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CSArt exhibition first Friday Frank O'Hara local muscle maine pop up Portland

CSArt, Local Muscle, Frank O’Hara & the Hustle

I just returned from a late night painting in the studio. I was working four separate panels intermittently and split that time up by reading Frank O’Hara. The panels are part of a group of pieces that I will be showing with CSArt in te Local Muscle truck on first Friday in August, in front of Space Gallery. 

The work is starting to really evolve. At first I think I was mostly concerned with the drawing. While I was mixing colors it still was feeling a bit like paint by numbers. My brushes are all a bit too large for the size blocks that I am using in te various patterns as well. It has been very frustrating. Coupled with my decrease in studio hours over the summer and the work has been in this sort of in between phase. Tonight I really feel like I was moving beyond that. There is a tendency when I am working in my home studio to stick to one panel at a time, but at studio I work best when I have multiple panels going. The conversation seems bigger and more inclusive. All I needed was a reminder to get to that spot. Cue in Frank O’Hara who worked for the MOMA, wrote poetry on his lunch breaks as spent a great deal of his time meeting with artists in their studios. All te reminder that I need. 

I think that this body of work really has the capability to be something more special than what I have allowed it to be so far. Here’s hoping for more positive energy moving forward. 
Peace
-Mike
Categories
CSArt exhibition first Friday Frank O'Hara local muscle maine pop up Portland

CSArt, Local Muscle, Frank O’Hara & the Hustle

I just returned from a late night painting in the studio. I was working four separate panels intermittently and split that time up by reading Frank O’Hara. The panels are part of a group of pieces that I will be showing with CSArt in te Local Muscle truck on first Friday in August, in front of Space Gallery. 

The work is starting to really evolve. At first I think I was mostly concerned with the drawing. While I was mixing colors it still was feeling a bit like paint by numbers. My brushes are all a bit too large for the size blocks that I am using in te various patterns as well. It has been very frustrating. Coupled with my decrease in studio hours over the summer and the work has been in this sort of in between phase. Tonight I really feel like I was moving beyond that. There is a tendency when I am working in my home studio to stick to one panel at a time, but at studio I work best when I have multiple panels going. The conversation seems bigger and more inclusive. All I needed was a reminder to get to that spot. Cue in Frank O’Hara who worked for the MOMA, wrote poetry on his lunch breaks as spent a great deal of his time meeting with artists in their studios. All te reminder that I need. 

I think that this body of work really has the capability to be something more special than what I have allowed it to be so far. Here’s hoping for more positive energy moving forward. 
Peace
-Mike
Categories
Faulkner maine painter

Absolom, Absolom

I started “Absolom, Absolom” last year, just after Austin was born.  I remember reading it to him in studio.  I love the way that Faulkner wrote.  I unfortunately don’t have the endurance to finish his books.  I have started three and gotten to about page 150 on each one and then I lose gas.  Today, while I was watching Austin, I happened into Longfellow Books in Portland and found a copy of “Absolom, Absolom” for my own library.  There is something about reading a book from your own library that can never be compared to borrowing the book.  You own that book.  It is yours to enjoy, feel, and love.  There is something important in starting this Faulkner over again for me; a thread that I left unravelled but not unravelled all the way to the end and not wound up again either.

It seems that my artwork is in the same headspace right now.  I am excited about the work but it seems foreign to me, like someone took all of my saved files on my computer and converted them to French.  I can still catch the gist of the work, but it is difficult to decipher and some of the motives are lost in the translation.  My time in studio has been reduced to such a great extent that I find myself feeling a bit lost, but I’ve begun piecing in hours.  If I can piece in hours then I will be better off.  I just need to retain my train of thought.  I suspect that I will need to write more; dictate to myself what steps I wish to take while I am creating.

I worked on two pieces today, neither of which is finished, both of which seem like steps in the right direction.  So as I sit here typing, listening to my last album of the day, Wilco “A Ghost is Born,” I wonder what the next step is with this work.  I want to put up a show of new thoughts at every turn, but as I related in my last post, I think this does a disservice to the work.  Is the work really about my subject matter or about me painting my subject matter?  Would I be saying the same thing if I did 100 portraits of my son or if I were to 100 paintings of the Grapevine Epimenis?  Grad school suggests to a certain extent, yes.

There is a holiness in the pattern making.  It feels electrifying to fit myself into the spaces, but on the other hand I don’t really fit into the spaces.  I haven’t concerned myself with coloring in the lines totally since I was in grade school.  At the same time, I come fairly close on a regular basis.

