High and Low Perspectives

"Sisters on a Walk"

(Click on image to see accurate size of drawing)

(Details)

They walk in different worlds of thought.

One learns through the insight of others 

(The thoughtful folks on the right).

One learns through personal experience

(The swimmers and ship on the high seas).

The Subversive Intent

                         Wishful thinking:

                         Draw/paint beauty to capture it.
                         Draw/paint horror to tame it.
                         Draw/paint ugliness to deny it.
                         Draw/paint humor to transcend it.
                         Draw/paint life to understand it.

Listening

Revelation

(Go ahead, get in my face, click on me.)

Portrait of the Inside Going Out

A portrait of the inside doesn't necessarily make sense,

until it does.

I just found the photo below which shows the connections 

I'm referring to in my Nov. 1, 2012 post.

 No, I didn't paint those similar shapes consciously.

Yes, this is part of the fun I have with my art:

I often don't know what I'm painting until there it is, 

revealed somewhere along the way.

It's usually a musing case of "ah, so this is what this is."

Then I execute the project with as much intelligence as possible,

bending the brush to fit my philosophical needs.

Madame Bona was a great one for self gifting. See that secret smile? That was her best gift to herself: an attitude that life was always worth living with style, even when style was reduced to sucking a martini through a straw. 

My painting, above, is not about this delightful self aspect. It is instead about her inner questionings... what she went through before the cocktail hour.

"Suspended"

(detail)

Turn Up the Music, Art Man

This "Guitar Player" drawing is just a tiny bit larger than what you see here. If I had a better pen nib and some older ink, I would have made the image even smaller still, so at first glance one sees mostly just gray wiggles of an unrecognizable form. Background music.

In real life the audience uses a magnifying glass to look closer at the drawing. Here you get to just click on the image to magnify, to turn up the volume. Notice the high notes, low notes, different harmonies, introduction of new instruments, sweet melodies ... What used to be background music is now an enveloping world of experience and energy, perhaps even insight.

Below is a different kind of music.

Graceful Dance in the Dark

Pulling out of a depression is similar to moving to a new country. The trick is to embrace the new language and customs with as much grace as possible. Though difficult to find, one can buy grace at most stores, especially at the one located two freckles to the right, three forward, one back, two to the left and two back of your funny bone. Price: a drop of effort and a look outside the box.

Finding Purpose

Inevitable.

Anatomy of a Drawing of Drama - Anger

Map for

"View from Below" (below)

The Theater is Us

 "View from Below"

The beast within snarls awake,

pulls and pushes for quick release.

Look down.

Attack.

Fear disintegrates.

Attack.

Nothingness.

The beast within snarls awake,

pulls and pushes for quick release.

Look up.

Stop, breath, think.

Fear disintegrates.

Breath, think, climb.

Sublime.

~

Dedicated to those who are newly lost 

and to those who have new loss, 12/2012.

Greed / Disaster / Fear / Control / Rebirth / Humor / Bliss

 "The Fool and the Phoenix"

This is one of my "I've got to say it all, damn it!" paintings. How in the hell can anyone even attempt to capture the complexity of this world?  ... By doing just that, putting oneself at the bottom, in Hell, and working upwards.

Fully Involved with the Art of Other

I recently saw a film about a naturalist, Joe Hutto, who lived a year pretending to be a wild turkey (the bird). Early in the story, it became clear that the human in the story was more excited about being a turkey than about being a human. He fell completely into the art of turkey behavior, learning how to speak turkey jibberish (NOT jibberish!), to walk or run at turkey speed, to eye turkey food with intent, and even to slumber in turkey nappishness.

The fabulous secret to this man's success (for it was so great a success that he even adopted turkey fighting skills) was this naturalist's ability to lose himself into the identity of other. What art have you seen, heard, tasted, or read that pulled you into this sense of other... where you realize that the artist has not only lost him/herself completely into creating the scene, but also had the talent to take you out of yourself and into this "otherness".

Music, sculpture, visual arts, film, theater, artful food, literature. Some mediums make the transition easier than others. Which are the most difficult? Why? What do the best artists and the turkey naturalist have in common? Where do you use this behavior in your own life?

Jump into the Bouquet, Taximan

This world is a beautiful but tragically messy place, no doubt about it. Ugliness can be seen anywhere if one opens one's eyes. (Pardon me while I take time out to remember the signs of terror I've seen in  desperate rodents, large animals, strangers/friends/relatives, myself...) I look at art as a means for accepting the chaos and for hopefully turning the mess into beauty.

"Unfolding Bouquet", below, is a tribute to the magnificence of the cycles of life and death. This world is an extremely complicated place full of all types of perception, but when one steps back, it's really just a blossoming bundle of fertility.

One can get good at sock skating around the house.

