Why I Have To Keep Trying To Paint

- An interesting conversation I had with Christina about Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter. 

- The new Alex Garland movie MEN, which I just saw... and can't stop thinking about and want to see again.

- Nihilism, and the antidote to it. 

- My difficulties finding a good pair of shoes, and my gripes with the shoe industry in general. 

- My theory about the aesthetic and structural organization of things, what I’ll call the “Nails and Spice Theory.” 

- The work I've been doing on Fledgling in preparation for it's sale and permanent placement.

These widely disparate topics are just some of the subjects I’ve considered blogging about recently. But I’m not going to write about any of them today. Instead I will return to an old topic - creativity, originality, and art production, but I’ll write about it in a new way… by going in-depth into a single particular piece of art that I’ve been wanting to make for a while, but have so far failed to complete. 

But first, a very brief digression onto the question: why would someone write a blog? Why do I write a blog? In short, I think the answer is that I’m trying to have a conversation. I guess it might be a strange SORT of conversation… but then again, I have picked up friends and acquaintances from many different places and many different times, and this is one way that I can communicate with all of them (you). But doesn't it seem, in this conversation, that I do all the talking? Well that’s one of the points that I want to make: I love it when my posts prompt people to write me back and start a different, perhaps more traditional, sort of conversation. So, thanks everyone who writes back, I appreciate it! 

I think I am also, however, having a conversation with myself. And probably another conversation with my future self. And possibly yet another conversation with future Kodiak. I imagine it might be quite interesting for him to read this when he’s a little older. But then… Who knows! Maybe he’ll just roll his eyes! Anyway, it’s nice to have a record of these years as they fly past. I hope you enjoy reading them.

So… On to the topic at hand. 

About four or five years ago while living in Berlin, an image flashed into my head. For me, this image was so strong, so personal, and so richly full of meaning* that I knew I wanted to bring it into reality. But then I thought… “I am a sculptor, and this is just an image.“ So I tried to figure out how to make this as a sculpture - possibly as a low relief sculpture - but I just kept coming back to the realization that it would work best as an image. So, I decided to learn to paint. 

And thus commenced a period of a few years in which I taught myself to oil paint. But, as anyone who reads this blog closely knows (and I think there might be at least one or two of you!), oil painting has proven to be quite the challenge for me. Not because I’m terrible at it… because frankly I don’t think I’m terrible at it… 

An example of me not sucking at painting. But... you see those light spots in the dark background near the bottom, and the reflection above and to the right of her head? Keep reading below to discover what those are and why they are a problem...

... but for other harder to pin down reasons that have something to do with perfectionism, and some legitimate technical challenges which are shown in the above image and which I'll fully explain in a moment. And so in the period of two years or so in which I was painting actively, I turned out a miserably small number of paintings. About five. 

The image that flashed into my head in Berlin cannot be counted among those five. I actually built a masonite “canvas“ for the image, I penciled the image, and I began to paint it. But my progress was so painful, so slow, and so beset by technical problems, that I did not get very far. 

This is about as far as I got with it.

I have not given up on the image. I would like one day to bring it into reality, but I can't help wondering whether oil paint is necessarily the best medium in which to accomplish the task.

Sometimes I find myself thinking: "Isn't the idea, the concept, the most important part? Have I not therefore already done the biggest part of the work?" Well, YES. And NO. Anyone can have an idea. We've all met those people who are all ideas, and no execution. And so this is one of the punchlines - the thesis statements - the conclusions that I've come to. A work of art (or any endeavor really) is idea and execution. And only when both are good can the work be considered successful, or impactful. 

I am fairly proficient at Adobe Photoshop, the image editing software. My methodology for making a painting involves the creation of a Photoshop mockup, which I then print and which I then paint. Here is the Photoshop mockup for the "Berlin image" which started it all...

This is what you might call a 'Photo-Illustration' and many people choose photo-illustration as their artistic medium. This particular Photoshop mockup is not refined enough to be considered a presentable artwork (there is no coherence to the shadows, many of the edges are rough, etc... all things I intended to fix at the painting stage) but it raises the possibility that, with a bit more time spent in Photoshop, it could be made presentable and then printed. And then that print, rather than the painting I'd always imagined, would be the artwork.

