In Which I Continue My Struggle with Brushes and Paint

A freewheeling and lavishly illustrated post mostly about art but maybe also about other things too... things like Hydra and David Lynch? But I think David Lynch is art too.

I have for a long time struggled with the whole topic of brush strokes in painting. I can see a few of you rolling your eyes with boredom already; I hope I don't lose you so early! I'll try to keep it interesting!

Many painters, especially those who paint realism, make an effort to show NO visible brush strokes at all. For example, have a look at this painting by Ingres:

This approach was pretty much the Norm for hundreds of years before the advent of photography, during which time painting was mostly preoccupied with faithfully documenting life and people. 

Then the camera came along and relieved painting of the obligation to be documentary; painting was suddenly free to be interpretive. Brush strokes went wild and things got impressionistic. There are gazillions of examples to show this, but this Van Gogh that I photographed recently in Amsterdam is as good as any:

When I began to paint a few years ago I couldn't help but notice - on Instagram and Youtube and other places - that loose painting (visible brushstrokes) was considered COOL... it was the way you were supposed to paint. But I could never find anyone to explain WHY. Why are you supposed to paint loosely? I rebelled against this dogma, in part because I don't like dogma, and the idea of doing anything because that's the way you're supposed to do it without understanding why seems weak and stupid to me. Additionally I felt that several of my favorite painters did not adhere to the "Visible Brush Strokes Are Cool" school. These are painters who I felt had something precise, important, and personal to say... painters like Mati Klarwein, Paul Cadmus, and Gottfried Helnwein. 

   

Mati Klarwein

Paul Cadmus

Gottfried Helnwein

These painters, and many others like them, apparently have no interest in loose brushwork... and my interpretation is that they want to say something specific, to convey an idea or a statement, and so loose brushwork would do nothing other than 'muddy' that message, make it imprecise and less impactful. 

BUT NOW, AFTER ALL THIS TIME AND OPPOSITION, I AM STARTING TO OPEN TO THE IDEA OF LOOSE BRUSHWORK. 

Despite the fact that I have never ever anywhere read a compelling defence of loose brushwork (a fact which I find endlessly annoying), I might be starting to see some reasons. (I suppose that after all, it's probably better to come to these ideas for myself rather than reading other people's justifications..)

For one thing, there are times when it just looks better. I find that this is usually in combination with precise brushwork elsewhere in the same image. To illustrate this point I will show - for the first time - a new painting I completed recently:

Initially all the edges in this painting were razor sharp, but at a certain point I decided to make them all intentionally imprecise, with the exception of the edges of the hand. 

This had the effect of bringing the hand 'into focus' in both a photographic sense as well as a psychological sense. And it just looks better than it did when all the lines were sharp. I suspect this might mimic something about the way the human eye focuses on things, making some things sharp and others blurry. (Or is it just the way we have been conditioned to see, based on looking at photographs, with their limited focal range?)

Although I used Helnwein above as an example of someone who tends towards precise brushwork, here is a painting by him... 

... which combines hard and soft edges to focus our attention. I think in this painting he is also using softer brushwork on the faces of the men to tell us something about their character. (This is among my very favorite paintings in the world, certainly in the top three...)

Another key to this discussion comes from something I read by the French painter Bruno Schmeltz, who writes about the importance of the "container being consistent with the contents." What he means by this is that the painting STYLE should match the painting's SUBJECT. The one painter (that I actually like) who most exemplifies this for me is Francis Bacon. 

One of Bacon's many Pope paintings. 

Bacon's eternal and unchanging message was something like "the human condition is characterized by pain, violence, dissociation, and confinement" (my interpretation), and the thing that is so brilliant about Bacon - and what makes him such a successful artist - is that he conveys this message through a perfect concordance of style and subject. The container matches its contents. His contorted grotesque people and his anguished tortured brushwork are both screaming the same thing at the same time. No wonder he is considered among the greatest painters of all time.

I was recently given access to a library of several hundred Christie's auction catalogs. These catalogs feature beautiful extreme closeup photographs of paintings, clearly showing the brushwork. This is something really special that you just simply don't see in ANY other way, not even in most art books. Look, for example, at this closeup of a Bacon painting:

And for the record... look also at this extreme closeup of Lucien Freud. 

I'm not really a huge Freud fan, but this photo, also from a Christie's catalog, is so instructive.

