ArtHouse23

More than 100 years ago Michelin, the French travel-guide company, began. In 1931 it instituted a star rating system to identify a select few restaurants that exhibit culinary excellence. These restaurants are considered special enough to note when planning a trip.Starred restaurants are considered the finest in the world. Three Stars–the best, indicates “Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.”

Most Michelin starred restaurants are still found in France and in a few cities in Europe. (The reviewers didn’t come to the states until 2005 and then only to New York, Chicago and the Bay Area.) When it comes to well-prepared food (and probably everything else), the French are pretty sure that they do it best. Yet a somewhat modest restaurant in Modena Italy, Osteria Francescana, has been awarded Michelin Stars three different times. The last time it was awarded three stars.  In 2009 it was ranked 13^th in the world.  In 2014 it is number three.

Osteria Francescana’s Massimo Bottura is a chef who expects his food to express or “to transfer” emotions. He says, “For me, culture is at the heart of the Italian kitchen and the kitchen is at the heart of our culture. I like to tell stories through ingredients and traditions that inform the flavor and bring it to life.”

He also is intensely interested in innovation which stems primarily from an openness to whatever might occur in the process. He believes that to leave space for the unexpected is crucial for cooking great food (and for making great art).

He defines himself as someone who grew up in the land of fast cars and slow food. He learned to do things, as he describes, very quick and very slow—”That means to have a quick thought, but do it slowly.” The two traditions set up a tension, a duality–sounding more and more like art.

Osteria Fancescana and perhaps Massimo Bottura are most famous for one particular dessert—Oops, I Dropped the Lemon Tart! The story goes that he and his pastry chef were about to serve dessert to a Japanese chef who was renowned for his fantastic technique.  They had been very nervous throughout the meal but so far everything had gone well.  When they went to plate the dessert the pastry chef dropped one of the two lemon tarts, made especially for the illustrious diner, half on the plate and half on the counter. The pastry chef “was ready to kill himself”. Bottura says:  “Don’t kill yourself, look at that!  It’s so beautiful, it captured the moment– That is the poetry in everyday life. If you keep that space open for poetry….from all the obligations…you can imagine a beautiful, broken lemon tart.  So we rebuild that imprecision, that imperfection in a perfect way.” The plating of that dessert became an international icon.

Working with emerging artists, especially the newer ones, the idea that expectations need a lot of room around them for the unexpected is often the most difficult to master. They rush from one point to the next without taking time to notice what may be beautiful in a new way and what may express a moment of authenticity. (And getting some distance in order to see.)

I think sometimes the sting of falling short of an expectation when you want to do something so badly causes a rush to judgment that can destroy the seeds innovation and truth. And it discourages the artist who can then turn away from the endeavor.

Let the idea come fast, but let the process be slow. Leave room for the poetry and the uniqueness of the moment to reveal itself.

He goes on to say that “art is the highest way to communicate the point of human thought. Art makes the invisible the visible”. That takes awareness and awareness takes times.  So the next time you shutter at some unplanned splash of paint or some awful bit of drawing resist rushing to “fix” it.  Let “oops” be a cue to the next good thing.

To hear an interview with this insightful chef- http://www.charlierose.com/watch/60460952

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.” (Writer, Lin Yutang)

“Color drives me wild!” I had the misfortune of uttering those words during an interview with a reporter from our local, small town newspaper. She was covering the opening of my first one person exhibition sometime in the late ‘80’s.  Of course the editor captioned the large photo that accompanied the article with that quote.  Humiliation. Not  only because it sounded pretty silly for a serious artist, or at least someone who wanted to be a serious artist, but because it was perfect fodder for some of my buddies who have continued to torture me with it even some thirty years later with their hilarious mocking.

The statement rose out of the depth of passion for something to do with paint and paintings that I didn’t fully understand at the time. What I knew was that when I looked at the opulent, velvety ultramarine blue as it butted up against a blend of a Marc Rothko warm red/orange, I swooned.  And the play of violet and yellow in Van Gogh’s Sower made my heart skip a beat.  And the endless, uncontrollable aquamarine that floats through Monet’s Water Lilies made my knees weak.  Yes the use of color can be powerful.

