Fitting. I’m on a plane right now.
You probably remember that we moved to Sweden. Wow, what a big and crazy thing to do. I think it’s good that whenever we humans embark on some ambitious new undertaking, we usually don’t fully understand the complexities and difficulties we will encounter along the way. I think if we had a really clear view of it, we might simply not try half of what we try. So I applaud our ignorance; I am grateful for it. To be honest, I think I have willfully cultivated this state of ignorance. Because the alternative is worry and anxiety. There will be time to freak out about situation X and situation Y when they engulf you, so why worry about them now? Stay focused on the present, and give it everything you’ve got. And stay positive, for Christ’s sake. Because the alternative to positivity is a bummer. That’s how I get through things like moving across the ocean with a 12-year old.
So, yes… we moved to Sweden. There’s a rich irony in the fact that we moved mostly for Kodiak - for his education and his future, and yet, of the three members of our little family, his transition has been the hardest. But then, what did we expect from yanking a 12-year old out of his established friend-group (and 12 years old, for those of you who can’t remember, is just when friend-groups start to become the most important thing in the world) and bringing him to a new and foreign place? It does bring some minor consolation to hear that his old pals back in Taos are actually also having hard times, in one way or another. Not because we want them to have hard times (which we don’t, because they’re all lovely, wonderful kids), but because it normalizes for us the fact that being a 12-year old is tough, whether you’re in Lund or Taos or Timbuktu. We must continually remind ourselves that he is learning skills now which will serve him the rest of his life, even though he might not appreciate that until years from now.
Life in Lund continues. Christina drives to KKV (the artist’s collective workshop in Malmö) with some frequency and makes beautiful things out of metal. When I can, I spend hours in my little art studio, tucked into a corner of our ostentatious rented mansion in Lund. Yes, I’ve been painting. I’ve also purchased clay and I have every intention of sculpting too, soon. In fact I intend to carry out my threat, soon, to cast a sculpture in bronze.
Swedish winters are gray. Unrelentingly gray. When the unrelenting grayness relents briefly, and the sun shines unexpectedly for an hour or a day, you want to run outside and stand in it. Or ride a bicycle. Or something like that.
The brightest light in Sweden, so far, has been the friends we have made. Scott and his family, from Texas… Thanks you guys, it's so good to know you. And Krister and Ylva and your two boys, our real Swedish friends… we love you guys.
I said I was on a plane, and so far… I am still on that plane.
Since way before we left for Sweden, Christina and I have been in communication with a new art festival called Transfix which is starting up soon in the US about their intention to lease from us two sculptures, Hand of Man and Capsule, for long-term exhibition. Transfix will be a new kind of festival. They have leased something like 30 interactive 'Burning Man style' sculptures from various artists and will set up these sculptures in one place, in one city, for 3 months. Then they'll transport all those sculptures to another city and show them there for 3 months. And then another city, and then another. Think of it as a condensed Burning Man experience, without the fucking dust, accessible to city-dwellers.
The first city to be graced by Transfix and its cohort of spectacular artwork is Las Vegas, Nevada. And that's where I'm headed right now in this aluminum marvel of aeronautical engineering. After Vegas the show will move to Los Angeles, then New York, and finally Miami. If it's a smashing success it may go on longer, and might even hop the pond over to Europe.
Mind you, I am not flying from Sweden to Las Vegas right now. No, I have been in Taos for about 3 weeks preparing those two sculptures for long-term exhibition. The Hand of Man needed a bit of freshening up, while Capsule got a whole new hydraulic system, allowing its three hands to open and close mechanically, rather than through the use of burning wood. (The new hydraulic arrangement means Capsule will never burn with wood again, so those of you who saw Capsule’s fiery debut in Seco back in ‘22 witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime art event!)