I think an interesting question that arises from this discussion is how much the Style and the Subject (or the Container and the Contents) can really be separated in some of these painters. In Bacon, for instance - and Freud as well - the subject is just people, and the message is arguably conveyed MORE by the style than by the content. (Although it must also be said that 'people' is a deceptively complex subject; it is not one subject but rather an infinitely regressing progression of subsets differentiated by headings like gender, age, posture, expression, assertiveness / demureness, aggression / passivity, etc etc etc. I don't think Bacon or Freud would work as well with happy smiling people. And so yes, I would say the content can actually be considered as  separate from the style, even in the work of these two.)

If I had to put a name on the message in my painting, it is something having to do with the collision between emotion and the feminine. (I actually have a much more articulate understanding of this message - it's even written down somewhere - but for all kinds of reasons it's not something that I think should be shared publicly). So the BIG FUCKING QUESTION facing me here is: Does my container match its contents? Is a precise and realistic style the best vehicle to convey messages about emotion? If I am using a precise and controlled style, am I not more like a clinician describing emotion in a detached and emotionless way than a real whole person (painter) actually conveying it? 

I'm currently working through a great book called The Art Spirit (recommended to me by the talented Jeff Cochran) in which the author makes the following challenging claim: Every brush stroke is the exact embodiment of the state of mind, the state of feeling, of the artist at the time that he or she made it. In fact the author devotes 10 or 15 pages of this book just to the discussion of brush strokes!

So if a painting is supposed to convey an emotion, and the brush strokes are the carrier of the feeling of the painter, what does it mean when the painter wants no brush strokes at all? Can a painter whose brush strokes are so controlled that they carry no emotion ever really make a painting that conveys an emotion? Or is there fertile artistic ground to be tilled by the detached and clinical depiction of emotion by someone who is not literally experiencing the emotion? After all, the flash of inspiration that forces an artwork into existence typically lasts only a moment, and everything that follows is just work in the service of that moment. Jesus, who knew painting would be so hard! Or so complex!

The final piece of the puzzle I want to bring in here revolves around the work of California painter Wayne Thiebaud. Thiebaud had a spectacular career spanning over about 7 decades, and is mostly known for painting cakes, pies, and other foods, although he also painted landscapes and people. Unsurprisingly I am mostly interested in his paintings of people, but the truth is that I am much more interested in his style than his subjects. In this photo that I took back in 2019...

of his painting Supine Woman, as well as this one from a Christie's catalog...

you can see that Thiebaud is not afraid of laying paint on in a thick and rather uninhibited way. Some people even say his handling of paint is "joyous", and at the risk of sounding like an anthropomorphizing sommelier, I have to say I sort of agree. What I see in the way he handles paint is a kind of glorious embracing of the fluid nature of paint, allowing the paint to act like paint. As someone who has consistently struggled with the paint itself... always trying to control it... I really like that about him.

Perhaps the last thing I should say about my slowly growing interest in loose brushwork is that I just can't seem to do it very well, and that is as good a reason as any to give it a shot. Maybe experimentation will lead me somewhere interesting. I've just prepared a handful of smaller canvases so I can play around a bit. 

If you read this blog regularly, and you find yourself thinking "Wow, Christian is just flitting uncontrollably from one painter to the next," you're not alone. I feel that way too! The world is just too full of great painters and paintings, and I do like different things about many of them. I'm trying to forge a way for myself, for my paintings, between all these giants. Sometimes I feel I'm better at thinking and writing about painting than I actually am at painting. But I continue to paint. So there. 

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If you think I'm doing myself a disservice by stepping away from sculpture, fear not. Sometime in the next three days, not later than the deadline on Wednesday, I will submit a proposal for a new sculpture. It is for a public art festival in Örebro, Sweden next year, and if accepted the sculpture will be built this summer and fall and displayed for about 6 months in 2026. I'll let you know.

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In November I visited the Brazilian side of my family in Amsterdam (and went to the Rijksmuseum as well as the Van Gogh Museum), and in December Christina and Kodiak and I spent two weeks around New Years in Greece for the second year in a row. Athens is always fun, and hanging with my brother Cles and his one-year-old twins was a blast...

 ... but the real highlight for us is always our time on the island of Hydra. 

We are going to retire there one day, I tell you!

Until next time,

Hejdå

PS: RIP David Lynch. I've never been a rabid fan of his movies (don't misinterpret that; I love his movies, just not rabidly!), but I have always loved his embrace of the artistic life, his interpretation of what it means to live as an artist. He was brave to be so unique. He will be missed.

