Tag: art

I engage in this quiet debate in my head.

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Sometimes I want to come up with some stupid generalization

as to why my painting is not done yet.

I desperately want it to be done

but at the same time I know I need to too push it a little further.

Add a little more detail.

Sometimes ambiguitiy works sometimes it not enough.

I always dwell in the possibility that I know where I’m headed

but occasionally I have to ask for directions

A direction I may not like.

Until I experience that moment of truth I venture on.

I engage in this quiet debate in my head.

Sometimes I hope for the accidental

as my intuitive manner of painting continues.

My acual interpretation of life into art

lies on a thin line of boring right now something is lacking.

It’s kinda mind numbing.

My art needs to challenge and reaffirm my ideas.

I guess my work is always a revolution of self.

I understand that now.

It’s that unequivocal commitment to the painting surface.

As an artist I take this paint and try to create some order.

Then and only then will I be done

Summer blues

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I got up early this morning feeling refreshed.

I sat outside with my coffee.

It was cool and still with a hint of fall in the air.

A faint dripping noise was in the background.

It’s damp but not wet.

I thank God for the moment and wonder what the day will bring.

Being that it is the last day of this long weekend.

The dripping persists almost like a woodpecker. The birds join in.

There’s a haze in the distance but the grass is very green and the woodchips orange.

A hummingbird buzzes a little too close.

The sun is trying to come out adding some color to the trees and then subsides.

A quiet wind has picked up and the clouds are rolling by.

The birds are surprisingly quiet again but that dripping never stops.

I get these visual revelations in my head sometimes.

As to how I should finish a painting that I’ve been struggling with or avoiding.

It’s a painting that has been sitting for quite awhile.

None of the ones I’ve been working on or even thinking about.

I found it and pulled it out of the garage.

It had some striking moments which I am pleased with but it’s in a medium I no longer work with.

But if there’s and end in sight this is a painting for me.

Idleness can be productive.

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We went out for a Friday fish fry that’s a big thing here. Went to a place called Moonlighting. It’s a little place off the beaten path hidden in some small town that we happen to fall upon one day. So we thought we’d go back. We ordered cod, you get a choice of potatoes, coleslaw and some marbled rye bread on the side. And of course a beer. I agree they do have good fish frys like they claim.

Behind us they have this old crumpled American flag in a frame. They found it in the walls when they renovated the place and kept it in remembrance that history starts here. I felt a little patriotic sitting here wondering who might have sat at this very spot at some point in time.

I was reading Solitude Inner Visions in American Art.

“Early romantics and transcendentalists solitude was a subject of those who observe the life of pioneer immigrant settlers around the turn of the century and during the great depression.”

The subject of solitude has been probed by American writers. Some things that Henry David thoreau wrote I found worth repeating. 

“A high intellectual level is not a prerequisite for solitude.”

“One of the beauties of solitude is its availability to every person.”

“To be in the company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

“A man thinking or working is always alone.”

That idleness can be productive; and that one could go far by staying put.

The painting above is called Black in Deep Red, 1957 by Mark Rothko

Making hay with words.

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Making hay with words.

Sitting here painting enormously absorbed.

Detail is my essential preoccupation.

As I investigate my progress I see I am far from finished and the further I get the less done it looks.

But importantly I have to make sure I don’t over paint it.

I think I need a break and a beverage.

We made it through the Polar Vortex. How’s the weather doing on your half?

Last week it was -40 degrees F and today it was 40 degrees.

Tomorrow we have a winter storm warning from 7:00am-12:00pm with possible blizzard conditions but not until after I get to work.

We call this winter here hey:)

The cross-country ski’s are ready.

I know I should be thinking about getting this painting done but I like to think skiing is part of my creative process.

We went skiing two weekends ago.

The timing was perfect right before the deep freeze.

While we were getting our ski’s on we saw the tail end of four deer pass before us about 25 yards away.

Nature at it’s best.

13 Things I learned in 2013

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1)I love doing something quiet that the brain can focus on.