In some sense, this has all been a buildup to bring me to talking about the most interesting thing that’s happened to me recently, which was my three weeks in Taos. The time was interesting, not in and of itself, exactly, but because of its context, its situation within the larger flow of having moved to Sweden. In other words, being in Taos for three weeks told me hell of a lot about what it means to have moved to Sweden, and also a hell of a lot about what we left behind in Taos. And it’s also given me some fresh data for a good old compare-and-contrast between the two places.
Basically, to put it succinctly, the life we built in Taos was lovely. The friends, the workshop, the home, the place… all of it was (and still is) wonderful.
And the task of building a new life, with new friends and a new home and a new workshop in a new country with a new culture… it’s fucking hard. Add a 12-year old into the mix, and it’s really fucking hard.
When I look at a snapshot of our life one year ago, in Taos, and compare it to our life now in Lund, in many ways things were better in Taos.
But America has an edge. There’s an edge of violence and anger here. And I think it’s born out of the economic disparity, the poverty, the desperation, and the political rancor. In the last two days someone lunged at my car in a mock attack, someone else flipped me the bird on the street for no reason (he was flipping everyone the bird), and I couldn’t cross the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge because someone had jumped to his death hours earlier (in front of his family, no less!) And that's just two days in Taos... not counting the mass shootings and other horrible things that happen across the US all the time. That shit just doesn’t happen in Sweden!
Democrats can’t seem to manage cities and Republicans are banning books and criminalizing being female. Taos is a beautiful bubble but America is a mess. History shows us that empires often decline after about 200 years.
And so, yes… when I look at a snapshot of our life one year ago, in Taos, and compare it to our life now in Lund, in many ways things were better in Taos. But that is the wrong way to look at it. It's an unfair comparison. Transitions like this take time. If Lund is tough and things aren’t coming together in 2 years, then we’ll reassess. But I really don’t think it’s gonna go that way. Because things are already coming together, and Christina and I are a pair of badass fucking powerhouses, and we make shit happen. We're hunting for a house to buy and might be closing in on one. And Kodiak is coming along. He’ll get there. The only tragedy here would be if we gave up on Sweden after NOT having tried our hardest. To quote my eloquent friend Jimmy, “Don’t be a bitch. Don’t tap out.” Word, Jimmy.
Before I leave the topic of Taos, I want to give a big thank-you to Matt and Richard for taking such good care of me in Taos. Everyone should be lucky enough to have friends like Matt and Richard.
OK do you want to read about art and painting and A.I. and brushstrokes?
I have a bit of a pet peeve about loose brushwork. Perhaps you know the kind of brushwork I'm talking about; you see it in paintings by Sargent and Sorolla and many others.
I've been thinking about this a lot, trying to figure out why it bothers me, and I've finally realized that my negative reaction has two components. First off, I just don't like loosely painted artwork. But I don't usually hate it either; it is just a preference of taste. More importantly, though, I resent the fact that loose brushwork is so consistently presented as the right way to paint. Recently I came across yet another painting channel on Youtube featuring a video on the importance of this approach. I believe it was called "Why you can't paint loosely, Yet!" The implication is obvious; learn to paint loosely and you'll finally be painting correctly. And yet, no one ever bothers to explain WHY this approach is so revered.
Since no one else seems to want to explain this preference, I will propose two possible rationales. And then, my second rationale will quickly mature into some broader, more universal observations about the nature of painting, taking us finally to yet a third possible explanation.
Rationale number one goes like this: If you can reduce the complexity of a scene by capturing it with fewer and looser brush strokes, you can theoretically finish a painting much faster. And if you can make one painting faster, you can make a lot of paintings faster, and you can theoretically make a lot more paintings, and maybe even sell more. This is undoubtedly good for the painter. I propose that whether the paintings are really better or not is a question of taste.
Rationale number two goes like this: Painting will never fully and faithfully capture all the details of reality; it will always be a somewhat imprecise approximation. So then, why not make a virtue out of that imprecision? Why not treat it as a strength, rather than a weakness? Why not see how far you can push that imprecision while still making the scene recognizable? And somewhere along the line, some painter or another realized that, by playing with brush strokes (or color choices, or some other technical variable), he or she could make some judgment or interpretation of the reality they were capturing; in other words the painting could become subjective or interpretive.