PPS: As I write this the fires that have devastated parts of LA are still burning, albeit less ferociously than they were a week ago. As far as I am aware, no one that I know personally lost their home in LA, but each of those few friends that I still have there knows many people who did in fact lose their homes. I don't know what to say, really, other than that it must be devastating and I wish everyone well. I'm sure that even living there now must be tough. I'm thinking about you all.

On Art and Politics (Separately)

I’ve wrestled with this post. As it is, what follows is mostly about art, and a little about politics. At one point it was all politics… and it was vitriolic. But I’ve cut that part way back, and written more about what I love, which feels better. 

I’ve been painting a lot. Well, a lot more than I have been, on average, over the last few years. In fact, it’s really supplanting sculpture and other kinds of art production as the thing I WANT to do. Which feels good. And I will get to writing more about my art in a minute, but first a few musings and observations… 

Not too long ago I visited a big, beautiful, world-class museum of modern art north of Copenhagen which is called, somewhat strangely, the Louisiana Museum. I visited with Christina and Kodiak and my mother, and among other exhibitions we saw a show of paintings by Swiss painter Franz Gertsch. Although his later work includes traditional portraiture and monochrome paintings of flowers, he became famous for large-scale photorealistic paintings of young people doing mundane things. I had a rather complicated reaction to these. 

It's obvious that Gertsch took photographs of people doing stuff, and then painted them faithfully at a very large scale. The paintings just look like really big photos. My first reaction was: This is boring. Why not just print these as really big photographic prints? What is gained by turning these images into paintings? When you don’t add anything, when you don’t interpret, then you’re not really showing the audience anything about yourself, and so what’s the point? Maybe the only reason Gertsch chose to paint these images really large was that painting gets you into the art world… in a way that photography doesn’t… and painting really large is cool. Because not many people do it. 

This is one of his most famous paintings. It is HUGE... about 13 x 19 feet.

So I left the museum that day feeling that I really didn’t like his work. Or I didn’t get it. But I did have one further thought, a few days later, that somewhat tempered all this judgmentalism. My thought was basically that, when an artist chooses one image from among thousands to elevate through the act of painting it or printing it, the artist is engaging in a kind of “communication by curation.” In other words, the very act of choosing a particular image tells us about what the artist values or finds interesting or beautiful. It’s the same type of communication a photographer uses. And when you look at a large sample of work like this, like a big show of one person’s work, you can get a deeper and more nuanced feeling for what the artist wants to say. Gertsch presumably wanted to communicate that “youthful energy is cool”, or something like that. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that his decision to make these snapshots into huge paintings amounts to a kind of stunt… designed to gain entry into the art world. Apparently it worked really well. 

Contemporary art in Sweden confounds me. My sense is that it seems to be creeping its way back towards abstraction, by way of identity. What I mean is that every painting or sculpture seems to have a back-story which allegedly reveals some deep truth about the artist’s identity, but the artworks themselves are always totally obtuse, non-sensical abstract shapes, often vaguely referencing plants or animals, made from odd materials. As a whole, the art on display here seems totally afraid of saying anything in direct terms. 

Two artworks from recent high-profile shows in Sweden. No offence to the artists... but these pieces do illustrate my point nicely!

In light of the fact that Sweden is considered an ‘advanced’ culture, there is a temptation to think that the society has moved ‘beyond’ debased categories like representation and figurative art to something more enlightened. But I have my doubts. My sneaking suspicion is that there is a deep-seated fear in the cultural heart of this place which is driving the type of art here… a fear of offending someone or of taking a stand.* And at the end of the day, abstraction is abstraction, and it’s just as boring now as it was in the 1960’s. I read a quote somewhere in which a figurative artist in the 1960’s was defending his choice of subject matter against the tidal wave of abstraction surrounding him, and he said something like “I choose to paint the one subject that actually has enduring meaning, through history.” Preach it, brother! 

I’ve been devouring books about painters. My current favorites are Odd Nerdrum, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (a Finnish painter who lived a while in Taos!), and John Currin (who is not only a distant acquaintance of mine, but who also, I recently learned, is the richest artist in the whole world! I had no idea!) Nerdrum in particular is amazing. I find his paintings a little depressing, I guess, but his technique is spectacular and he is totally committed to the human figure and its universal and timeless meaning. Good stuff. 

