What’s Bugging You?

Infernal, 10 x 10″ Acrylic and Spackle on Illustration Board

“You are no bigger than the things that annoy you”

– Jerry Bundsen

I love the efficient wisdom of this quote. What you let bother you defines you. Makes you think twice about to what exactly you are willing to concede that power to.

I’ll admit it – I have issues with patience and tolerance. I’ve been known to complain about this or that. I even recently participated in an experiment with my wife in which we committed to not complaining about anything for 40 days. In these challenging times, I think I lasted 4 days and only because my definition of a complaint was narrower than my wife’s.

What does this have to do with making art?

As artists we’re constantly confronted with challenges and problems – sometimes we call them “failures”. We are frustrated by them, dare I say annoyed. When we adopt this attitude toward these perceived limitations, we allow them to define who we are. We cannot become “bigger” than them, we cannot go beyond them.

I have sometimes thought that my frustration with my current limitations has been the fuel which propels me past them. And perhaps there is some role played by that attitude in my progress, maybe the pot is stirred in a necessary way. But I realize that ultimately I can only move past those limitations when I drop my annoyance with them. I’ve never really fought my way through a creative limit while holding onto these feelings. It’s only when I let them go, that I am able to redfine myself.

A Dancing Star

Dancing Star, 10 x 10″ Acrylic on Illustration Board

“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.”

– Henry Brooks Adams

I like the contrast between “life” and “habit” in this quote. One of the reasons I love non-objective subject matter is that helps me avoid habit, which, for me, equates with boring. When I was painting landscapes years ago, I found that eventually they all started to look the same. There is an order to the objects we see around us, perhaps imposed by how we have created them or at least in how we perceive them. This sense of order imposed its will on me, made me move in certain directions and not in others. I’m not saying that others who paint differently create boring, habitual art – obviously this is not true! I only speak to my own experience.

By not attempting to depict this order, I am free to roam in all directions. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it’s up to me what I create – the curse is that I have few guideposts to help me know if I’m on the right track.

This series is, in some way, all about that chaos. I’m trying to honor the chaos while offering enough order to connect with the viewer.

Nietzsche said that you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star – this piece is my homage to that sentiment.

Artful Violence

Cycle, 10 x 10″ acrylic on illustration board

“One never paints violently enough.”

– Eugene Delacroix

Painting and violence are not words commonly juxtaposed. We often think of painting as a refined activity, one in which we connect with our gentle spirit. Painting calms us, allows us to achieve an almost meditative state. So what place has violence in this serene tableau?

I think Delacroix (who was a French Romantic painter) is commenting on passion and abandon in painting. Violence is defined as “swift and intense force”. When we unfetter our passion as we paint, the force is palpable. When it is “swift and intense” we often sit back and look at the result and wonder “where did that come from?”. And often these pieces are our most satisfying, having bypassed our common ways of thought, our conventions and comfortable patterns. Leaving all that behind leads to an exciting place.

It is challenging to paint “violently” – letting go is not something we do often in our daily lives. What is great about art is that it is a safe place to do so. If the word “violent” offends, substitute “passionate”, but be sure that your passion is swift and intense!

Practice Makes Perfect?

Macrocosm, 10 x 10″ acrylic on illustration board

“Artists are notorious for spending more time ‘producing’ paintings and spending little or no time ‘practicing’. “

– Tom Lynch

I will admit it – I am very bad about practicing anything. Making art is no exception. So I am one of the “notorious” members of the non-practicing art crowd mentioned above. Are you also?

I don’t know why this is. I know that practicing specific techniques or subjects would probably produce  better results. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t even be bothered to spend 5 minutes doing a value sketch, much less a full study. Nor can I bear to spend any of my precious, too-little time I dedicated to art working on something that has no chance of being a finished masterpiece because it is just practice. Not that many, if any, or my efforts become finished masterpieces anyway!

This character flaw is very evident in my piano playing – once I reach a stage where I can stumble through a piece in a recognizable fashion, I move on to the next piece. I would much rather learn something new and be less than skilled at it than be a master of one or two pieces.