But would that be good enough?

I guess the answer depends on who you're talking to. 

A professional photo-illustrator would probably say "Yes, of course! It looks like a finished artwork to me." 

An oil painter would say "No that's just a print."

What might a member of the public say.. someone who is relatively unconcerned about art technique? Such a person would probably focus more on the subject matter - the imagery - and therefore in this case the idea would be the most important thing, and the work could be considered impactful.

But, what would I say? I guess this is the important question that I must answer.

And what I would say, I suppose, is: "Hmm... I think it would've been better as an oil painting." And, further: a photo-illustration is by definition a sort of collage of images, and each of those images was made by a camera, not by a hand holding a brush or a pencil. And in my personal hierarchical ranking of originality, there is no surpassing a hand-made piece of art. Because, in the making of it, the artist unconsciously put something of himself, of his psychology, into it. And in the process, it becomes something that could only be made by that one person. If you don't believe me, look at the work of Bacon, or Ingres, or Currin.

So, it seems, I have to keep trying.

"Well just get on with it! Just keep painting! What's the big deal?" I hear you saying... I hear my few painter friends saying... I hear myself saying. 

For the moment, I can't. 

I have no more studio - I converted my studio back into a living space. 

My head isn't in it right now - I am deep into the move to Sweden and all that that entails. 

And what about those mysterious "technical challenges" I referred to earlier? I had a major problem with my paint drying in a really terrible way, which I finally attributed to the extreme dryness here in Taos. 

In these three images, you can see what I am talking about. Whenever the paint went on even remotely thickly, the top surface dried almost immediately while the paint underneath was still wet, causing this crinkly "orange-peel" effect which catches the light in a totally unacceptable way. These light-catching areas can be seen in the finished painting near the top of this post.

I communicated with the paint manufacturer but he said he'd never seen that before and was of no help. The next time I really try painting will be in Sweden. There is better humidity there, and I will try a different brand of paint. 

But beyond the lack of a studio and the problems with paint, the biggest impediment is in my head. I just have to get over it and get back to painting. 

Because you see, here's the thing: I have ideas. I have ideas for images. But like I said earlier, an idea is not enough. An artwork is an idea, and execution. And so it's quite frustrating to have these ideas, but not be able to execute them. When we get to Sweden, I'm going to have to start painting again. 

OK, enough. 

I probably lost all but a few of you. 

Until next time, when I promise to be less self-indulgent and more focused on actual events, real things that are happening. And there's plenty of those.

Cheers

* As to the meaning of the image: that's not really the topic of the post. And don't you think that I would be doing YOU a disservice if I explained what I thought it meant? Don't you think it's more interesting to let you come up with your own interpretation? In any case, I can think of three distinct meanings for the image, one of which is the most important to me, but all of which are valid. And I'm sure there are others.

Big Things Happening

Sometimes a long interval passes between my blog posts because life seems to be moving slowly - not much seems to be happening.

This has not been one of those times.

The long interval, this time, is due to the fact that so much is happening... so fast... that it's hard to find time to write, and it's hard to know what to pick out to write about.

The biggest news, really, is that Christina and Kodiak and I are moving to Sweden this summer! More on that in a moment.

Two posts ago, in my entry of December 4th, 2021, I discussed the fact that I had been commissioned by someone I know here in Taos to build a new sculpture. That sculpture is now finished and installed. The client wanted a sculpture to bring attention to his ambitious and well-developed solar electric installation, and so 'Electra' was born. 

Electra is an emissary from the future, letting us know that we'd better shift our energy technologies over to sustainable sources before it's too late.

Other than her base (which is carbon steel), she is fabricated entirely from stainless steel, so her surface should require little maintenance and she should look like that more-or-less forever.

And here is Electra taking her rightful place at the evolutionary end of the progression I showed back in December.

______________________________

So, we are moving to Sweden.