I’ve noticed a funny thing about the evolution of my attitude towards my own painting, and it’s most easily explained by talking about my figure drawings. When I first started figure drawing about 5 years ago in Taos, I was certain that every drawing was going to be a masterpiece. I bought really nice paper and nice charcoal drawing pencils, and went in with high expectations. After making really awful drawings for weeks and weeks and weeks, I gradually came around to understanding that every drawing is basically just practice. You get better slowly, and once in a while you get lucky and make a good drawing, but it’s basically just one long practice session. I’ve had the same experience with painting. Every painting now just feels like an opportunity to make some new and unexpected mistake… a mistake I hopefully won’t repeat. So I slowly get better, but every painting is a big failure in some way or another. 

This is the first painting I made in my new studio. 

I love the pose… it’s exactly what I wanted… but almost everything else is problematic. I learned a LOT of lessons on this one.. and I may still go back to it and make improvements or corrections. 

Here is the second one. 

It’s a bit better. 

I’m almost done with a third, but because I’m only almost done, I won’t be showing it just yet. And I have the image for a fourth one already transferred to the stretched canvas, ready to start. I'm starting to actually enjoy painting. I love holing up in my studio, not noticing as the hours fly by. But soon I’m going to have to start doing the much less fun job of trying to find a gallery, or a get into a show, or brainstorm some other way of getting these paintings out into the world. I'll certainly try a few galleries in Sweden, but with the aforementioned local zeitgeist of obtuse abstraction, my hopes aren't high. I'm not afraid of branching out to Copenhagen or Berlin or New York, or...? 

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OK… the political situation in the States. And the world. This last section, about politics, was originally longer and angrier. I think that I was able to expunge much of my anger just by writing that first version, and I’m not sure I see the point of publishing all that spit and vinegar. It should suffice to say that I absolutely, unequivocally hate trump. I think he is a dangerous man and he will take America, and possibly the world, in an ugly direction. In response to his recent election, I am stunned, angry, disappointed, sad and scared. I am scared for America, and Ukraine, and Europe, and the planet, and the future. 

There are SO many reasons not to vote for him, but I’ll mention just two. 

The climate crisis. That fucking baboon doesn’t believe in climate change. Doesn’t BELIEVE in it!! (Remember how he didn’t believe in Covid either? What an Idiot.) How could anyone who has children, or gives a shit at all about future generations, have voted for him? 

Women’s rights. Trump is a fucking convicted rapist! WHY DO CONSERVATIVES NOT CARE ABOUT THIS? And many of his appointees thus far are also accused of rape or sexual assault (Hegseth, Gaetz, and RFK Jr., among others). Abortion bans, Republicans' pet project, are already causing radically increased maternal mortality. Acceptable collateral losses in the culture war, I guess.

I could go on. And on… and on. He’s a failed business man who gambled and lost all his daddy’s money, yet people “trust him on the economy.” He’s a non-stop liar… lying an average of 21 times PER DAY in his first term. How could anyone vote for this guy? 

I do have my theories about why people do it. I won’t explain them in detail, but like most human failings I think it mostly comes down to psychology. 

So, regarding the next four years in the US… what the fuck? Keep your head down and pray for cancer.

Revenge fantasy, anyone? (I love this image!)

And on the topic of the worldwide shift towards authoritarianism in general… I mean… who knows. It’s certainly disconcerting. But also understandable in a way. Skyrocketing income inequality and war and global warming (all of which, incidentally, are disproportionately caused by the political right) are all pushing up immigration and intensifying competition for resources, which plays well for the ‘strong’ right. But their policies are just not long-term solutions. The right-wing approach, across the world, is basically “Let’s enact policies to make things better for us, our in-crowd who look and think like us, and fuck everyone else, including women, immigrants, gays, poor people, and all members of all future generations.” The whole thing is just about power. It's gross.

The short-term outlook is certainly grim. I guess my only hope is that this wave of authoritarianism will backfire so badly, with such negative repercussions for regular people (mothers dying in Texas, for instance), that it will pave the way for a more humane and compassion-based future. I'm not optimistic... but I continue to be hopeful. Moving to Sweden seems like a good idea… in this context at least!

OK, I've already slowed way down on reading the news, and hopefully I won't have to write about politics again any time soon. 

Lots of love to all of you. 

Keep trying to make the world more beautiful, in whatever way suits you.

