zip | zen for tv

Movin' through Art with Modern mystic Barnett Newman to Fluxus punk Naim June Paik. Will painting ever regain the transcendental overtones of yore? Where is painting taking us? How does it transform us? Wrong questions?

Pencilove, 3 The Pet Edition

Miso, on the kitchen floor watching Omeed run from one end of the house to the other.

Jake, trying to sleep on a pillow in the sun while Omeed swats at my pencil.

Omeed

To Whom it May Concern:

Steven LaRose, Vain Repetitions, 2008
An array of paint on wood laminate
20 x 16 inches

James Elkins, What Painting Is (page 187 +):
"That is what perfect painting is: neither entirely dull water and stone, nor weightless representation. Not merely a wooden panel coated with cracked and abraded paint, nor entirely a madonna and child. Or as Rembrandt, not just a slather of oil, nor simply a face."

This weekend Eva Lake fluttered through town on her way to court gallery representation in San Francisco. I suspect that I have never blogged about "the hustle" because it is so remarkably awkward.

Maybe I should.

Eva has been forced to become a traveling road show out of the back of her car.

Elkins again: "Perfect painting is imperfectly transcendent. Less interesting painters do not know what to do with the choice between substance and illusion."

Eva does not use tape. I have only met her a handful of times and already I suspect that Eva's seismic paintings accurately represent a portion of her psyche. Shit. Is that a truth? Do our paintings act as extensions ? ? ?

Regardless, this is my favorite photograph of Eva and one of her paintings from this afternoon. But wait, Eva's clean-edged organic-minimalism is balanced and amplified by her collage work. Her collages are kept in a separate folder.I had to ask permission to touch this one:
Fuckin' brilliant. I hope that the collage pictured above never sells so that I can trade with Eva.

"When paint is compelling, it is uncanny: it hovers on the brink of impossibility, as if nothing that close to incorporeality could exist. "

Pencilove, 2

Strathmore just introduced a 6" square pad of bristol paper. I thought I might try to draw something every day for a spell. Zaida cleaned out her toy box recently and she was going to sell most of her small plastic figurines at a yard sale (she is trying to generate enough money to pay for her half of a Wii). I spray painted a couple the of animals satin black.

While I was drawing, Zaida worked on her house that she is making our of tongue depressors and hot glue. Note the summer jammys still on at noon!
While I was drawing I had to keep reminding myself of a long list of instructions. The major points included: 1) Look at the big picture first, or draw the dog before the fleas, 2) Look at the negative shapes in order to orchestrate the edges and, 3) Don't give up.

It was a wonderful bit of exercise I suppose, but ultimately un-enjoyable. The next drawing however, had me enchanted from the first spontaneous mark.

Pencilove, 1

The Adventures of Picasso via Mona

Those darn Sweeeeds.

Steven LaRose, Kirby, 2008
An array of paint on quarter inch mahogany (or birch)
20 x 16 inches

Steven LaRose, Her Tempestuous Affair with Lord Byron
15.75 x 11.75 inches, Various paints on luan

Wait for it. . . .

Pendulous Parameters Aside

Animation takes a lot of work. I watched this one with hilarious respect:



Our family only just read Shaun Tan's The Arrival. Four years in the drawing. Eddie Campbell does the best review. . . almost two years ago.

It is too bad that so much beautiful attention to detail can be devoured so quickly. A book like this should have a place on the wall. Maybe they will in the future. Can you imagine flat-screen graphic novels?

My only complaint is the faux aging shtick. I still can't figure out why a patina gives something integrity.

Crater Lake Blue

Marc Snyder riffs on the previous two posts, ". . . does growing up in a world where drawing seems like an exotic practice of an eccentric few affect the future artist?" His post reminds me of an earlier post I did in which I proclaimed, "The Debit Card was the Signature's Fatal Straw."

Oh yeah

Compared to the first Hot Wheel, I didn't spend as much time painting this reclining nude. The photograph seems a little fuzzy, and yet, it might be the painting. Regardless, the comment section of the previous post made it all worth while. I am glad that Mary Klein chimed in because her paintings are the cat's meow. Currently, I would like to pass the baton over to Mary Addison Hackett and her comment section.

My back burners have been boiling over and I need to act on some fecund collaborations. Timothy Buckwalter sent me several beautiful acrylic ink drawings and I've only been able to add the radiating lines to the sketch below (the actual drawings are still pristine).
For the following image, I am imagining something like the penciled spirit/face I doodled in the upper right.
I am measuring what I can add to Timothy's already pithy drawings.

Anthony Castro sent me some painted starting points and I have taken them this far:
I'll send them back to him this week and wait with bated breath as he adds another flourish.

The family went for a hike today.

Painting

If I had more time, I would have made this blog-post shorter, linear, and clearly to a point.

Blogging is making me itchy lately. Painting seems more important.
My blog. I can do whatever I want. Mwah-ha-ha.

