Matty

Happy Birthday, my friend. Thinking of you today. I always thought I’d see you again…..you are missed.
http://www.mattyluv.com

you made the joy poop out of me

I was asked to judge an art show at a local school a few months ago. They had about 30 artworks and it took me and a staff member a few hours to do the judging. Some of the work had that beautiful, childlike quality that comes from just ‘being’. It doesn’t last into adulthood because it comes from a sense of ‘not knowing’. By the time students get into art classes in high school every last drop of that lovely childlike quality is squeezed out. Things have to start looking like something….there has to be a product. I was fortunate enough to have a pretty good high school art teacher who, for the most part, understood this tragedy. But by the time I got to college the professors made it their personal business to wring it out of me.

Anyway, I got a card in the mail the other day from the students who had work in the show.It has a bunch of comments like "good job", and "thanks" and "you were great", then underneath that bold red comment some kid decided to add an extra ‘o’ above the word ‘pop’ making it ‘you made the joy poop out of me’……love that. See. It’s that wonderful quality of ‘being’….

There's Sandorfi...and then there's me.

I have been revisiting some websites of favorite artists for a little encouragement and inspiration. I had forgotten how powerful Istvan Sandorfi’s work is. Every time I retrun to it, I am again struck and struck hard. It is always just like the first time I saw his paintings all over again. Although I have heard him criticized for some of his techniques (big deal art snobs) I still swear his work to be the most powerful and compelling work of our lifetime. He is weird, too. I like a stereotypical weird artist. And his philosphy makes no sense at all. Amazing work. Looking at other artist’s work usually makes me feel pretty good about mine but Sandorfi’s is the kind of work you see and immediately feel deflated, like a sorry little balloon let go into the wind……

So, I am dug in deep working on "Morpheus" (or "Morpheus Appears as Ceyx to Halcyne"). There is a turning point with a painting when things start to come together as you envisioned them. With each work I learn something new. I aways take the long way, the hard way in a work as I rarely use any references and every element comes exclusively from my mind. I have noticed these elements in my mind to even be improving with each work. I thrive on working that way (though I might have an ulcer to show for it….).
Have a look at some others…..It will be worth your time….

http://www.janeandrews.co.uk

Amazing:
http://www.b-noble.com

Great, but I love his earlier work. He does mostly portraits now:
http://www.yuqiwangart.net

http://www.seancheetham.com/index.html

Narazyzn is a foremost artist from the Non-conformist movement of the late Soviet Union:
http://www.jamesyarosh.com/narazyan_.htm

Van Gogh...in person

Craig and I went to the National Gallery of Art on Saturday. We have figured out that we can park for free over by the tidal basin close to the Jefferson Memorial and walk to wherever we want to go. I guess we put in about seven walking miles in the heat and amongst the tourists.
The initial plan was to see the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit over in the east building. The west building has a Gilbert Stewart exhibit. He is the guy that painted the numerous famous portraits of George Washington including the one on the dollar bill. Right up Craig’s historical alley. He just finished a whole class exclusively about George.

The National Gallery has an impressive permanent collection, though including one too many classical paintings of the Madonna and Child….one can only take so many. I was losing interest among the numerous paintings of naked, full figured ladies and the blank stares of the people passing from one painting to another. Suddenly there through the doorway across the hall I caught a glimpse of what I knew was a Van Gogh. Right up my artistic alley.
I made my way down the wall taking in the magic and noticed a crowd of folks in front of a painting taking photos (I think that’s wierd, by the way). It turned out to be a Van Gogh self portrait, my favorite of all his work. Vincent created more than 2,000 works of art in his short lifetime and the gallery has 19 of those works. I cannot believe they have one of his self portraits. So, I waited my turn slowy moving closer as the snapshooters line got shorter until I was there… a few inches from the painting. I could see the brushstrokes made by the hand of Vincent Van Gogh.