Hugs

* Regarding my comments above on Franz Gertsch and the Swedish art scene, I know I'm being a bit snobbish and dogmatic. I understand that art comes in many flavors and can can be successful even in the simplest of ways, like being beautiful or bringing joy. But I also feel like artists - especially those artists enshrined in world-class museums - should be communicating something meaningful, or personal. And for the record, I'm basically agnostic on all this stuff, which is to say that if someone came along and provided me with believable evidence on why all the aforementioned art is actually really great, I'm open to being convinced. 

I'm also in the funny position of having never studied art, and needing to give myself an art education and develop my own system of art values comparatively late in life. I'm too old to screw around with art that doesn't speak to me.

Back to the Studio

Wow, so I just re-read my last post, the one I wrote on the plane coming home from Taos, and it was a doozy. For one thing, it raised the possibility that coming back here to Sweden might be difficult, or that our life here might pale in comparison. I think I probably should have written a quick follow up to that post a few weeks later letting you all know that everything here was good. But I’ll just do that now… everything is good! It’s been lovely to be back here.

Actually, to be fair, it WAS difficult returning. I find that whenever I travel between New Mexico and Sweden, or the other way around, it takes me about a week to adjust, both emotionally and in terms of sleep. But at least now I know that, and can expect it. And after a week, it's done.

The other thing I talked about in that last post was wanting to take my work in my studio more seriously, to treat it more like... work. And I'm happy to say that I've been fairly successful in that. 

Christina and I are quite good at what I like to call 'homesteading.' That is to say, we do a darned good job at building houses - or renovating houses, in this case - and then continuing by making the home and the land around it really lovely. This also applies to workshop buildings. We have done this extensively in New Mexico (2 homes and a workshop), and now here in Sweden as well (a home and 2 workshops.) The problem with homesteading, however, is that it's never flippin' done! There is always something more to do! So, not too long after returning from New Mexico in August, I decided to draw a line in the sand and commit to spending at least 4 hours per day in my studio. The homesteading work, and everything else, would just have to fit into the remaining hours. I am proud to say that I have been semi-successful at this, because semi-successful at a 4 hour daily commitment is a hell of a lot better than the essentially no hours I was spending making art before. 

I have basically finished one painting. I made a bunch of late corrections to it today and it might be done. I'll have to look at it again in a few days to be sure.

I certainly want to get my paintings to the point where they feel right - when I see an error I cannot help but to correct it - but when I get close to the end of a painting I also have the competing impulse to just call it done and move on to another one. I figure that the more paintings I make, the better. I want to get faster and better. 

I'm also working on a small mechanical sculpture. 

As crazy as this sounds, it is a sculpture I am coming back to after a 4-year pause. I started it in Taos in 2020, and I just brought all the parts back here to Sweden in my luggage a few months ago. I enjoy working on multiple projects simultaneously... so that if I ever feel stuck or bored with one, I can move to another. I do have a minor quandary about the subject matter of this particular sculpture which I will probably discuss in a future post. For now it can suffice to say that the sculpture involves a tricky mechanical challenge, which I enjoy.

At this point I seem to have more ideas for paintings and sculptures than time to make them. I feel pressure to make things. Maybe it's a sense of my own mortality. Maybe it's a sense that waiting for big festivals to give me money to make big sculptures has just been a colossal fucking waste of time, and I need to get to work and make up for lost time. I'm also feeling ambitiously broad in the media I want to work with; I'm already painting, but I have plans to also sculpt in traditional clay, in oil-based clay for eventual casting in bronze, in wood, and in stone. Today I bought some regular (water-based) clay to start a bust, like what I was doing in Barcelona a few years ago with Jorge Egea. 

Speaking of Jorge and Barcelona, you might remember from my post back in June that I had failed in an attempt to buy a marble Jassans sculpture at auction. I'm very happy to report that the painful hole in my life... caused by not owning a genuine Jassans sculpture... has now been filled. 