I prefer to learn by doing rather than practicing. It is probably not as efficient but more fun for me! Maybe it means I’m not serious enough about developing into a better artist.

Have you found for yourself the right balance of practicing and producing?

What’s in a Pattern?

Intersection, 10 x 10″ acrylic on illustration board

“A repeated shape is not actually the same – the more subtle, the more poetic this repeat is, the more we feel that resonant pulse.”

-Suzanne Northcott

In the pursuit of confusing myself, I am working on two series simultaneously which have very different objectives. Recently I’ve been posting work from the series titled Universal Meaning in which I am trying to use a more fluid style with little or no pattern or straight lines. This work is from a different series, as yet untitled, in which am exploring pattern and shape. Maybe a sort of left brain/right brain dichotomy. I like to exercise as many dimensions of my creativity as possible, even at the risk of a hopeless snarl.

I love the quote above because it reveals something about pattern that I truly feel – it’s “resonant pulse”. Pattern creates a rhythm which we unconsciously respond to. By making the patterns more or less subtle we can regulate the pulse of that rhythm in the observer. Paintings without pattern (I’m thinking of the Universal Meaning series) create a feeling of floating or being adrift – perhaps not the right words. But something other than a pulse with its insistent regularity.

Somehow our perceptual system translates these marks into some type of dynamic that we feel, rather than see. All art forms impact us on more than one level. Non-visual art such as music can have color, non-kinetic art such as painting can make us feel movement and temporal art such as dance can have structural permanence.

The more ways in which we respond to the art, the more interested we become in it. Artists who cross over into other art forms benefit greatly from this exploration as it allows them to infuse each with some aspect of the others.

The Spirit of Art

Cosmic Dance, 10 x 10″ Acrylic on Illustration Board

“Being ‘spiritual’ simply means being willing to look into the nature of life, to ask questions and to wonder, and to listen. It also means seeing art everywhere.”

– Quang Ho

I liked the simplicity of this definition of “spiritual” and its connection to art. It means being curious about the important questions, contemplating what you discover and being open to everything that might teach you.

Spirituality becomes more of a mindset than a set of particular beliefs. This mindset keeps us open to possibility at all times and protects us from rigid doctrine. It’s why people who hold widely differing beliefs can all be considered spiritual –  they share this mindset.

When we engage the world with this mindset we see art everywhere. We honor what we find by viewing it as art. We find the beauty and grace in even the smallest thing when we ask questions about it, wonder and listen to what it tells us. The art we find in the world around us serves as the source of inspiration that allows us to create our own art.

Imagine how different you would feel if you did not see the art in the passing clouds,  the bloom of early spring flowers, the joyous bustle of the farmers market or the laughter of children at play. Where would our art come from?

The Art of Arrogance

Heavens Collide, 10 x 10″ Acrylic, Soft Gel Medium, Granular Gel Medium on Illustration Board

“Walk to your easel casually, but with a dollop of arrogance.”

– Harley Brown

Harley Brown is a well-known painter famous for his wit and somewhat outrageous declarations of what it takes to be a good artist. So the statement above really is about confidence – we can probably succeed stopping short of outright arrogance! But a lack of confidence can cause so many problems, including lack of growth, repeating mistakes and failure to even pick up the brush.

While many artists are reluctant to speak openly about their accomplishments and talents for fear of sounding conceited or boastful, each time we are alone in our studios and approach that blank, or worse, partially completed problematic piece of canvas or paper we must do so with confidence in our ability to do what we intend to do. Sometimes we fail but next time we know we’ll somehow muster that same confidence that was there last time to get us started.

I think this is one of the wonderful qualities of making art. It puts us in touch with our own abilities time and again and reminds us that there is reason to have confidence in ourselves. In these times, something to treasure.

This is another piece in my series Universal Meaning. Someone commented on how different these pieces are from my more typical angular and geometric work. This is one of the intentions I had in this seris, to work with as few straight lines as possible. But don’t worry, in my spare time I’m also working on another series which satisfies my need for order – when this series is complete I’ll post work the that, as yet unnamed, series.