It all started with a recent blog-post, that was loosely composed around Stacy's trip to Portland. I didn't mention that she went to Powell's and bought me James Elkins' What Painting Is
I've only read the first three chapters (and the last paragraph) and I can already tell that if I am ever allowed to teach a painting class again, I will include the introduction and first chapter as required reading. And yet, I wonder if non-painters will revel in the alchemical connections. I wonder if everyone will understand the "mystery and attraction of pure, nameless substances." When it comes to translating that essence to a classroom, I need all the help I can get. Painting is something infinitely more than the scab of an image represented. Not only is painting akin to alchemy, it shares nuances with cooking. Or, more precisely, the freestyle make-or-brake concoctions of left-over cooking. I'll never be able to reproduce my meal above. As Elkins says, "Alchemy is the art that knows how to make a substance no formula can describe." I created my dinner with intuition, not knowing what the end result would taste like.

Mary Addison Hackett recently tried to paint with a representational goal in mind.
She writes of the endeavor: "I wish I knew what goes through the mind of someone who's painting something that looks like something. Like what's their motivation or reward for finishing?"

This question is timely for me because blogger Ms. Brazil recently commented: "Ok- I have been driven to say this- you aren't going to like it. . . You have an amazing ability (gift) to render- and with soul- its not cold and clinical- that's where its at. Just say no to abstraction and conceptual art."

I have always struggled with the "gift".
It implies an external power, like the power of flight or invisibility, that should be used for good or is wasted on evil. It suggests that the "gift" is a clear-cut absolute that is to be wielded with pride.

Alchemists and Painters "wrestle every day with materials they do not comprehend and methods they can never entirely master" (from the last paragraph of What Painting Is).Mary helps articulate my ambivalence towards representation when she continues, "My reward is along the lines of, "Hey cool, that vaguely resembles what I intended it to look like." Inevitably followed by, "Now what?" Decisions seem to be predestined to a certain extent and then it's over. I mean, there was some excitement to it. But it happened so quickly. There was no anxiety, no "I have no idea what I'm doing," no sense of being lost, not millions decisions to negotiate, etc. Some play, quite a bit of spontaneity, even, but it didn't challenge me in the same way that abstract painting challenges me."

James Elkins calls these challenges "nearly indescribable requirements: the precariously balanced viscosity of the pigment, and a nearly masochistic pleasure in uncomfortable, unpredictable twists and turns."

Tonight James Lavadour opened a show at Southern Oregon University's Schneider Museum of Art. In triple digit temperatures, I peddled (update: I pedaled) my bicycle to the opening. I have been anticipating this tightrope walker's exhibition of paintings all summer. Of course, we weren't supposed to take pictures.
My emotions are mixed. His surfaces are too glossy for my present tastes. His palette is dangerously Antique Mattel. He uses the same wood-graining tool over and over again. His paintings are gorgeous.

It all started with a recent blog-post, that was loosely composed around Stacy's trip to Portland. I've been prepping some surfaces for a new suite, and in the meantime, I have been painting some tiny paintings of Hot Wheels.Bill Gusky: "That Hot Wheels car was the best in my neighborhood. Anyone who had it was the object of envy and pilfering."

Joanne Mattera "BTW, I meant to e-mail you to tell you that I laughed out loud at the picture of your wife's shoes juxtaposed against the hot rod. You've somehow defined the male id for the Thinking Horny Guy--not a T or A in sight."

Chris Rywalt "I'm pretty sure I had that Hot Wheels car, or one a lot like it. One of my favorites."

mindsprinter (aka Rebecca Szeto) "Truly uncanny about them hot wheels. "

Pure Abstractions coming soon. . .

Yin and Yang

I apologize for the pet barrage.
I can't seem to get enough of their cross-species relationship.

But Seriously

I apologize for not maintaining a constant bloggerrhea. The past couple of weeks I have been busy with CRACK (Conceptual and Radical Art Classes for Kids). As a final project we appropriated the work of Yves Klein and combined it with the work of William Wegman
and our reading about grids at the website radical art in order to make seven panels that will eventually be sewn together as a back drop for the local elementary school's performance space.

Full Of It

In no particular order:

There is this plant that grows behind a rock
On the other side of our house
Whose waxy leaves repel water just so.

Once again, Zaida surfed a float in the Independence Day parade.

Bugs. . .
Our kitten died. . .
Is that normal?

That cat is something else (and very much alive).

The following video is primarily for the hardcore process monkey junkies.

First a run through the sprinkler and then back to her watercolor self portrait. Zaida eventually felt that the details became boring towards the end and the piece didn't evolve much further than what you see above. How does one teach the importance of plowing through the monotony? What about the idea that the fear of making a mistake is actually an exhilarating challenge? Those seem to be our future hurdles.

sumi-ahora

Parallel Verses