year is no different. Maybe even more pronounced, given the stress from the events of this past year. But I take some comfort in knowing that I have navigated through these canyons before and that takes off the edge. The doubts are still there but can’t box me in.
There is always a way through.
Here’s what I put down about this four years back:
This new painting, 8″ by 10″ on panel, is called Canyon of Doubts. For me, it represents the navigation that takes place in the creative process as the artist tries to get past the formidable obstacles of self doubt. Doubt often throws up barriers that has the artist asking if they are good enough, if they have the talent, training, and drive to create true art that speaks for them to the world. Doubt makes them fear that they are out of place, that they don’t belong, that every other artist has more right to create than them.
Doubt keeps the artist seemingly boxed in with no apparent way forward.
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
–Kahlil Gibran
I’ve been trapped in that canyon many times. I’ve thought many times that there was no way out, that the fears posed by my doubts were the realities of who and what I was.
I have always felt alone with my doubts. Words of encouragement from others often felt hollow when I was lost in those canyons. They didn’t know how steep the walls of doubts seemed to me or how inadequate, how ill-prepared I felt in that moment.
The only option that seemed available to me was to trust that I could somehow fight my way out of those daunting canyons. It would mean mustering every bit of talent, every ounce of energy, and a sustained belief that I deserved to have my voice rise from out of those canyons. It was matter of either having the faith in my own value as human to find my way free or withering away in a canyon of doubts.
Your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
I still find myself in those canyons. I still find myself periodically looking up at the walls that surround me and wonder if I am talented enough, strong enough, or even entitled to escape them.
But I now know that there is a path through them, one that is well worn with my own footprints from my past journeys in that shadowed place. I know that, even though it is lonely and seemingly unbearable in that moment, I don’t have to be trapped in that place of doubt.
I’ve traveled this path and there is indeed a way out.
It takes time and effort and devotion. It takes the belief in yourself, forged from past experience, that you will make the right decisions and not be trapped in those walls. It’s in having the faith that when take a wrong turn, when you make a mistake, that you will recognize it and get quickly back to the path that sets you free.
At the moment, I may well be in that canyon still but I have the moon guiding me and its light shows me where the canyon ends.
Think about Think about how many times I have fallen Spirits are using me larger voices callin’ What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten
—Southern Cross, Stephen Stills, Rick and Michael Curtis
I have a lot to do this morning so this will be brief. At least, that’s my intent. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.
Just wanted to show a new small piece at the top, Steady As She Goes, which is headed to the West End Gallery for their annual Little Gems show which opens on February 12. I love doing my boat pieces even though I am not a sailor. And even though the romance of sailing free on the wide expanse of the ocean under endless skies is powerful, I know that will not be a sailor in this lifetime.
My loss, no doubt.
But the boats themselves offer great symbolism for me that translates well in paint and speaks to the non-sailors like myself who understand and envy those who respond to the lure of the open sea.
I thought that a fitting song would be the Crosby, Stills and Nash song, Southern Cross, especially with a video that features the lyrics. Interestingly, Stephen Stills wrote this song with the Curtis Brothers, Rick and Michael, basing it on an existing song from the Curtis Brothers called Seven League Boots, which they had recorded several years before with members of Fleetwood Mac.
Stills explained how their collaboration on Southern Cross came about:
“The Curtis Brothers brought a wonderful song called ‘Seven League Boots,’ but it drifted around too much. I rewrote a new set of words and added a different chorus, a story about a long boat trip I took after my divorce. It’s about using the power of the universe to heal your wounds. Once again, I was given somebody’s gem and cut and polished it.“
Well, he did a fine job in polishing it and I like how it attaches to this painting.
This is Possessed in the Light, one of my Red Tree paintings which is up for auction today as part of a fundraiser to benefit The Kramer Foundation and Abby’s Paws For a Cause, two local organizations that that do great work and have my support. The fundraiser/auction is being conducted at this link on Facebook Live today from 4-7 PM EST. Bids are accepted at any time today and the bidding ends promptly at 7 PM.
To make your way to this and other auction items, go to the link then click on Discussion which lists the auction items as individual entries. For this painting scroll down to Auction #2. You simply leave your bid in a comment for this entry.
This painting, Possessed in the Light, which is 10″ by 20″on canvas and valued at $1500 has a current high bid of $1200.
I am happy that it will bring at least that $1200 amount for these two great organizations but I would be much happier if it gets much closer to its true value. Hope you can help us get there today.
One of those benefitting from today’s fundraiser is the Kramer Foundation which is dedicated to fostering, rehabilitating and rehoming dogs that would historically be euthanized in shelters for behavior and/or health issues. They basically take dogs labeled as being troubled and transforms them into service, therapy, and search dogs for the lost and missing, as well as corpse-sniffing dogs. They also foster dogs for troops deployed overseas.
Abby’s Paws for a Cause advocates and operates programs in and out of local schools designed to encourage and expand local childhood literacy and discourage and reduce bullying. They employ dogs in their programs, using them as models for kindness and acceptance.
Both are local and are privately funded which means that this fundraiser is important for their continued effective operation. So if you can, please support them in some way.
For my part, it’s this painting. But there are plenty of other items and ways to help.
Try to do something good today for two organizations that are doing good every day. It will be appreciated more than you will ever know.
Redtree Times 