Well, I should qualify that and say that we are almost certainly moving to Sweden this summer. A grotesque enlargement of Putin's vanity war, or some other unforeseen complication might still derail our plan, but that feels pretty unlikely. I would put the likelihood of us really moving at about 98% and climbing.

The news has been leaking out, so some of you reading this may already know it.

There are multiple reasons for this move. In roughly descending order of importance, they are:

• Secure a better education and a better future for Kodiak. This really is the undisputed #1 reason for the move. New Mexico is 49th out of the 50 states in quality of education, and we feel Kodiak deserves more. We also want him to have the opportunity to become a 'World Citizen' in a way that he never could if we stay in Taos.

• Move to a place with a less divisive political climate, and less Republicans. I hate the conservative agenda in this country, I hate the fact that that agenda is driven by fear and hatred of dark-skinned people and women, I hate the effects of unchecked free-market capitalism, and I hate climate-change denialism. I could go on and on. Sweden does not suffer from these idiotic problems. Christina feels the same way. 

• A change of career opportunities for Christina and me. Who knows, really, how our careers will go in Sweden, but it's well-known that there is an entirely different level of respect for the arts in Europe than here in the US. Serious artists over there can get government assistance, there are collective workshops (places like BBK in Berlin, where I built With Open Arms, and KKV in Sweden), and probably lots of other good resources for artists. We are jumping in a little blind but we are willing to roll the dice.

• We will be in a place where we can grow old and face inevitable health problems without going bankrupt, without enriching 'Health' Insurance executives with everything that should be Kodiak's inheritance.

• We will be closer to Christina's parents in Stockholm, and to my brother Cles and my mother, who both live in Greece. (One regrettable downside is that we will be farther from my dad and brother. But hell, now they will have a reason to visit Sweden!)

• We will be a short train ride or flight away from the rest of Europe... places like Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Venice... 

• We will radically increase our opportunities for exposure to arts and culture.

• We will be near a beach and an airport, things which are very far from Taos.

The timing of our move is incredibly complicated to pin down, as it depends on variables such as my application for a residency permit in Sweden, our ability to secure a spot in a school for Kodiak, our ability to secure an apartment or house to live in, and some possible job opportunities which might keep me working here in Taos into the fall. In any case it seems Christina and Kodiak will likely move over there in July, with me either coming at the same time or following some weeks later.

And for the record, we are NOT selling our ranch here in Taos. If things don't work out for whatever reason, we can always come back. 

______________________________

These last 6 weeks have been some of the craziest times for my career that I can remember.

In a nutshell, I have had a quite unprecedented flood of opportunities, most of which have promised to deliver big paychecks, and most of which have evaporated almost as quickly as they had appeared for one reason or another. And through it all, one or two good ones have actually stuck.

It's really been strange. 

• One job - a new sculpture build - promised to pay almost 3 times more than I had ever made on a previous sculpture build. The pay would have been so good that it would have made sense for me to stay here in Taos through the fall in order to build it, throwing a huge wrench into the Sweden plans. Then the job was suddenly postponed... perhaps indefinitely.

• A festival job disappeared because the guy I was working with threw a temper tantrum when I asked him to verify that I would have the right kind of forklift available at the site. That was a guy (well-known to some of my artist contemporaries) with whom I was possibly going to do other work in the future, and I feel like I dodged a bullet when he revealed himself to be a narcissist and a jerk.

• Yet another festival job disappeared when, over the course of a week, my contact couldn't be bothered to answer my emails and texts... until I told him I had run out of time to organize my logistics. Upon receiving that text, he responded immediately accusing me of being impatient! (I could expand this into a whole blog post... who are these self-absorbed people and how do they get these jobs? And why are we, as artists, so often forced to deal with them?)

• An old friend from LA called me with less than a week warning asking me to come to LA to help work on some droids for a new Star Wars thing. That actually sounded like a lot of fun but I just couldn't fit it into my schedule.

• A new 'traveling festival' is talking to Christina and me about leasing a few of our big sculptures to go "on the road." This could be a nice sort of 'passive income' for us... but I can't tell if they are really serious or not. They know we are moving to Sweden and that time is of the essence. We shall see...

