1st Gear

It has been a slow road off of the recent crisis. The crisis is a crossroads; if I paint this infrequent my art life may go nowhere and then necessarily become extinct, traded for a more stable family friendly career. I haven’t been painting much lately as a result. I think one way out of this crisis is choosing to make more time for it, a proper amount. I have tonight, but an obstacle or two has already been presented. I have a prior obligation I am reluctant to attend and I have no energy. These are mere obstacles and for now I am resolute.

I have entered into a fine conversation or two recently and perhaps I will post those later. One deals with my art in particular and I found it an interesting take. It was opined that my work is interesting and of notable quality, but “empty”, my emotional content that is. On some level, I agree. Now, for those that know my work and have been exposed to my thinking, it can be agreed that this is quasi-intentional. It is intentional in that my priorities are for painting ideas and notions, not emotional moments and flowers or even pain. I paint ideas and concepts almost philosophically and have actively resisted too much specific emotional baggage. Though this is what I have done, “empty” is no achievement, regardless of where on the totem pole I place the importance of emotion.

That said, my ‘everyman’ forms serve a great purpose. I do not wish to personalize my forms so much that they overpower the theme. Often it is the very idea that individuals are lost in the modern media, replaced by numbers and sensation that drive the ideas behind my paintings. I want to focus on the greater concept of how we are changing as a people, as a world, as a species, with every new development in the conditions of our evolving human condition. When I painted In the Mines, I painted the whole of the lost souls and what it means to risk going underground and being left there in a commercial world. I painted the dark light of man’s last moments, pre-buried. I didn’t paint Jim’s ordeal or Jane’s sacrifice; I painted the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. The same goes for the painting representing the tragedy at the World Trade Center Towers, In the Towers. It represents all of those lost, the fear in all of us, the futility, the capitulation and quiet resignation in the face of the foreground avatar. Bodies twist in that one, as much from the idea of such fantastic carnage as it represents how little we knew of what it must have been like up there and how they would never know what would happen in the years after down here. It is unknown. Putting a specific emotional and realistic face into that dialogue would seem too one sided, like starting an argument with an absolute and refusing to budge your ground.














As mentioned however, “empty” is no triumph and I admit, I could stand to include this element in a more thorough way with my forms. Granted, ‘empty’ may not even be the right word, it may be too harsh (maybe not?), but the viewer trusts me to make the whole argument and I believe I can trust them to engage the whole idea of my intent without stopping on agreement or disagreement of how I use emotion in my paintings. So, I will soon endeavor to better frame my arguments, not neglecting parts of our being for the sake of sterile understanding of the truth.