2)Pulling a deer out of the woods is a lot of work.

3)What POTUS means.

4)#1 U.S. export to China is scrap and trash.

5)When to use a pitching wedge.

6)How proud I was to see my kids on cross-country skis.

7)50% of the world population is illiterate.

8)It is always the red wire that they cut.

9)80% of Muslim do not speak Arabic.

10)Obama care consists of 2,700 pages both sides.

11)The Bible will be translated in every language in 2016.

12)The Packers still have a chance at the Super bowl.

13)why I call work Ninevah sometimes.

What is required to paint when you have none.

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It has been dark and dreary for two days.

We have been in a tornado watch all day.

I have been working a lot of over time so my painting has been minimized and limited to none.

It is all my fault I suppose…no energy, no ambition and no desire.

It is funny what is required to paint when you have none.

It is nice when you have a little left in the end of the day.

That little bit can make a difference.

Instead I sit and stare at my paintings in process and say I can’t. I can not see it happening.

My birthday was in October.

My birthday marks another year for me more importantly than the annual New Years Eve party and celebration that takes place every year in January throughout the United States.

I like that day too but my birthday is a special day that bookmarks my unique timeline.

It is telling me I have one year before I reach another decade in my life and part of a century as well.

So instead of a party…my goal is to have another art showing or another one lined up by my next birthday.

A show usually consist of 10-15 paintings. That is a painting a month. Is it do able yes. Can I find the time that is the question of the day?

Some how I was able to miss three deer standing in the middle of the road yesterday so I feel anything is possible today.

I call it the Finnish Sisu.

Sisu is about taking action against the odds and displaying courage and resoluteness in the face of adversity. Deciding on a course of action and then sticking to that decision against repeated failures is sisu.

There is no work of art so big or so small

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She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from the speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window-or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so small  that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.

Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

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Inspiration comes when it wants. The secret is to sit and wait for it or bore yourself silly. When it does come it is fleeting and it’s brilliant. The moment is more real than any other moment.

I love the early stages of a painting. It’s muddy, sloppy and wet. It’s just a  bunch of ground work that makes no sense to anyone and not even me sometimes.

Almostfinnish current news;

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.                                                                                                             
Ron Paul

It’s only a paper moon

I was hoping to say something profound while I collected my thoughts here.

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But I got nothing.

They say…

good artists borrow

and great artists steal.

I’ve been intrigued by some old postcard photographs from the 1900’s called ‘Paper Moon.’  They use an acronym RPPC meaning real photo postcard that originated during the dates between 1904-1918. There are a lot of these images taken with kids or couples; families and friends as they would get their picture taken with this life-size paper moon in the background. These photographs are still around and people collect them. The photographs are sepia maybe black and white or both I’m not too sure.  I like old photography to begin with the cameras, the color and the serious faces. I like the whole studio effects and the flatness and how desolate things can look.

 

I just love this idea and feel the need to explore this topic some more. I just want to bring myself back to that era. In the process maybe bring a good original idea back to life with a new contemporary perspective or modern-day version. I’m in the planning stage to do a painting with this theme. I already have the person and image in mind I just need to get the moon and person sketched out together on canvas. I know some photographs will follow in the mix. How hard could it be to make a paper moon? What does it look like it’s made out of is it wood, fiber glass or foam core?

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Of course I have to finish my painting in process before I start another…not.

I have so many paintings in process again.  Three that I can think of off the top of my head but I know there are a couple more tucked away.” The fine art of finishing a painting.” Some will need some serious time to get done and I don’t have any serious time at the moment. So they will have to wait until summertime when the days are long.  I thought if I worked smaller it would go faster but it’s just as much work to do a small painting as a big painting. So my creative process is divided but it is aways in play.

What’s next on your plate?

I have to laugh. I wasn’t very hungry the other night but my son made sure he let mt know that I couldn’t leave the table until I finished everything on my plate.

I stopped saying that.

*Just a note the flags are at half mast around here but it seems like they are always at half mast these days.