The sentiment is something I hear often from novice painters. And rightly so.  I mean COLOR is a seductive siren. Used to its full advantage it can make fools of us all.  Scientifically proven to impact human physiology and mental state, color has a powerful subconscious effect on our perceptions, on how we feel, choices we make and even how we behave. (No wonder we will pay so much for a tube of paint.) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/10767459/Seeing-red-The-mind-bending-power-of-colour.html

It’s a powerful tool for the painter. But it requires some restraint and a little knowledge and most of all it is best used with a proper respect paid to value.

Value, the difference between light and dark, is what defines form.  It tells the viewer if the subject has volume or is flat. It shows where the light source is located, and how bright it is and that in turn speaks to the relationship of where the viewer is relative to the scene or the subject. And it describes what kind of texture the surface of the subject has. It can also reference time.

Values create the visual structure of an image. Remember Notan–(http://www.amazon.com/Composition-Understanding-Notan-Color-Instruction/dp/048646007X )—the harmonious interaction between (essentially) black and white. It is achieved by reducing an image to its lightest lights and darkest darks—no mid-tones, no graduated blending of value.

So I have a challenge for you this week to see color as value. We’ll be revisiting a familiar image, but instead of deconstructing and rebuilding, we’ll let the structure stand and instead interpret the value as color. Not to the extreme that Notan does, just enough to see the different values in an image as a color and see if you can end up with a structure similar to the source material.

Since mixing color is complex and borders on scientific- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory , (fodder for continual exploration), I suggest that you set out to learn a “favorite” mix each week and use it repeatedly.  I still remember when I first glazed  or mixed Golden pthlao turquoise and Nickel Azo Yellow.  It indeed drove me wild……

Over forty artists submitted more than 180 paintings to the upcoming show. As we laid them out along the walls, which they would eventually inhabit, folks trickled into the office.  Amidst the smell of coffee and morning chatter we could hear the reviews coming in: “so exciting”; “the art show is favorite time of year”; “It bring so much life to the place!” And over and over again we heard: “the work gets better every year”.  Indeed.

What the office-dwellers cannot know, that we know, is that most of the work in the show is from the artists of ArtHouse 23. And that much of it was created in our Big Yellow House studio. And that very often the subject being painted was exactly the same. They probably can’t imagine how rare that it is for a group of people to work together, exploring the same ideas and images in the same place at the same time with basically the same materials and have them expressed so differently.

I read recently in someone else’s blog—the Accidental Creative- “Since the early days of the podcast we’ve closed off with the phrase ‘cover bands don’t change the world – you need to find your unique voice if you want to thrive.’” Thrive—isn’t that a good goal? Not to produce, not to make money, not to get famous, not to get acceptance, not to get gold stars, but to thrive. I love all that that implies.

If the unique, creative expressions on the walls in the large, gray office building are any indication, there’s some “thrivin’” goin’ on! Congratulations to all!

It’s not easy to know if, when and how we might find our voice. And to complicate things, if one is thriving, it is changing. Keeping it authentic takes paying attention. Being in tune with your rhythms, your likes and dislikes, what prompts strong emotions—anger, love, tears, laughter, what piques your curiosity, etc. all contributes.

If you could be dropped anywhere in the world, where would it be? What time of day would it be? What would you want to see? What would you want to hear? Is it peopled or are you alone? Are there ocean waves in the background or beeping horns? Do you want to paint the air, the earth, or you ancestors?  Those are only some of the questions that might lead to an answer or two.

I think it’s more an endless search than a goal, a never-ending story that connects with others. The act of painting facilitates.  Telling the world, or just a small piece of it, or more importantly yourself, who you are is just part of the process.

This morning over coffee Otis wanted to show me something about a gadget’s new operating system. I wanted to say shush, I’m feeling things….but I didn’t. The hyper-sensitive world I visit fairly often is best kept between me and the canvas and you who care to read this. It’s not appropriate to let moods spill out on the breakfast table.

It’s hard for me to hold back when the rush of time past blows so hard that nerve endings feel receptive to every slight temperature fluctuation and any subtle waft through the window. Acuity picks up patterns and reflection usually ignored. And the familiar smell of coffee, or flower blossoms, or holiday evergreens can bring flashbacks of people and places like a Lennon and McCartney song, along with the appropriate lump in the throat.

I’m not always sure what prompts this intensity. Sometimes the trigger is the seasons’ change or a movie and sometimes it’s a big life event, like a wedding or a birth, or when tragedy strikes.   When the emotions swell and memories make meaning of past and present connections of bits of time string together, often out of order, but still with a sense of endurance.

I know what jewels these are. I refuse to let them pass unnoticed. Even if I don’t take the time to properly pick them up, I must regard them.