I have always felt that his work had a sense of lonliness and tragedy… a sort of lostness and longing. Even before I ever knew anything about how tragic his life was I could sense it. Those are elements that I don’t see in the works of other impressionists from that so important time in history. Though there were plenty of artists with tragic lives in that era, the evidence just doesn’t come through like it does in a Van Gogh work. Its like bleeding on the canvas. I haven’t experienced this sort of thing often in art.

I stood and sure enough the tears started to seep out of the corners of my eyes. Happened at the High in Atlanta last year, too, at an exhibit passing through that had a Van Gogh self portrait. It’s ridiculous, I know, but the affinity I feel with Vincent Van Gogh is poignant. I wonder if the quickly moving viewers and photographers know anything about this man’s life and the kind of person he was. I wonder if they see more than quaint paintings of sunflowers or hard working people in the fields. I do. The painter Ben Shahn once said, “It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the livingroom wall, but the prospect of having Van Gogh himself IN the livingroom would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout.”
My legs felt like cement standing there making that connection. He was looking at me, I was looking at him. Amazing. It was hard to move on but I move on blessed…..time for Lautrec and dancing ladies……

starting again

…still working on that ’starting over’ thing. Each new beginning is a painful place to be and every time I understand again that I was made to create something out of nothing. I am not happy unless I am in that process. Now that its been over a month with one pencil drawing in between that I lost interest in I feel I am moving into panic mode. I have an idea and a preliminary sketch, but once again I face the birth of only one idea and the abandonment and death of all the others. I hate that.

Mercutio

After intense focus on my last painting, ‘Mercutio‘…eating, sleeping, thinking about it, I am at that place again of starting over. I am very proud of ‘Mercutio‘ and feel I walked through the bone, muscle, blood and skin of that figure under the dense velvet of that robe. I can see it in my mind and almost ‘feel’ the figure. An artist may not live on the success of any work and its time to move on. Beginning again almost always brings depression and struggle, so I have been living in that place for a few weeks now underneath the busyness of life. The business is coming to an end and the faint voice in the distance of that next work is eye to eye with me now demanding to be contended with. Health issues have abounded lately and being one of those folks whose physical state is directly linked to her emotional state I am not winning the victory at the moment. I have learned that it WILL come to me but I have to be reminded not to take this gift for granted thus the fight. I have learned to look at my bodily struggles in the same manner. Health is a gift. The art is a gift. We do not appreciate things that come easily. The seasons of struggle teach us that lesson.

9:30 clu

Rollins, Black Flag 1983 (left) and Ian, Minor Threat (right)(photo Glen Freidman)

Craig and I went to a show at the 9:30 club on Sunday night as sort of chaperones. Along with Atlanta’s Metroplex and CBGB’S the 9:30 is historic as far as being a birthing ground for important music in the last 20 plus years. Walking through the doors was amazing for me. Having been embedded into the scene in the early 80s I learned early on about the existence of the 9:30 club.

Once I tried to explain to the mother of one of our charges my own experience and how I felt seeing Black Flag live for the first time or hearing the Melvins for the first time. These were life changing events for me. As a teenager I always felt like I didn’t belong anywhere and in this community I found a place where people felt and thought as I did. I lived in that community of comrades for many years and still hold to some of the ideas and thoughts.
The punk and underground scenes began as a protest against the overproduced, overly long songs of the 70s. That was the time of the reclaiming of the simplicity of music and the idea it belonged to everyone in a protest against rock stardom. People started their own record companies and pressed their own records and printed their own magazines. Lyrics were about ideas and issues. The hairstyles and clothes were a direct attack on the establishment and being status quo; not being one of the herd. This was a time of do-it-yourself in music and thought. We certainly had our share of boneheads, but it was mostly a positive scene.

Though I did not hear or see anything I haven’t before on Sunday night, I was impressed by the fact that the next generation has embraced this music and that for them it is a totally new thing. The electricity is still in the air. You can feel it as soon as the first chord is struck. You can almost see the energy of the music. And to see a new group of people experience what I experienced (and still experience) is really amazing to see