• I just sold Fledgling to a local gallery owner and friend here in Taos. This means that, along with Electra, Taos will have two of my sculptures on permanent display, now that we are leaving!

• And now, in the last few days, I am talking to someone about a new sculpture build for display at an event in the United Arab Emirates at the end of the year. Just like that first job in this list, this one now threatens to upend the Sweden plans, because if it were to really happen, it would make the most sense for me to stay here through the fall and build it. I wonder what will happen?

One must have a high tolerance for uncertainty to work in the arts. It has been quite a roller-coaster as these jobs have appeared, promised to pay big dollars, and then disappeared. 

______________________________

Meanwhile, with the awareness that our big relocation is coming fast, Christina and I have been busy like never before. Not only are we selling vehicles and all manner of other stuff as well as cleaning up our land, we are also packing in the trips to see people and places we might not see for a while. 

In April, Kodiak and I spent a wonderful 5 days in San Francisco with my dad. It was a chance for Kodiak and my dad to get to know one another, as well as for me to show Kodiak the city of my youth. We dined with my dad at great restaurants every night, and I gave Kodiak a first class tour of the city. Among other things, we met up with my old friend Sabrina Merlo for a tour of Sean Orlando's cool new Seaport Studios, went to the DeYoung museum (where I was amazed to see Thomas Hart Benton's 'Susannah and the Elders'!), rode the ferris wheel right next to the museum, went to Baker Beach, the crooked street, Coit Tower, North Beach and Chinatown, SoMa and Haight Street. I took him over the Golden Gate Bridge to Stinson Beach where we spent a sweet afternoon with my old high school pal Vasco Agnoli and his family. We even climbed to the top of Fort Point for great views of the Golden Gate and the Pacific Ocean. What a great city that is.

And just this last weekend, the Vanagon triumphantly returned to take us (along with Kodiak's good friend Marcelo) to Chaco Canyon, home of Anasazi and their impressive architectural triumph, Pueblo Bonito. This trip really arose out of Christina's desire to show Kodiak the best of New Mexico before we leave (she also took him to White Sands and the Carlsbad Caverns a few months ago), but I was also thrilled to go. In fact, I did a school report about Pueblo Bonito when I was about Kodiak's age, so it was actually quite special for me to walk through that place. Much to my surprise, they actually let you walk around the site! 

So I guess that's it for now. 

As you can see, big changes are afoot! 

Stay tuned...

The Way Forward

Ok well it’s been a while. So much is happening all the time and sometimes it’s hard to pick out the ‘blog-worthy’ stuff to write about. But I have to remember that what feels normal and routine to me might not seem normal and routine to everyone. 

I’ll get the bad news out of the way first, and that is that Burning Man decided to reject my application for funding a new sculpture… AGAIN! 

Burning Man places sculptures in specific locations around the ‘city,’ and the most prestigious placement, arguably, is a location called ‘The Keyhole.’ It’s very central, very high visibility. Christina was awarded the Keyhole placement in 2009 for her sculpture “The Heron Project.” The reason I bring this up is that, pretty much every year that I apply for funding, I gradually convince myself - while waiting for their response - that my proposal is so good that not only are they going to fund it, but they’re going to honor me with the Keyhole! And then… they reject it. 

The upshots of this brief discussion are A) that I apparently always like my own proposals so much that I think they merit fantastic placement (and I suppose this sort of self-confidence is probably a good thing) and B) my own assessment of my own ideas must be really out of step with the assessment of the Burning Man granting committee. (In fact when I look at some of what they fund instead of my proposals, I am often baffled.)

Oh well, fuck it. I have other shit going on. 

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I would have been able to accept the grant - and build the sculpture - even if I had gotten the 'thumbs-up' from them. The next few months look like they're going to be very busy for me and Christina, with both paying work and non-paying work. In this context, it was probably even a blessing that I did not get funded by them, as building something for Burning Man is always a huge time commitment coupled with a loss of money. Still, it would have been nice to know that they liked my proposal in the same way that I do. Whatevs.