This is when my whole arm itches to hold a brush and snatch the emotion as the mind’s eye images slide by. With the only agenda to express, it’s like scratching an itch– all other outcomes be damned. Ahh, the pleasure that comes from squeezing a tube of paint

Recently, Susan challenged me by offering me a “prize” if I could paint a painting without a horizon line, something I rely on when I’m not sure what to paint. The challenge was clearly about a good time. And the only pressure I felt was speed so I could see what my prize was as quality was not a criteria. The collage box was close by and in addition I grabbed a couple of handy baskets of paints, so my palette was limited to yellows and neutrals.  A red found its way into the mix, but other than that there was little other color available to me.

The under-painting was some demonstration piece that was comprised of a lot of dark so my first step was to collage a green patterned piece of whitish paper on the surface. Next came a response that was more of the same to balance. The shapes were simple but complimented each other. Soon a familiar profile of a sail had my mind racing in the sun and a repeat pattern was added for unity. I felt pretty satisfied with the piece within the hour.  Subsequent viewings in all directions held my interest.  Yes it’s a painting.  I got my prize—Susan knows me well.

When the urgency to create has nothing to do with exhibiting, selling, or gold stars, it’s remarkable how easy the paints can dance.

So when you’re struggling with a piece to which you’re heavily invested put it aside. Get out a scrap of paper or an old painting. Gather. Give yourself limits—time, palette, etc. Require that you use something– an element, a material, a color– that you never use. Forget the ideas and the outcomes– just start.  Feel. Let images from the most impactful times in your life show up on the page—a door, a meadow, the color of your favorite stuffed animal.  Mix it all up. Deconstruct and rearrange.  Get mad, if that’s appropriate and paint like it. Let tears blur your vision. Or paint things that make you laugh.  Be quick and intense, have fun and be daring. And keep going until either it begins to coalesce or it’s time to tear it up.  And even then—tear it in fours and see if the pieces can be put together in a new way, or perhaps become completed, smaller  pieces—if not, toss it.

The real prize is to know you can paint again another day.

Have you ever dreamt a painting? Some dreams can be so real that the details of locations and how people look, what they’re wearing and the light, temperature and weather can be clearly seen and felt. Dialogue can be memorable.  I’ve had dreams in which I can clearly see fabulous artwork.  Sometimes I’m in a gallery or a museum and sometimes it’s my studio or another artist’s studio, or even a restaurant.  And sometimes paintings just float past while the plot unravels like Renee’ Magritte or Salvador Dali just stopped by.  The artwork is never famous or familiar—never anything I’ve seen before—but it is strong and vibrant and sometimes I can almost remember what it looks like after waking.  Instead of being exhilarated the feeling is often one of amazed disappointment– something like “why can’t I paint like that?”  Then I realize—I  did.  Those colors and shapes and lines and that arrangement were all in me.

That’s the truth of it, I believe. The paintings are there to be discovered.  But not like pre-packaged cereal on the grocery store shelf.  They are in the raw ingredients, inside heart and mind and spirit. They result from gathering experience, recall and reaction.  They are there in snippets and snags, sometimes they are rolling waves of idea and inspiration. Sometimes they hide like a tear caught in the throat that comes as a surprise.  They can hang like over ripe fruit just ready for picking or skitter and scurry like a tiny mouse, almost impossible to snatch.

I like the grocery store metaphor. Some go shopping with a list and buy what’s needed to prepare the pre-planned menu for the week. Some concentrate on what’s on sale, acquiring bargains that hold little imagination. Some go shopping when they’re so hungry that everything quick regardless of nourishment gets chosen. But imagine going to the grocery store with plenty of time, plenty of money and a sense discovery, walking up and down the aisles wondering how flavors differ, how the chemistry works, what can be put with what —tasting possibility, willing to throw things in the cart and take risks making new combinations. See yourself as a chef, or a magician, willing and ready to use all that you know about everything and apply it to a cart full of ingredients which are both familiar and frightening. See yourself as a master, knowing not all experiments will work but who cares—you’re magic. You don’t need your ego to be protected with constant success. Eventually your unique skills—those that only you can possess—will prevail. Be willing to “see” that.