About 2 weeks ago I saw a listing for this well-documented sculpture in wood come up online, and.. after a little aggressive bargaining with the seller... I was able to bring it home for about 73% of his asking price. I really didn't know how I would pay for it at the time, but I couldn't lose the opportunity! I ended up selling three (1, 2, 3) of my original Wicked Wanda paintings by Ron Embleton to another collector, which more than covered the purchase of the Jassans. As I mentioned in June, Jassans is really my favorite sculptor. Looking at his work, especially in person, brings me back to my days in Barcelona, AND inspires me to sculpt. What a fucking genius the guy was. I've recently enjoyed reading my old posts about him, here and here, and I'm now also reading some of the books I have about him, with the help of Google Translate, because... everything about him is in Catalan! (I suppose it's lucky for me that he never got more famous - according to Jorge he never cared about fame - because it makes his sculptures comparatively affordable. But the flip-side is that there's almost nothing written about him in English.)

Anyway, back to me and MY art!
Like many painters, I like to have an image in front of me when I paint. And I have very specific ideas about WHAT I want to paint. But I have struggled a lot over the last few years with HOW to arrive at this visual source material. I have paid models on several occasions to take photographs of them, but overall  this has been a frustrating experience. For me, the key to my paintings is facial expression, and over time I have come to realize that a model's ability to make facial expression is probably the most important thing to me. A woman can be beautiful, and have a beautiful body, but if she cannot act (it's essentially acting that I am talking about here), then it's not going to yield anything useful for me. 

(Side note: I've just finished reading two books, back to back, about the human face. What a fascinating topic! The first of those books makes the interesting point that it's really only actors who can masterfully and convincingly control their faces at will - to make us believe that they're feeling what they are actually only pretending to feel - and we pay them handsomely for this comparatively rare skill.)

From all the photos I've taken of models, I've only ever painted one painting. Paying models isn't super-cheap, so that doesn't seem like such a great investment. 

Another technique I've employed is essentially photo collage; I will find photos representing different parts of a woman and put them together in Photoshop to make the image I want. I'm quite good at Photoshop and I've gotten some reasonably good results this way. But I'm not THAT good, and there are always frustrations, especially when it comes to making the lighting match on the different parts of the body. 

I've recently been building up the confidence to just draw my source material... in other words to simply draw the people I want to paint and then paint those drawings. It's certainly a time-honored method, practiced by artists throughout history, AND I've been drawing from live models for a few years now and my drawings are definitely getting better... BUT it feels to me like a pretty big fucking step. And it would require a lot of confidence in my drawing skills. The bottom line is that I won't rely solely on my drawing skills if that undermines the quality of the finished painting. Nevertheless, I will likely begin to experiment soon. 

But this whole discussion has been leading me to what I really want to talk about, which is AI image generators (AKA generative AI) or.. for those of you who aren't familiar with the concept.. software (websites) which can generate images based on text inputs (called "prompts"), or based on other images. This looks like it should be a real boon to artists looking for copyright-free source images, and frankly it is. (The copyright to the images you generate on the various sites belongs to you, the user... at least for now.) There are, however, pitfalls...

But AI is such a hot topic right now that it warrants a very brief aside... Most people seem agree that AI (and here we are no longer really talking about visually generative AI but rather information-processing AI, more like ChatGPT and its descendents) could one day pose an existential threat to humanity, but that's not the "pitfalls" I'm talking about. The existential threat presents variously as "AI will kill all humans," or "AI will replace humans... or at least take their jobs." While it strikes me as reasonable that doomsday scenarios such as these are possible, back in the mundane here-and-now world of art-making, I tend to agree with these articles (1, 2, 3) which take the position that artists are safe from generative AI, at least those artists engaged in the production of "High Art" like painting and sculpture. At least for the time being.

No, the pitfalls I'm talking about are much more pedestrian, and are specific to the use of generative AI. First off, a lot of the images coming out of these image generators can look similar to each other, and so images made this way can have an 'AI look.' To be fair, the various bits of software are getting better all the time, and if you are willing to keep playing with them I think you can sort of get around this same-same problem... but it takes some work. Another problem is that it can sometimes be pretty difficult to get the software to do what you want it to. If you're open to being surprised, it can be a lot of fun; but if you want something really specific it can be frustrating. Also, like most screen-based technologies out there, it can be quite addicting. You can spend a lot of time on it. You have to be disciplined. And lastly (and this is the danger that I take the most seriously), I think that making an image with AI has the potential to satisfy the artistic impulse (or the dopamine circuits) so thoroughly that one no longer feels the need to even make the painting. There are many people out there making AI generated art, and then calling the whole process done; in other words, for them the digital image is the end goal. But to me, that's not good enough. Because the best you can do with that is to make a print, and a print is not an artwork. A print is an object that is produced by a machine, while a painting is an object made by a person. Some people will bristle at this distinction, but that's how I feel about it. 