And here we get to the meat of the discussion. Before the advent of photography, painters mostly aspired to simply capture reality accurately. They were record keepers, documentarians. But once technology produced a little machine that could make accurate images of the world (the camera), painters needed to carve out new territory for themselves to remain relevant. This actually made the world of painting much more varied and interesting. No longer bound by the slavish imperative to reproduce reality, painting suddenly became a way for artists to say something, in many cases something personal and idiosyncratic. And loose, impressionistic brushwork is one way to do that. But for god's sake, it's not the only way! And in my personal opinion, it's not even the most interesting way.
Because you see, there are many many artists who clearly couldn't give a shit about the Youtube doctrine that looser equals better, and they are, in my opinion, doing much more interesting work than the loose school. Painters like Salvador Dalí, Paul Cadmus, Michael Bergt, Alex Grey, Gottfried Helnwein, Hieronymus Bosch, and Alessandro Sicioldr, to name just a few. These painters, and the thousands of others like them, have chosen a substantively different approach to saying something personal, idiosyncratic, and interpretive with their images. They have chosen to paint images of specific narratives which are meaningful to them, but fall outside the realm of consensus reality (this approach is sometimes called 'magical realism'). And because they are trying to convey something specific, tight and concise brushwork serves the purpose better. And the purpose is communication.
It occurs to me as I write this that the tension between loose and tight brushwork can also be thought of, like so many other things, as a tension between emotion and intellect. I read somewhere that the real value in Jackson Pollock's paintings (which are, pictorially speaking, total garbage if you ask me) is in the fact that they are a record of action and emotion. When you see all those violently thrown splashes of paint, you are seeing the result of - and perhaps imagining the action of - a man in the throes of passion, the passion of throwing paint. This is why they are called 'Action Paintings.'
Insofar as any of the painters I mentioned two paragraphs ago are capturing emotion they are doing it in a totally different way. They are capturing a scene of emotion (or whatever other aspect of humanity intrigues them), as if in a freeze-frame, and then painting that image accurately. The process is fundamentally intellectual.
Now just for fun, let's go back to the question that started this rant: WHY is loose and expressionistic brushwork presented on Youtube and other popular culture media as the right way to paint? I propose this answer: Since the advent of photography (and artificial intelligence image generators such as Midjourney and Dall-E have only intensified this pressure), painters have needed to make images which are fundamentally personal and interpretive in order to remain relevant. And while loose brushwork and magical realism (which depends on having a unique outlook) are both avenues to achieving this, it’s a lot easier to teach people how to handle paint in a video or a book than it is to teach them how to have an opinion, or teach them to have something to say.
- End of rant.
- I'm not on the plane anymore.
I'm feeling a little more experimental with the painting these days... willing to paint with less worry about making everything a masterpiece. Trying to find ways and styles that work for me.
The brightest light in Sweden, so far, has been the friends we have made. Scott and his family, from Texas… Thanks you guys, it's so good to know you. And Krister and Ylva and your two boys, our real Swedish friends… we love you guys.
I said I was on a plane, and so far… I am still on that plane.
Since way before we left for Sweden, Christina and I have been in communication with a new art festival called Transfix which is starting up soon in the US about their intention to lease from us two sculptures, Hand of Man and Capsule, for long-term exhibition. Transfix will be a new kind of festival. They have leased something like 30 interactive 'Burning Man style' sculptures from various artists and will set up these sculptures in one place, in one city, for 3 months. Then they'll transport all those sculptures to another city and show them there for 3 months. And then another city, and then another. Think of it as a condensed Burning Man experience, without the fucking dust, accessible to city-dwellers.
The first city to be graced by Transfix and its cohort of spectacular artwork is Las Vegas, Nevada. And that's where I'm headed right now in this aluminum marvel of aeronautical engineering. After Vegas the show will move to Los Angeles, then New York, and finally Miami. If it's a smashing success it may go on longer, and might even hop the pond over to Europe.
