To see through this thick fog…The weight of the world is immense. To continue to make work feels superfluous and necessary; it is our culture. In my mind resonates Trungpa Rinpoche’s words…, “ …the horrors of a war that could destroy the world and its inhabitants…” I have been a studio practitioner for over 40 […]
That “art doesn’t give a shit”, revealed by painter Larry Poons, is arguably the most profound utterance of this Century. The imbalance of the market is extreme, we all know that. The luck of the draw is prevalent. It is who you know. Much deeper than all of that nonsense; when the artist is still, […]
For as long as I have made work I have thought about the importance of an artist’s anonymity. More specifically, the inherent significance of the work itself, a “pure art” as the artist Il Lee would describe it. My interest in artists like Reinhardt and Martin reflect this. There is a devilish element of swimming […]
All artists do not make work from the same place. This does not mean that a particular form is privileged. But it does lead to a particular aesthetic. Work made from chaos and work made from the still and silent can produce two opposing forms. Beyond the “place” from which the artist works is the […]
Epiphanies come. Last night on the eve of my 57 birthday I reviewed. It quickly came to me that it’s not that I dislike birthdays – but, I do not like them either. The attention is misplaced. I am just kind of going along in my life and each year there is some type of […]
It is always a startling moment when I recognize what a disruption a show of work is. There is, now, a realization that I was stopped in mid thought, mid sentence, mid stride, vision interrupted, trajectory rocked, etc. The feeling of getting the work back into the space and to continue is grounding. I suspect […]
In 1961 Ad Reinhardt described his work in these words: “A square (neutral, shapeless) canvas, five feet wide, five feet high, as high as a man, as wide as a man’s outstretched arms (not large, not small, sizeless) trisected (no composition) one horizontal form negating one vertical form (formless, no top, no bottom, directionless). Three […]
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them. -From the Four Great Bodhisattva […]
Many could and are welcome to add to this. It is entirely out of the context of art making; then again – nothing is out of the context of art making. My most loved friends are at the point in their lives when they are touching the tip of the iceberg that is the end […]
In September I wrote about refraining from writing or speaking publicly about my work for one year. Specifically what I was referring to was forms of abandonment. Abandoning complexities in a studio practice. The psychological and physical hoops that one puts themselves through to make work. Most, if not all, are of our own making. […]