As far as the specific image generators I've used, most of my experience has been with Midjourney, Freepik, and Getimg, as well as a few others. The source image for my newest painting... the one I'm still working on above... was made with a combination of found imagery, Midjourney, Freepik, and Photoshop. It's the first painting for which I've employed AI. (To be honest, I think the reasons I've struggled a bit more than usual with this painting are rooted in this combined approach.)

Some people (including many artists) have a violently negative reaction to these image generators, but for me AI is just another tool in the toolbox. If I could find a model who could really emote, that would be great. And if one day I get to the point where I can draw exactly what I want to paint, with all the required subtlety of expression, that would be fantastic. In the meantime, AI image generation opens up a lot of possibilities. 

Just for fun, here are a few images I've made, along with the text prompts that generated them:

smiling feminine skull with long hair and sunglasses

wood sculpture of a calm serene smiling woman looking upward, seen in profile

(Note the interesting hybrid of painting and sculpture in the background)

Trump as an Indian style guru

socialist recruitment poster featuring a powerful attractive young woman, rise up against the ruling class, chaos and explosions

blonde woman riding a shark

gay leather jesus

Each of these images was created in seconds. It's pretty amazing.

OK Thats's it for now. I do have more to say about the Swedish art scene and what Jassans might have to say about it, but I'll leave that for another post.

Oh and in case you're wondering, I feel like I'm 2 or 3 paintings, and one or two sculptures, away from putting together a digital portfolio and trying to get a show in a gallery somewhere. That's the big idea.

Hope you all are well!

Bye!

Nice Place, Nice People

I am on a plane returning to Sweden from Taos. It’s quite uncomfortable. I‘m having difficulty finding the right way to organize my body and my laptop in this confined space… so that I can write. 

Something that felt big and important happened on this trip to Taos, but I don’t quite know what it was, or how to write about it. It’s confusing. I’m confused. Maybe by the end of this blog post, I will have a better understanding of what happened, and… maybe by the end of it, you will too. 

I guess the easiest way to state it is that we all – Christina, Kodiak, and I – had a really wonderful time in Taos, and we realized that we miss it there. More specifically… we miss our people. Our community. 

Do you remember, at the end of my last post, when I said that I wasn’t looking forward to going back to Taos, but that I would probably enjoy it more than I expected? Well, yeah… like that. It happened like that. I had a lot of physical work to do in Taos, and I did it all (which means that I was working hard most of the time), but fear of that work wasn’t the reason I didn’t want to return. I think the part of my reluctance to return to Taos that I was conscious of was that I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of progress we were making in Sweden… and I think that fear was semi-legitimate, but perhaps overblown. In fact I think this little break in Taos may well turn out to be good for my flow in Sweden… but more on that later. And I think the part of my reluctance to return to Taos that I was UNconscious of was basically a fear of liking it too much, being too comfortable there, having Taos shine an unfavorable light on our life in Sweden. It was a risk. We went. We ran the risk. In 5 hours I will be back in Sweden and the readjustment will begin. I won’t make any judgments for a week or so, because jetlag is a bitch. It fucks with your sleep, which is almost exactly the same as saying that it fucks with your moods, your emotions. So no judgments for a week. 

But yeah, it was nice. I mean, not all of it. I’d rather live in the lush green Swedish embrace of our wild grass and fruit trees than the dusty dry death of the Mesa any day. And the painting and sculpture studio I build in Sweden beats the hell out of any studio I’ve ever had in Taos, and I can’t wait to work in it. But the community… wow. What a difference. I mean, don’t get me wrong… the people we know in Sweden are lovely, amazing people and I am genuinely looking forward to seeing them all (YOU all!). But really, there is something very special about being in your old home town for 3 weeks and having genuine and engaged conversations with over 100 people (there's a list below)… people you run into at parties and grocery stores and restaurants and parks… people you have missed and are happy to see… people who are happy to see you. It’s lovely. Does this mean that I want to focus even more on community-building in Sweden, deepening and broadening the friendships we have there? Yes! Or does it mean that the focus in Sweden can be on buckling down and working while Taos can be for topping up the social battery? That could work too! I’m telling you, man, it’s very confusing! 