Mind you, I am not flying from Sweden to Las Vegas right now. No, I have been in Taos for about 3 weeks preparing those two sculptures for long-term exhibition. The Hand of Man needed a bit of freshening up, while Capsule got a whole new hydraulic system, allowing its three hands to open and close mechanically, rather than through the use of burning wood. (The new hydraulic arrangement means Capsule will never burn with wood again, so those of you who saw Capsule’s fiery debut in Seco back in ‘22 witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime art event!)
In some sense, this has all been a buildup to bring me to talking about the most interesting thing that’s happened to me recently, which was my three weeks in Taos. The time was interesting, not in and of itself, exactly, but because of its context, its situation within the larger flow of having moved to Sweden. In other words, being in Taos for three weeks told me hell of a lot about what it means to have moved to Sweden, and also a hell of a lot about what we left behind in Taos. And it’s also given me some fresh data for a good old compare-and-contrast between the two places.
Basically, to put it succinctly, the life we built in Taos was lovely. The friends, the workshop, the home, the place… all of it was (and still is) wonderful.
And the task of building a new life, with new friends and a new home and a new workshop in a new country with a new culture… it’s fucking hard. Add a 12-year old into the mix, and it’s really fucking hard.
When I look at a snapshot of our life one year ago, in Taos, and compare it to our life now in Lund, in many ways things were better in Taos.
But America has an edge. There’s an edge of violence and anger here. And I think it’s born out of the economic disparity, the poverty, the desperation, and the political rancor. In the last two days someone lunged at my car in a mock attack, someone else flipped me the bird on the street for no reason (he was flipping everyone the bird), and I couldn’t cross the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge because someone had jumped to his death hours earlier (in front of his family, no less!) And that's just two days in Taos... not counting the mass shootings and other horrible things that happen across the US all the time. That shit just doesn’t happen in Sweden!
Democrats can’t seem to manage cities and Republicans are banning books and criminalizing being female. Taos is a beautiful bubble but America is a mess. History shows us that empires often decline after about 200 years.
And so, yes… when I look at a snapshot of our life one year ago, in Taos, and compare it to our life now in Lund, in many ways things were better in Taos. But that is the wrong way to look at it. It's an unfair comparison. Transitions like this take time. If Lund is tough and things aren’t coming together in 2 years, then we’ll reassess. But I really don’t think it’s gonna go that way. Because things are already coming together, and Christina and I are a pair of badass fucking powerhouses, and we make shit happen. We're hunting for a house to buy and might be closing in on one. And Kodiak is coming along. He’ll get there. The only tragedy here would be if we gave up on Sweden after NOT having tried our hardest. To quote my eloquent friend Jimmy, “Don’t be a bitch. Don’t tap out.” Word, Jimmy.
Before I leave the topic of Taos, I want to give a big thank-you to Matt and Richard for taking such good care of me in Taos. Everyone should be lucky enough to have friends like Matt and Richard.
_______________________
OK do you want to read about art and painting and A.I. and brushstrokes?
I have a bit of a pet peeve about loose brushwork. Perhaps you know the kind of brushwork I'm talking about; you see it in paintings by Sargent and Sorolla and many others.
I've been thinking about this a lot, trying to figure out why it bothers me, and I've finally realized that my negative reaction has two components. First off, I just don't like loosely painted artwork. But I don't usually hate it either; it is just a preference of taste. More importantly, though, I resent the fact that loose brushwork is so consistently presented as the right way to paint. Recently I came across yet another painting channel on Youtube featuring a video on the importance of this approach. I believe it was called "Why you can't paint loosely, Yet!" The implication is obvious; learn to paint loosely and you'll finally be painting correctly. And yet, no one ever bothers to explain WHY this approach is so revered.