Transformations

"Unfolding Bouquet"

Recently the atmosphere at my studio art complex went through a hell period when the City Council acted aggressively and disrespectfully. Many artists eventually lost their studios, including me. I had lost my home two years earlier, and lost my studio three times this particular year. While I also underwent strange physical losses, my spirit entered a state of detached emotional strength that I had no idea I was capable of. The above painting came out of the worst time of my physical and emotional chaos. A fellow artist who was losing his own studio saw this painting and reacted with a surprised "It's so happy!"

Humans have a remarkable ability to survive, no matter how heavy the load.

The Art of Getting Through It

It is possible to see beauty anywhere at anytime,
even in the midst of danger...

as long as we're sane, that is.

(And hopefully we survive the distraction.)

(Theater set ~ San Mateo High School)

Elusive Truth

"Meditation with Pink Fish"

(Private Collection)

Today someone posed a difficult question.
It took me over an hour to come to some type of an answer.
The answer is in ongoing movement, itself, defined by the elements of time and change.

We do slip through the minutes, hours, days, years, being influenced by the currents.
Of course the answers change.

Chasing the Maddening Muse

I live with a man who chases birds, and since I like being with the guy I end up chasing the birds, too. I'm the driver, the "Parnelli-Toldi", the one who keeps my eyes on the road instead of in the trees, shrubs, telephone wires... ditches, ponds, lakes. Bird watchers go everywhere. I mean Everywhere! If there's a small road, he's been on it. Maybe I've been on it.

There's only one place I refuse to go back to. That's the Salton Sea... in the summer... especially at night. I met a black widow there, in the out house, belly up, right at calf level. Later a drunk truck looped d-looped one foot from our tent. The lake was full of dead fish. Disgusting aromas filled the air. My brain banged and banged and banged with pain. No. I'm never going back.

Never-the-less, when I google Salton Sea images, I find a gold mine of beauty, tragic and strangely uplifting. It is difficult to simply enjoy the Salton Sea. It engenders great passions of hate, despair, fear, pleasure, and frustrated hope. And ultimately, awe. Man made this disaster. Nature frames it in mirrors of sunlight, warmth, and reflected glory. Push ~ pull ~ push ~ pull.

Take notes. This is where migraines are made and revelations hit us at our core. I will never go back, but the Salton Sea is never far from me.

Fish Game Inspected

(detail)

I have always known that seeing as much as I do can be both an aye and a nay factor. What I am now wondering is if the swimming along is easier for those who see more, or for those who see less... or is it as complex an experience for us all, regardless of how clearly we see?

There are thorns on the stems of those beautiful roses that we admire from afar. Looking closely reveals the danger. We can keep ourselves safe... or we can stick in our hands and find life itself.

"Gossip Waiting for a Juicy Story"

(Private Collection)

(Take a chance, click on fuzz ball)

Love in Art: Simple or Complex?

"Familiar acts are made beautiful through Love," so it is said.
I'm in thorough agreement here, and so it is easy to look around to see whom I love lightly, and perhaps, deeply.

It's the mustached guy with the toothbrush in his mouth, and it's the guy with the hat who bobs his head left and right every step he takes. It's also the guy who says, "good morning" in the same tone every day, clear-eyed, not knowing me at all.

It is the cat-like silhouette of a woman, jogging down the street. It is the girl with the long, long legs in the public bathroom, who looks in the mirror with eyes that might have been innocent yesterday. It is the gal who bares her chest at the trash collector and laughs and laughs and laughs as she quickly winds her way back down the street, to her home, to her young son, to her husband. It's that laugh that brings love, and the daredevil attitude. "I am alive!" she yells. She is.

When we make art every line we draw, every stroke we paint, every conscious or unconscious step, comes from a place similar to this sense of appreciation. It's basically looking at the world within and without oneself, and admitting "You, out there, whatever you are, I might love you or I might hate you (war imagery) but I also respect you, honor you... because you are real and you are fascinating."

There's no room for embarrassment here. No room for low cuts about sentimentality. In the deepest form of art there is nothing but that experience of monumental connection with the subject, product be damned. It is the wealth of the universe that some artists are actually able to convey this depth of connection, through their art, to the people around them. It is the luck of the universe that some of these people perceive.

No Wiggle Room

We are in this together, you, me,
and the guys outside our cave entrance.
We always have been here, set in stone,
stressing and shifting our bones, hoping for more room.
The only difference between then and now
is in how I listen, inside, deeply.

Ooops!

Living in the Painting

Where we are right now shifts our perspective on viewed art.
Usually I suspect that warmth will soon break through somewhere in this cool painting.

At this moment, though, a torrential rain/wind storm is beating a cold and wet tattoo on my west facing windows. I turn to look inside this painting and see/feel a matching atmosphere.

"Beyond the Tempest", in reality, references changing weather patterns of sun, fog and rain on the Big Sur coast as well the crisp, icy coldness I found when traveling in Alaska. In my mind, and on canvas, I enjoy merging these localities, creating a somewhat abstracted world view about weather. Can people in England relate to the weather in this painting? Japan? Siberia?