(For the record, my proposal was a sculpture of a woman on a shark. It was kind of the inverse of my proposal in 2019, in the sense that it was another interaction between man and nature (another sea creature, in fact), but this time it was positive and forward-looking. In fact it was called "The Way Forward." A text description and pictures will follow at the end of this post.)

Moving on.

In my last post, way back in December, I stated that I was about to start building a new sculpture as a private commission. My creative energies have been pretty focussed for these last few months on building that piece, and it's been a lot of fun. I have certain reasons for not wanting to 'unveil' this new sculpture, even here on the blog, until it is really done, so that means that the best you're going to get for now is this teaser picture...

I must say that I've really enjoyed building this piece, not least because I decided at the beginning to fabricate it entirely out of stainless steel. I love working with stainless steel! (Whenever one works with regular steel, a decision has to be made about how to 'finish' the surface to keep it from rusting to bits. In other words, one must ask oneself... should I paint this sculpture, or oil it every 6 months, or seal it in some other way, or let it rust? Stainless presents no such conundrum. Weld it up and call it done.)

Anyway, the official install date for this sculpture is May 5th, so I should be posting some pictures of the whole thing around that time.

______________________________

Christina and Kodiak and I just returned from a 2-week trip to England and Sweden. (It was my first time on a plane since October 2019!) We travelled to England in order to install Christina's sculpture The Flybrary on the grounds of the Chatsworth House.  The Chatsworth House is a stately mansion built in the 1600's which has been home to the long succession of Dukes of Devonshire. In fact, the current Duke of Devonshire lives there now! Burning Man arranged with the Chatsworth House to bring over about 10 large sculptures, and Christina's beautiful piece was one of the ones chosen. In fact, her piece is basically the star of the show; it has the very best placement (right in front of the house!) and is getting tons of great press. In fact, if you click the link above you will see a great picture on the Chatsworth House's homepage... which I will also immortalize here:

We were treated really well while in England; they put us up in a cute little stone cottage and fed us way too much food. We also got the chance to tour the home and see it's truly spectacular art collection. It's like a museum (and I love museums.)

I will now take you on a little photographic tour of our European adventure!

A view of the house, with the partially completed Flybrary in the foreground, as well as the river Derwent.

Another view of the house, with a very handsome young gentleman in the foreground. Kodiak did so well, and had such a good time on this trip. All the grownups fell in love with him!

This is the first room you see in the house. The room is colossal, all the walls and ceiling are covered in Renaissance-style paintings, and every nook has a sculpture.

This is an approximately life-sized sculpture of Saint Bartholomew, who was skinned alive, by my old favorite Damien Hirst. He is shown holding his skin on one arm, and the scissors used to remove his skin in the other hand. It is cast in silver, then gold-plated!

These are paintings of the current Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, the occupants of the house, by Stephen Conroy. They might seem unremarkable, at first glance, but they were actually my favorite paintings in the house, on purely stylistic grounds. They feature just the right amount of stylizing / idealization. I would like to paint like that.

Some contemporary sculpture by... I don't know who. The swirly, curvy things are made from bent wood, and I thought they were quite beautiful.

 

A wooden bench, which I also found gorgeous.

One of two original Rembrandt paintings in the house. This just gives you an idea of the quality of this collection. (We were told a funny story... Apparently many years ago there were three Rembrandts in the house. At some point one of the dukes died, and some pretty hefty 'death taxes' were due. The government came in and took one of the Rembrandt paintings as payment - they chose the one which was assessed to be the most valuable. Then, some years later, the painting was proved to be by one of Rembrandt's disciples, not him!)

There was an entire long room full of Lucien Freud paintings - probably 20 or 25 of them. Wow. This one, featuring his nude girlfriend and his mother, was perhaps the most intriguing!

And a HUGE John Singer Sergeant. This painting is about 9 feet tall... or 3 meters. Again, wow.

The last room on the tour was a large hall full of marble sculpture. This one was perhaps my favorite.

Also not bad.

Marble bust of... who knows! But wow, she is gorgeous. I took a lot of pictures of this one.