There was a story in the New York Times awhile back about Melanie Thersmtrom, author of The Pain Chronicles. She shares her experience of real-time functional neuroimaging that allows subjects to interact with the brain itself. (also part of a recent Radio-Lab story 8/27/14)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14pain.html?_r=0

It’s bio feedback of sorts, but instead of imagining constant, burning pain as something positive like lying on a beach of warming sand, (which only temporarily helped) she instead found that if she could see herself see herself as the one at the switch of her brain functions she could make the pain go away. The proper brain state created a loop: watching herself thinking her thoughts, thinking her thoughts and watching herself watch herself, etc.. The longer she could watch her brain do what she wanted it to do the more it did just that. Like affirmations on steroids.

So try It.  Try seeing yourself as a creator, the master of your “grocery cart” and “kitchen” and dreams. See yourself as one who has something to make, even though you may not be sure of what that is yet. Watch it. Watch yourself be creative watching yourself in your mind’s eye…..  When the work looks like sludge, resist despair. Welcome your power to change it into something rich and wonderful as you watch yourself watch it unfold.

From a poem Derek Walcott—Love after Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

The day is perfect.  You are on a journey, or at a museum, or in a park. Nature, or stirring works of art surround you, or the gritty patina of an historical place gets under your skin.  Or you are moved by the elderly couple on the bench nearby, or by the cheeks of your child or of your child’s child. Or the smooth roundness of a model speeds your heart rate.  In other words you are inspired.  Your emotional reaction to that which you experience rises up inside you and you can’t wait to get to the studio.

Alas, there you are with an hour or so in front of you, your basket of colors just waiting to dance—all the tools and all of the time and the urge is mounting. And then you move forward with some drawing, some rendering, some marks, or some paint. And everything you put on the canvas looks like crap to you.

What do you do?  How do you continue to ride the wave of visual stimulation? In our studio I often see and hear what is probably the quickest way to douse the flame–almost immediate denigration–like Bette Davis just walked in the room, as she did in Beyond the Forest, and pronounces “What a ‘mess’!” I’m guilty too as this thought rounds by brain… “After so much inspiration, anticipation, education and opportunity and then THIS– THIS is what comes out? How could you?”

It’s a natural reaction as our ego jumps to defend anything less than momentary brilliance by trying to discount the effort.  In other endeavors slow starts and trial and error over time are acceptable.  But somehow we find it difficult to allow the same when it comes to creating. We either have talent and it must be displayed immediately, or we don’t. That is the common miss-belief. So if the thing in front of you looks like it was taken from the local Montessori, the early years, all efforts are discounted and we doubt the validity of the doing.

To what can that possibly lead in the creative act? Typically the chest tightens around the previous anticipation and it has now become a lump.  The face furrows and frowns. The body slumps and the shoulders tighten. Breathing is shallow and the urge to destroy is hard to resist. Non-attachment that leads to fearlessness is a good thing.  But that “I must not let the world see my folly” move to eradicate is not.  How do you soar when you’ve put this yoke around your neck?

Allow yourself patience.  Practice patience. Patience is not trying harder. Patience is a room for mistakes, for mud and muck and silliness. Patience is a way forward. Let patience muffle that critical voice so possibility has a place.

It is ultimately about changing pace. It’s important to be able to decelerate after the rush of inspiration in order to let the process proceed.  Resist that nose-to-the-grindstone approach.  Drop the obsession to “to get it done”.  You’re not making wallpaper.

Develop strategies that allow you time. Perhaps work on more than one piece simultaneously. Walk around the room every 3o minutes or so. Ask for feedback or advice from more than one person. Look at your work.  Wait until your own eye tells you the next move– not all the next moves. Watch it from the corner of your eye while you do something else.  Put it up with other work, your own and others, not as a comparison, but just to see how it looks in a different context.  Move it around, upside down, etc.—even if it’s a figurative piece upside down can show you compositional flaws. Look at it in a mirror.  Take it to another room. Change the light. Sneak up behind it. Make a cup of tea. I often clean up while “watching” my work.  Or fill my eyes with other art from the books around the room. Not with an analytical approach just a way to shift perspective.

The next component is belief—a simple belief that the mushy, pre-school style rendering in front of you is not a reflection of your ability or your character or anything else.  It is only a seed, a starting point. Have belief that no matter where you start you can and will learn how to do what YOU need to do to say what you need to say. The skill set is attainable if you don’t judge too quickly. Trust things that feel good and when they don’t, be willing to abandon any part or the entire piece.  But wait—wait for an idea for a new approach, wait.  It will come. Make tea.