Of course, it’s not fair to compare a place we’ve been in for just under 2 years with a place we lived for a combined total, between Christina and me, of 40 years. But despite it being unfair, of course I was comparing the two places all the time; which place has better weather, which has better work opportunities, which of our two chunks of earth is better, which workshop is better, etc., etc. But in a conversation on the topic, my friend Benito wisely said “You don’t need to compare; you’ll always be in one paradise or another.” Yes. That’s the right way to think about it. 

Back in Sweden, our metal shop is finished, as is my art studio… so now the hard work begins. What will we do there? What will we make? How will we make money? These questions have so far defied easy answers, but that’s at least in part because we’ve been so focused on building and renovating that we haven’t put much effort into answering them. The answers will come. We will apply for opportunities and the opportunities will come. I believe that. But something about this trip to Taos has focused me, sharpened me. Personally, my fantasy is to make a commitment to myself to spend at least a few hours of EVERY day in my studio, painting or sculpting, for the next 6 or 8 or 12 months so that I can not only get some work done, but even more importantly develop my own style. Go into a cocoon and develop. No outside influence. No opinions. Just me. Find the truth. The truth for me. And then paint it, and sculpt it, over and over and over again. And sell hundreds of fucking paintings! Fuck it. No time to lose. People die every day, and it might even happen to me one day. Maybe. 

As I write this, in one long flow on this plane, I’m tired and a little overwhelmed and emotional about it all. But I’ve decided to just post this, as I’ve written it, without waiting a few days to come to my senses and edit it. An honest snapshot in time. 

Did I figure out what happened in Taos? Did I make it clear? I hope you understand, because I’m not sure I do. Maybe in a week. 

You might remember that Kodiak and I started off in New Hampshire, with my brother Trevor and his family... which was super fun

I made this list of people I saw in Taos, mostly because I wanted to count the names. If you don't live in Taos, I can't imagine that you would care... and you can skip it. 

1. Cedar 

2. Johnny Cisneros 

3. Big Giles 

4. Krizia 

5. Little Giles 

6. Elijah 

7. Todd 

8. Marlena 

9. Phil 

10. Elizabeth 

11. Peter 

12. Gregory 

13. Toby Rickabaugh 

14. Nonnah 

15. Roberta 

16. Sasha and Vida 

17. Ruby 

18. Shandra 

19. Eric 

20. Niko 

21. Satya 

22. Eric 

23. Elizabeth 

24. Sonya 

25. Dave 

26. Josh Kanizzle 

27. Lydia 

28. Jason 

29. Pamela 

30. Zoe Zimmerman 

31. Barry Norris 

32. Joan Norris 

33. Kelly Igo 

34. Scott Shaward 

35. Ron Detullio 

36. Keevan 

37. Sofia, Jen Hart's daughter 

38. Matt 

39. Richard 

40. Chris Painter 

41. Copy Queen Nicole 

42. Nicole Barady 

43. Alessandra 

44. Key (Kye) 

45. Gerd 

46. Jimmy 

47. Renee & Daisy & Ready 

48. Scott Adair 

49. Val from New Zealand 

50. Sherry Mcgraw 

51. Tom Azari 

52. Holly Azari 

53. Lynn Garlick 

54. Maury 

55. Sheila O'Malley 

56. Benito 

57. Joshlynn 

58. Jennifer Amman 

59. Kate 

60. Sam 

61. Eileen 

62. Elaine Baker 

63. Maria Zamora 

64. Kevin 

65. Nancy 

66. Charlie 

67. Olive 

68. Cozy 

69. Genevieve 

70. Oswald 

71. Tracy (Zeke's) 

72. Carl (Zeke's) 

73. Michael Lujan 

74. Amy Westphal 

75. Thomas 

76. Siri 

77. Jack 

78. Dimitri 

79. Shawn Ludwig 

80. Scott (Randalls) 

81. Claudia 

82. Cullen 

83. Anita (John Dunne shops) 

84. Kristin Swim 

85. Eric Anderson 

86. Adam Robison 

87. CJ 

88. Jemma 

89. Namani 

90. Mariah 

91. Lola 

92. Juniper 

93. Izumi 

94. Shintaro 

95. Angela Oliver 

96. Travis 

97. Jason (Jen Hart's Ex) 

98. Tara from UPS 

99. Suki and Orion 

100. Forest 

101. Aaron Shiver 

102. Cousin Amanda 

103. Ashley (Magical Tattoo) 

104. Casey from 2 Peaks

105. Steve McFarland

106. Bonnie

107. Beau