I had to squeeze behind this sculpture, close to the wall, to get a good shot of this lady's marble butt. Butt it was worth it.

After touring the house, we toured the gardens, which were vast. This guy cracked me up.

I dragged our group into a far corner of the grounds to see this sculpture, behind me, by my old friend Rachel Feinstein.

I guess that when you are a duke, and you have a 200 acre garden, you can have some pretty weird trees. 

Here's our crew! From left to right... Me, Christina, Brian Malley from Canada, good old friend Cedar, Cedar's girlfriend Heather, Kodiak, and Terril Scott from Berlin.

After leaving the Chatsworth House, Christina and Kodiak and I went down to London for a day and connected with my cousin Eduardo. He is originally from Brazil, as is my dad, but has lived in London for 8 or 9 years.

Upon arriving in Sweden we went straight to the house where we were staying, which was on the island of Rindö. The house is owned by some friends of ours who have deep roots both in Taos and Sweden. You have to take a ferry to get there.

The landscape in Sweden is quite beautiful, and the water is never far away.

Here is another photo from the ferry, taken from within the electric car we rented. It was our first real experience with an electric car; the car was cool, but recharging it was a pain because the car did not come with a charger. Instead we were forced to use the charging stations scattered around the city, which was quite difficult.

Sweden features large selections of both delicious pastries and power tools!

I tend to judge cities, or European ones at least, in part based on the quality and volume of their public sculpture. And extra points are awarded for female nudes. Barcelona leads the pack in this regard, at least as far as I have seen. Stockholm doesn't measure up quite as well, but there are a few gems, including this one near the old town center.

______________________________

I know that I usually round out my blog posts with some philosophical ponderings (and once in a while the ponderings wholly comprise the post). I have to say that with everything going on these days, I haven't been pondering all that much... other than to say that I sometimes find myself thinking about compassion. The ability to really identify with someone else, and feel what they are feeling, seems to me to be such a critical and important factor in the world, and sort of a differentiating factor between people. For instance, would Putin really have invaded Ukraine if he was a truly compassionate person? Would his soldiers be killing innocent women and children if they were truly compassionate people? I guess most soldiers aren't particularly compassionate. But I think the world would be a better place if more people conducted themselves with more awareness of how things are for other people.

And also, being in England (and close to Manchester at that) got me enthusiastic... again... for like the 100th time... about my old favorite band Joy Division. What a great band they were, and what a tragic story. I find that I am always interested in people who do really extreme things in life... people like Ian Curtis and Ted Bundy. I will never be one of those people... but I find them fascinating. 

While at the Chatsworth House we were really close to Macclesfield, and I really tried to get over there to see the last house that Ian Curtis lived in, but I had no car and so it wasn't possible. Oh well, another time.

______________________________

OK, as promised, I will now show some images and text from my most recent proposal for Burning Man.

Proposal text:

The Way Forward is a mid-action snapshot of an impossible scene. An ocean wave bursts from the ground, and at the cresting top of this wave is a shark, on the verge of breaking free from the water. Just forward of the shark's dorsal fin sits a woman. She is leaning forward, looking intently ahead, right arm outstretched in front of her, finger pointed decisively forward. The wave and the shark are crafted from steel; the woman from aluminum. The scale is such that the woman is about 1.25 times larger than a real human. This piece is a synthesis of several threads - aesthetic, personal, and philosophical - that came together for me in an unconscious process. The male and female, or Apollonian and Dionysian, as presented originally by Nietzsche and elaborated by Paglia, achieve a dynamic fusion in this piece. Also, a tremendously productive year of therapy brought me finally in touch with my wounded and suppressed female side, hidden since childhood. The woman on the shark IS my female side, showing the strength and focus needed to manifest, to demand to be seen. But I believe the most important, universal, and accessible meaning of the piece can be found in its depiction of the female principle uniting with the power of the natural world to show a path forward through dark times. The male principle can be rapacious and has done much damage. It will be the female principle in all of us that gets us back on track. Power and longevity of the shark, vision of the female, direction, focus, The Way Forward.

OK, thanks for reading.

Bye!