Fact is Stranger than Fiction

Beginnings, 10 x 10″ acrylic

“The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.”

– Tom Clancy

Here is one of the great paradoxes in life.

Most people would agree that art (I think of art as a form of fiction) has to make some sense – if it’s totally random, it crosses the line from art to something else. The artist must have some intention, even if it is obscure to them and others. You make choices about design, color, value, etc in ways that make some sense to you.

Even art that seems random is probably not created randomly. Ask the artist – they weren’t just splashing paint around with their eyes closed (now,  I don’t want to hear from all of you painters who do just that!). You have to have an extraordinarily broad definition of art to include something that makes no sense at all.

Reality, on the other hand, can sometimes be quite random or without apparent sense. Or at least it is so complex as to defy any attempt to make sense of it. And we accept this. Not to say that there are not things in reality that have exquisite design and make total sense. Just that we do not reality to the same “standard” as we do fiction.

In some way, the artist is always trying to make sense of something, whether it be reality or their imagination. The degree to which they are successful at this at least partially defines the success of their art.

In a Land Far, Far Away…

Nova, 10 x 10″ Acrylic, Spackle on Illustration Board

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all sciences.”

– Albert Einstein

Is all beauty mysterious?

What makes something mysterious? Is it just that we don’t understand it? I think there is more to it since I don’t understand many things that I don’t consider mysterious (like why my teenage son won’t get a haircut). In addition to this lack of understanding there is some implied significant meaning to the object in question. There is a sense that if you do figure it out, you will learn something of value. This appeals to our yearning to discover truth in our lives and adds an important dimension to our perception of that mysterious object.

Mystery makes the beautiful more beautiful. It adds a quality of excitement, of greater meaning and potential. It touches our hearts in a way that something beautiful but without mystery does not.

Einstein groups true art and science together in their dependence on mystery. Most of us do not combine science and beauty or art in the same train of thought. And at some level, much of science deals with things without mystery, self-evident facts and processes which seem dry. Consider that there is a lot of art in the world of which the same can be said (I’ve made my fair share!). But at some level, both in art and science, true mystery is encountered from which emerges the true essence of both art and science. Perhaps each are equally capable of teaching us the same truths as we unravel their mystery.

This piece is the second of a series I am working on which I call “Universal Meanings”. In this series I’m exploring form and movement within the void, whether that is external space or our inner consciousness.

Hey, What’s the Story?

Cosmos, 10 x 10″ Acrylic on Illustration Board

“Looking is the end of a painting in my view. If you want a message, go read a novel.”

– Douglas Atwill

First of all, my apologies to those who read my blog for my absence over the last few weeks. I won’t go into the tedious details of the motivation for that truancy – let it suffice to say that many things contributed and not all of them are resolved. But my intention is to saddle back up and rejoin the fray.

The quote above raises the issue of whether a piece of art should tell a story. Much artwork does and many art instructors teach that it must (or at least should). My exploration of non-objective art (such as the example above) has led me to question this view. This type of work doesn’t seem to tell a story or have a message for the viewer. Perhaps the viewer will compose a story in their minds inspired by some aspect of the piece, but I think that in truly non-objective work, this would be pure self-indulgence.

So does a piece like this simply lack some dimension that artwork that tells a story has? Or is it replaced by some other equally compelling quality, perhaps by the very absence of a story? Is the viewer freer to engage with other characteristics of the piece, such as design, color, texture, etc. that may be otherwise secondary to the story?

Are there examples of this dichotomy in other art forms? I think about stream of consciousness novels, such as On the Road [Kerouac] where the story is obscured or not there at all and the focus becomes elements at least one level removed from story or message – emotions, language, character, etc. Or contemporary classical music without a melody or even a recognized tonal scale. Can you think of other examples?

I don’t think that this type art is deficient compared to pieces with storylines or melodies – I think it attempts to elicit a reaction from the viewer (or listener) using different methods and may, in fact, be able to touch us in unique ways.