Since no one else seems to want to explain this preference, I will propose two possible rationales. And then, my second rationale will quickly mature into some broader, more universal observations about the nature of painting, taking us finally to yet a third possible explanation.
Rationale number one goes like this: If you can reduce the complexity of a scene by capturing it with fewer and looser brush strokes, you can theoretically finish a painting much faster. And if you can make one painting faster, you can make a lot of paintings faster, and you can theoretically make a lot more paintings, and maybe even sell more. This is undoubtedly good for the painter. I propose that whether the paintings are really better or not is a question of taste.
Rationale number two goes like this: Painting will never fully and faithfully capture all the details of reality; it will always be a somewhat imprecise approximation. So then, why not make a virtue out of that imprecision? Why not treat it as a strength, rather than a weakness? Why not see how far you can push that imprecision while still making the scene recognizable? And somewhere along the line, some painter or another realized that, by playing with brush strokes (or color choices, or some other technical variable), he or she could make some judgment or interpretation of the reality they were capturing; in other words the painting could become subjective or interpretive.
And here we get to the meat of the discussion. Before the advent of photography, painters mostly aspired to simply capture reality accurately. They were record keepers, documentarians. But once technology produced a little machine that could make accurate images of the world (the camera), painters needed to carve out new territory for themselves to remain relevant. This actually made the world of painting much more varied and interesting. No longer bound by the slavish imperative to reproduce reality, painting suddenly became a way for artists to say something, in many cases something personal and idiosyncratic. And loose, impressionistic brushwork is one way to do that. But for god's sake, it's not the only way! And in my personal opinion, it's not even the most interesting way.
Because you see, there are many many artists who clearly couldn't give a shit about the Youtube doctrine that looser equals better, and they are, in my opinion, doing much more interesting work than the loose school. Painters like Salvador Dalí, Paul Cadmus, Michael Bergt, Alex Grey, Gottfried Helnwein, Hieronymus Bosch, and Alessandro Sicioldr, to name just a few. These painters, and the thousands of others like them, have chosen a substantively different approach to saying something personal, idiosyncratic, and interpretive with their images. They have chosen to paint images of specific narratives which are meaningful to them, but fall outside the realm of consensus reality (this approach is sometimes called 'magical realism'). And because they are trying to convey something specific, tight and concise brushwork serves the purpose better. And the purpose is communication.
It occurs to me as I write this that the tension between loose and tight brushwork can also be thought of, like so many other things, as a tension between emotion and intellect. I read somewhere that the real value in Jackson Pollock's paintings (which are, pictorially speaking, total garbage if you ask me) is in the fact that they are a record of action and emotion. When you see all those violently thrown splashes of paint, you are seeing the result of - and perhaps imagining the action of - a man in the throes of passion, the passion of throwing paint. This is why they are called 'Action Paintings.'
Insofar as any of the painters I mentioned two paragraphs ago are capturing emotion they are doing it in a totally different way. They are capturing a scene of emotion (or whatever other aspect of humanity intrigues them), as if in a freeze-frame, and then painting that image accurately. The process is fundamentally intellectual.
Now just for fun, let's go back to the question that started this rant: WHY is loose and expressionistic brushwork presented on Youtube and other popular culture media as the right way to paint? I propose this answer: Since the advent of photography (and artificial intelligence image generators such as Midjourney and Dall-E have only intensified this pressure), painters have needed to make images which are fundamentally personal and interpretive in order to remain relevant. And while loose brushwork and magical realism (which depends on having a unique outlook) are both avenues to achieving this, it’s a lot easier to teach people how to handle paint in a video or a book than it is to teach them how to have an opinion, or teach them to have something to say.
- End of rant.
- I'm not on the plane anymore.
- I got my motorcycle legal in Sweden and I'm looking forward to riding it.
- I tested out of my Swedish course, as expected.
- I'll probably write another blog post soon about my time in Las Vegas. What a weird place this is.
Here are some paintings I've recently made.
Here are some paintings I've recently made.
Until next time,
Adios
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