Below is lifted from an article entitled The Power of Patience published in last fall’s Harvard Magazine:

”The art historian David Joselit has described paintings as deep reservoirs of temporal experience—“time batteries”—“exorbitant stockpiles” of experience and information. I would suggest that the same holds true for anything a student might want to study at Harvard University—a star, a sonnet, a chromosome. There are infinite depths of information at any point in the students’ education. They just need to take the time to unlock that wealth. And that’s why, for me, this lesson about art, vision, and time goes far beyond art history. It serves as a master lesson in the value of critical attention, patient investigation, and skepticism about immediate surface appearances. I can think of few skills that are more important in academic or civic life in the twenty-first century.” Jennifer L. Roberts November-December 2013 Harvard Magazine

A cool, dark theater on a hot day—aahhh.  This past weekend I was fortunate enough to watch a marvelous Shakespearean actor/director conduct a master class in delivering Shakespeare’s lines, aiding the actor in determining what the hell the man was really intending to say.  (Artistic intent)

Most of the three-and-a-half hours was spent discussing why Shakespeare structured his words, phrases and punctuation the way that he did and what that meant to the text as a whole. (Composition) That led to how important it is for the actor to understand how to respond to those internal cues in order to communicate the idea. Art is spawned by internal cues– “emotion” and by ideas, whether overt or not.

What struck me most was how an actor is expected to explore and speak each word, even each syllable, as if the thought is giving rise at that moment.   Imagine what that must mean.  You commit the lines to memory and you may even speak them for dozens of performances, but in order for them to resonate for the audience every time, you must continue to discover while you say them again and again. How fresh, how connected, how present a good actor must be. It’s not like she doesn’t know what happens next, but she must discover the lines anew each time she says them, just like an artist must find each element anew regardless of where it comes from or how often it’s been used.

Shakespeare as playwright was a “creator”, the actor is an interpreter.  The visual artist is generally both.  You imagine, invent, and/or respond. Emotion is crystalized into form. Your job is simply to keep the impetus alive remaining sensitive to the prompts.

As you approach the paper, board or canvas, have a vision, an idea and intent, but stay present like the actor, discovering with each mark, each color choice and each placement. Authenticity and resonance will arise. Be willing to follow an urge even if the likelihood it will turn out is slim.  BUT—and here’s the rub (sorry, couldn’t help myself)—refrain from immediate judgment.  Know that whatever you put down is not necessarily good or bad, it’s simply another element that will need reaction, response, balance, integration, etc. It’s a dialogue.  Keep engaged in it, regardless of your skill set.  Skill WILL come, if you can refrain from judgment long enough to continue the discourse.

Source material always helps to bring me back around when I feel lost.  “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”— Jean-Luc Godard  Perhaps it’s seeing the source material in a new way that works—upside down, inside or/and backwards. Rearrange.

Collage–the art of reinterpreting is a saving grace as skill is developing– “Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The ‘newness’ in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components.”—Carl Jung Collage by its very nature facilitates “newness”. It’s a recombining of that which speaks to us. Look for your cue in everything and speak it “..trippingly on the tongue”  (I know, I know–sorry).

For those who missed last week here is a link to a wonderful video about collage artist,  Eunice Parsons: http://watch.opb.org/video/2292085198/

I followed a circuitous route to get to the idea I want to present this week and the whole thing will likely make you laugh.  But there are strands of truth that I know I picked up on this journey.  It started with a “Brain Pickings” weekly email. (Which is something worthy of exploration, if you haven’t already. http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=1e18e8b3fd&e=3520d26b2b)

In the email the author Rebecca Solnit (http://rebeccasolnit.net/) mentions a quote read to her by a student “…. from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno.”  (Actually, Meno is a dialogue written by “post-Socratic” Plato—but never mind about that.) The quote as the student reported was: “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”  From what I can discern from a little research, (And I really mean a little research) no such quote exists. But regardless, it was all I need to start connecting dots.

The entire conversation in this paragraph is above my pay-grade, but it helps me make a point that I struggle to make again and again and again.  It is something I forget and so regularly need to be reminded of. It goes something like this: Meno asks Socrates to define virtue. Socrates says there is a list of varieties of virtue, no real definition, blah, blah, blah—it gets way more complex than that, but this is not Philosophy Talk. He believed that virtue is not teachable, virtue is within us, and we must find it. (Picasso said: “I do not seek, I find”—ah-huh!) Socrates states: “[A] man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know[.] He cannot search for what he knows–since he knows it, there is no need to search–nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for.”

