Divine Discontent

“A great artist . . . must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted.  This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.”     Goethe

In March of this year I went to New York to see the Armory Show, as well as to visit the galleries.  This past weekend, I went to Sante Fe to see the latest in the art scene there.  The Armory Show was still pushing the same old tired conceptualism, which is on its last legs.  The galleries in Chelsea and Soho still had their high end talented artists, however I remember few shows from the dozens I saw.   Stalwart Sante Fe kept the artwork to the usual western art, landscapes, bright abstract splashes of colors, and figurative sculptures.

Today I am thinking back to the conversations I had with the New York and Sante Fe artists and gallery owners, as well as the artwork I saw.  One thing is sure.   The art world is in flux. One artist opined that the future is a mix of abstract and realism.  Another gallery owner predicted the future of art was chemical, and exploring chemical reactions. Certainly we are using more and more synthetic materials.  A third gallery owner stated that art might be headed towards romanticism.

I too feel it– a disquiet and confusion about where my art is headed.  But as an artist, it is my job to watch, and sense what is going on around me.  To be the lightning rod, to transmit, to speak back to our culture of what I see, AND to speak forward to where we are going.  I think we artists have said enough about the consumeristic, vapid, and plastic culture of our past.  Now is the time we need to turn inward, to listen to the “divine discontent.”   It is time to speak to our future.

Page from the book "Of Elements and Whispers"

Musings on an Artist’s Studio

“Every work of art is an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing… Art asserts the possibility of fellowship in a world built entirely from the materials of solitude. -Michael Chabon.

My studio

I have had many inquiries about visiting my studio and I am loath to accept, as are many other artists.  We fear that people imagine a large light filled clean loft simliar to what they see in the movies.  Perhaps they imagine sitting in a pristine chair drinking wine and eating cheese with soft jazz playing in the background while I discourse on something unobtrusive such as line and space and color.

That will never happen.  I would rather run into on-coming traffic than live that lie.  Not that my art is a downer, quite the contrary.  I seek out that which is beautiful.  However I also seek to depict that which is true.

The building my studio resides in is at least 130 years old and should have been demolished years ago.  Ironically, at one point is was a school.  It is dirty and it stinks.  There are bullet holes in the walls allegedly from a shootout between two very drunk artists back in the 1970′s. I don’t keep food there on account of the mice.  It is hot as hell in the summer and frigidly cold in the winter.  If you want wine you can get a really cheap bottle at the corner store but you must get in line with all the pan handlers who work the corners with their cardboard signs.  I chose this studio because it keeps me real.

If you are ok with visiting a studio that could be blaring Beethoven, Gogol Bordello, Gorecki, and Buddy Guy all in rapid succession, then you are welcome.  If you are ok with paint and wax and dirt getting on your clothes, then you are welcome.  If you can handle seeing photos on the walls of Iraqi children screaming in terror as American bombs destroy their neighborhoods, and views of addicts smoking crack outside my windows, then you are welcome.  This is my sanctuary.  This is where I am finally free from the fake-good of the culture we live in.  If you visit me, bring your heart and speak to me only from there.  Leave everything else at home.

Preparing to paint with fire

The Power of Art

“The power of the arts to anticipate future social and technological developments, by a generation and more, has long been recognized.  In this century Ezra Pound called the artist the antennae of the race.”  (Marshal McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964)

Artists are encouraged to paint what they know.  Tonight I will do anything to erase what I know.  It has been a really rough week.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

I sit outside on my back porch in downtown Denver and close my eyes so I can listen, shutting out all visual input.  I hear the shower as it goes on inside the apartment next to me, listening as someone coughs out the troubles of the day.  The woman who lives in the tiny carriage house behind me stumbles up the stairs to her bedroom on the second level and turns on the tv.  I hear car horns in the distance and a faint siren intermixed with the sound of a train as it rocks down the tracks.  A small airplane slowly putters overhead.    On top of everything I am hypnotized by the sound of the crickets and a low humming sound I can’t quite place.   I wonder if we humans should end suddenly, all that would be left would be the strong single note of the crickets.

What the future will be like, I don’t know.  But what I do know is that we artists carry a heavy load.  If we truly are the canary in the cultural mine of our world, than I am worried.  Last night I saw a large open show at a popular art gallery in the Denver area, however, tonight I can’t remember even one painting.  Blaming the artist is wrong.  Artists record, as accurately as they can, what they experience, and I fear we are experiencing the vapidity of our culture.

What if we were to turn the tables?  What if we artists chose not to react to our culture, but instead chose as a group to consciously influence our culture in beautiful, positive, and deepening ways.  Artists did it in past centuries, but they didn’t have tv and internet to contend with.  How do we reach out to those who experience only what they see in the media?  How do we teach them to use their other senses, to feel and know what beauty really looks like, not what is airbrushed into superficial perfection?

What if we were brave enough to try?

 

Beethoven, Symphony 7, Allegretto, mvt 2 – YouTube

via Beethoven, Symphony 7, Allegretto, mvt 2 – YouTube.

What If We Were Brave?

This week I was at a conference in a large hotel in Dallas for my work.  The hotel shall be unnamed, and was gorgeous.  However it was filled with what I would call as “Neutral Art.”  Art that is abstractish, with neutral colors and really nothing that would cause you to stop and look.  I guess the decorators think they are doing us a favor–making sure everything is bland enough to keep us soothed.   However Thursday night at around 12:30 p.m. I started itching for something–anything to ground me.  I pulled out my ipod and found the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony.  It was listening to that rich music that woke me up.

What if they–and we–took a chance?  What if the art was chosen to challenge the viewer?  To force you to think in new ways, to be innovative and courageous.  What if we chose not to be numbed?   What if we were brave?  I believe that art and music can move us to new levels of thinking and change the path we are on, but it requires us to open our minds, and our hearts.

Detail from Nostrum Somnium Memor "Our Dreams Remember"

The Cloud of Unknowing

Some days are rough.  Nights can be worse.  How many times in the middle of the night do we feel lost and confused, trying to sleep, hoping all will feel better in the morning? Usually it does.  There are so many times in my studio when I have felt that lost feeling and all I can do is tell myself to paint–anything, but just paint–the painting will come to life some day.  I enter into the painting in a cloud of unknowing, with nothing but a feeling or even a sound. Ultimately, the painting tells me what it wants to say, and I must obey it, no matter how chaotic it looks at the time.

I stumbled into the studio a year ago, with discouragement and heartbreak coursing through my veins.   The ink splatter above was all I could do.  I left it hanging on the wall, and forgot about it.  Weeks later I looked at that splatter and it told me what I needed to paint.

"Lacrymosa" Latin for "tearful"

Life is funny that way.  Having faith in a direction that appears aimless seems counterintuitive, yet it is what we must do to break through to new levels of who we were created to be.

Playing With Fire

There is nothing like creating art with the use of fire to teach one about letting go of the outcome.  The term encaustic derives from the greek word enkaustikos, or “to burn in.” I create my own encaustic mixture of purified beeswax and crushed damar resin.  I then layer the clear encaustic with pastel pigment to create color.

This is a piece based on a Japanese haiku by Seishu in 1817.

Rain clouds clear away:

above the lotus shines

the perfect moon

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