Category: My Art

What is the Subject?

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This is not a post, its a question. Does that make the question the subject?

What is it? Someone asks, when they see a work of art.

I like what you’ve done, but don’t feels strongly about the subject.

I haven’t given much thought to this, because I thought the question had been abandoned long ago. But having recently heard this raised–the question about the subject, it’s been troubling me. Most of my work has no subject, not one that I think about. But some do. And then, there’s conceptual art–which I haven’t given much thought to in relation to my own. Maybe I should.  Continue reading “What is the Subject?” →

#303 302, 300 .. the static noise of the creative drive.

303 update

#303 84×58 acrylic, oil crayons, roofing paper, duct tape, plastic scrap on plywood

302 6x6 water color & ink on Aquboard

#302 15×15 cm pen & ink, watercolor on Aquaboard

#300

#300 14×8 pen & ink, watercolor, acrylic

I think these 3 are ok. Maybe I’m really an artist? I know that sounds stupid of fishing for compliments, but it’s not about that. This is something internal.. a relentless interior dialog that plays over and over in my mind, in my dreams. And what does it mean, anyway? I ask? Post ‘posterity,’ when we are on the brink of human species suicide? And there’s no way in this capitalist empire of money and death, to find a place where what I do might be seen and appreciated, beyond a few intimate friends. But why does that matter? Isn’t that enough? Why can’t I do what my niece has been doing (160 new pieces in 3 months! and doesn’t care about anything but making art–no matter whether anyone else sees it). As much as I wish in my waking dreams that I could do nothing else–drop everything, just draw and make art–I can’t because I live in this fucking evil world and giving myself to that is part of–informs my art, even as it impedes it and crushes my desires to promote and distribute it. And am I really that good that I should devote so much emotional energy (such a waste!)! Am I even a real artist? And what does that mean, in this post-posterity world where it will all likely be lost, and no hope of future generations recognizing what I’ve done–as if, even if there were, my stuff would be worth saving…
…. you see what I mean?

And no, I can’t still that voice, or stop asking these stupid impossible questions, making these impossible demands on myself and my work–because that voice is but the agitated external manifestation of what drives me, of why I’m doing this. This is the static noise of the creative drive.

Moving Forward by Moving Back

Bridge over Outlet Bass Lake

Bridge over the Outlet, Bass Lake

From December 31, 2012: The Ox

Okay–so it’s arbitrary. A change on the calendar that means nothing but what we want it to. But I like these marker times… not the holiday stuff, which makes me feel profoundly alienated, but days where I can check where I’ve come to on the ascending (or descending) spiral… where I… we… all of us, have come to occupy the same space again, a place–which is not the same at all.
Years ago… pretty sure is was Martin Buber (I was in thrall of him in my 20’s), said something to the effect that ones life is never over so long as one has the capacity to begin again. This year I made one of those life change moves… from a little too expensive efficiency at 13th & Morris in South Philly, to an old, unheated warehouse on N. 2nd St… sharing space and life with some 20 others… all many decades younger.

This was like… and has proved in one other profoundly significant way, a move back by moving forward… or the other way around. I lived in a commune from 1966 to 1970. Here I was again.

At that time, I was painting… in oils. Had many hours and courses in art behind me–from children’s classes at the Art Institute in Chicago… where (like the Nelson-Atkins Gallery in Kansas City years later, I was able to wander the halls and bond with the art as a child… with almost adult privileges. Sunday at La Grande Jatte … was like something in my second living room (all the museums in Chicago were like that, thanks to an unmarried Great Aunt who lived nearby).

I gave it up… for 8 years or so, to make pottery. And then… some dumb ass wish to be respectable (?)… merged with a genuine passion for intellectual pursuits… I gave it up.

After moving into the Ox… even before–the first view from the roof, I knew… that with space to work, and tools. I moved quantum leaps forward by moving back.. this time, without the pretensions, the inhibitions of what it meant to make ‘art.’

In June, I walked to New York from Philly with Occupy Guitarmy.. and everything I saw made me want to go back and start putting things together. THINGS. Objects. Street junk. It was an act of pure pleasure. With no sense at all of where this would take me. But I kept doing it. And found that I was .. surprised, startled… by what was happening. What I was making. It began to sink in… that yeah (still hard to use the word)… I was making ‘art’ … and it was, like .. ok. I mean… maybe better than ok

It’s become an obsession. On a day when I make progress on a piece, or finish one, or begin another… I’m happy! I mean… as happy as I’ve ever ever been in my life! And on days when I don’t… ?

So here I am. End of this arbitrary number (2012)… having begun again. Half way through my 72’nd year. Thinking… this time, it’s to the end. It’s all the way. Maybe… before 2013 has passed… I’ll be able to think of myself as an ‘artist’ without irony, without self-consciousness. Not just all those museum images.. it’s family. Really talented family… never felt quite up to snuff. Mostly, cause I was trying to do what I thought OTHERS judged worthy. Now… I’ve found my own way. I’m so glad I lived long enough.

Art in Service of the Empire…

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When I’m intensely involved on new art, the pleasure expands way beyond the time spent physically working on a piece. I walk down the street, imagining what I can do next, experimenting in my mind. I try this color combination and that, discard one idea and take up another. Thinking in both images and words, and not quite either, the one flipping to the other and back again. Then when I get back to the easel, it’s all visual.

I feel somewhat conflicted. I love painting… working with color, but it takes money and space. I see work in museums that I admire, but am deeply troubled. They belong to the elite. The monied elite. They are the property of those who would own every THING and every ONE, who are destroying our public schools, growing fat on their perpetual wars, privatizing every last vestige of the public commons and with it, any sense of community not owned and made serviceable to their interests.

I’ve looked at paintings I’ve done, and destroyed them—because I could imagine them on the walls of corporate board rooms. . I play with the idea that I might go back to doing nothing but constructions… and that, with materials I find… not even Modpodge. Wire and nails from the street and junk yards. What kind of artist am I, that I depend on working within the supply and material conditions of a system I despise?

How am I any better–pining for a nice well lit studio–than those capitalist feeders who produce huge expensive works with grants and contracts gained by doing stuff to entertain the Empire’s ruling class?