Think about that—it is the same thing Picasso was so famous for saying.  In the act of real creating, you are creating– you don’t know what you’re looking for. You must find it.

Now to the “miss-quote” attributed to Meno, which I really like no matter who said it: In order to go about finding that thing, the nature of which is totally unknown to you, one must experience transformation. The very act of seeing the same things in a new way can’t help but be transformative at some level.

This is where you will laugh—that led me Collage! –Collage (From the French: coller, to glue:  is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Source- Wikipedia.)

So I got to thinking of how sifting through bits of experience and memory—maybe in the form of actual objects, maybe just in the imagination, maybe in the form of new images that evoke reaction–not seeking anything in particular but responding and recording—noticing what you notice– is a way to find a transformation and confirm artistic intent (which is already there whether you know it or not) and create something new.  It’s time for Collage!

You’re going to love this link: http://www.nga.gov/kids/zone/collagemachine.htm .  PLAY! PLAY! PLAY!

You’re going to likely not love what I propose as an exercise this week. Most of you are working on a piece in progress.  Let that image inform a collage communicating the same idea, emotion, etc.  You may want to gather from stuff at home, as well as use what we have here. Or you may want to canabalize other paintings.  It can be a different size and format, but take the challenge to make it as sophisticated as you can.

Both Leslie and Laura have been working with this concept quite successfully.

The day after my 63^rd birthday is a bit of a melancholy one.  I just heard that a long-time friend, one who is very close to people I love a lot, has 48 hours to live.  He is 63.

The brilliant, gifted, funny, sensitive, lovely, at least as we’ve seen him from the outside, Robin Williams commits suicide today at the age of 63.

My father, who was not like Robin Williams, died at 63.

The news—well, never mind the real news—the financial news has all of us at the age of 63 focusing almost solely on retirement income. My inbox from AARP tempts me to keep my calculator handy– how many hours at how many dollars will it take to not worry.  The financial advisor asks:  “How long do you think you will live—let’s say 90….?” In the meantime the paints dance alone in the dark.  I am not there to guide them. The poetry is silent. Will they stay that way? For how long?  Ninety?

Then a day like the day after my 63^rd birthday happens.  And I feel the waste of so much time—so much focus on fear.

Last week in Ashland I saw the Stephen Sondheim Musical Into the Woods.  “Into the woods to get the thing that makes it worth the journeying…..”

The Proustian message throughout that play is learn who you are. And you have to know what you want in order to do that. “But how can you know what you want till you get what you want and you see if you like it”?

”If you know what you want,

 Then you go and you find it

 And you get it –and you give and you take,

 And you bid and you bargain,

 Or you live to regret it….

 Why you do what you do,

 That’s the point,

 All the rest of it is chatter.

 If the thing you do is pure in intent,

 If it’s meant, and it’s just a little bent,

Does it matter?

Into the woods–you have to grope,

But that’s the way you learn to cope.

Into the woods to find there’s hope

Of getting through the journey.

Into the woods, each time you go,

There’s more to learn of what you know……..

Ann called me this day after my 63^rd birthday to ask me how many paintings I will have for the upcoming show that we’re all diving into again.  Of course I hadn’t thought much about it (I’ve spent too much time with that damn calculator).  But with the bum foot I thought- sure I’ll have some work ready. it’s a great opportunity to focus on painting and to work small.  Then she said she’d put me down for five paintings!!!  FIVE!  What pressure–sweet pressure perhaps?

Exhibiting artwork is an opportunity to find an extension of self. (No, it is not about how to get your framing costs back.) Whether conscious or not, successful or not, resonate or not, your interests, your choices will lead to an accumulation of personal expression. Pay attention. You’re telling yourself about yourself all the time. Listen.

Allow yourself to be inspired by anything.  But don’t choose until it excites.  Then allow for change. If it’s scary, definitely pick it. “You decide what’s good…. out there in the wood.”

”Art is the triumph over chaos.” Writer, John Cheever.

To the point and in honor of Mr. Williams: “We’re not laying pipe! We’re talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand?….Poetry, Beauty, romance love, these are what we stay alive for ….  ‘That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse— That the powerful play goes on and You may contribute a verse.’  What will your verse be? John Keating (Robin Williams, quoting Whitman) The Dead Poets Society

Next year maybe I’ll ask “Will you still need me, will you still feed me…..?”