Here is the piece from last night.  I’ve started to solidify the color, work in a ground which the tessellation will eventually seem to be growing out of and started to paint the succulent.  I realized two things today while I was working on the piece.  One, that I need to have the succulent in front of me if I am going to attempt a more expressive brush stroke.  The photo that I took to studio of the plant at home flattened everything, and the plant that I love felt lifeless.  I need to feel the weight in person, just like I would with a figure drawing.  Two, I realized that I needed to finish the tessellation layer as a whole the next time before I started worrying about where the additional elements might reside.  It is frustrating painting in the negative space around a subject when the ground is a pattern.  Really, it feels like two figures fighting each other; a mathematical and logical figure versus a natural progressing and aesthetically perfect logic.

I wizened up and created the tessellation before I determined where elements were going over top in this piece.  Right now the piece exists as a pleasant play between a cobalt turquoise and a yellow green.  I can already feel the weight in the tessellation, so now when I add in the succulent I feel like it will seem more like a counterweight than a figure being created in correlation to the tessellation. 
Absolom, Absolom.
Peace
-Mike

Categories
Art fine artist maine painter Pattern succulent tessellation

Where Did I Leave Off

UThis summer has been so very trying on my creativity. I took a job in an art gallery and seemingly lost my creative mojo. There were so many works around me, very few of which I wanted to feel any influence by, and on the whole my little brain has felt completely an utterly overwhelmed. Compounded with the amount of time that the job takes up I feel like I have been in for it. 

This morning I woke up with a piece in my head though. I haven’t in a while, but I know that when I do there is some soup about to get made. I’m off to the soup. I figured that if I couldn’t figure out where I was going it was probably because I never got to where I was headed with the last body of work. Sometimes I forget that a new series of work doesn’t have to concern an entirely new approach or concept. Sometimes it can just be a matter of the growth of your ideas. And so I have returned to the succulents with the tessellations, albeit a bit smaller this time, and my heart feels light. I know I’m doing something right tonight. 
I’m excited to see what the studio brings tomorrow. Peace. 
-Mike

Categories
Art Goya inspiration maine painting Portland

CSArt, Working for the Man & Goya

I’ve been plugging through Robert Hugh’s “Goya” again. It’s a good book, but long and heavy. It’s just not something you sit down and read cover to cover in a few days. 

I’ve been working for a used car salesman turned art gallery owner and it is proving to be a difficult venture for me. I am expected to dress better there than when I teach. It seems silly to me. As I was thumbing through Goya I came to a passage on a portrait of Carlos IV in which his dog is sniffing obsequiously at his crotch. The collar of the dog is labeled G-O-Y… which implies Goya’s name on the color, suggesting that he was the king’s loyal servant. It’s apropos that as I slog through a summer job working for a man I have a hard time respecting I read of Goya working for a King who primarily hunted and left politics to his staff. 
And so I humbly return to my work and accept my position for what it is. I am happy with these pieces of compartmentalization that I am working on. The drawings are born from spontaneity, defining a game and rules as I go. The color is becoming a play which is indicative of a study in Albers. Colors are changing for me based on what I place around them. There is no recognizable subject so I am allowed to convey my message and my empathy solely with color. It’s working well thus far. Here are te five.completed pieces. 

I must remind myself to focus, keep my head up, and remember how good I have it. I have goals in mind which I must achieve. Getting to wrqpped up in work drama will not help get me to them. 
Peace
-Mike
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Uncategorized

I Can Feel It

The emotion is all over me right now. I have felt so trapped by a new schedule necessary for my summer job that all my anxieties, interjections, thoughts and emotion has become bottled up. Today was supposed to be an all day studio day, but I decided to take my son to the park and stay home and work for a while. He’s amazing. He makes me think things I’ve never thought and slow down for things that I would never have had patience for.  

While he was napping I started painting out a piece I had started to draw last night. It is a simple recurring set of shapes and colors arranged in the same locked box manner which I based off of the structure in a house of cards. 
I realized today what this method is to me. I am taking a set if shapes, creating a corresponding set of rules and then creating the drawings at random, a spontaneous quasi-mathematical creation. It is like understanding the functions in a trigonometry problem but getting points taken off on your test because you didn’t use a ruler in your diagram. In other terms it is like taking a set of compositions from a logic that is nothing but fallacy. Sort of like everything everywhere on the internet. 
Here is the newest piece from the locked box series:

Peace

-mike
Categories
Art exploration found materials Found Objects painting Portland Maine Portland Maine Painter walking wood

Some Inspiration – Found Wood – The Exploration

Summer is in full swing.  My show in Bangor has come and gone and now I am left with the itch.  I have a show of watercolors coming up in Laconia in October, but it is the end of June.  I am not done making paintings like those that I put in “The Dinosaurs of Industry,” but in order to make more work, I need more materials.  I need some found wood.

When I get in this mood, I generally begin by taking some early morning walks.  The morning is the easiest time for me to think.  I have a clear head.  There is nothing to process from the day.  I can respond to objects that I encounter for their sheer aesthetic value and nothing else. There are several good spots to walk in Portland, ME to find found materials.  The Bayside community has two things going for it.  There is a high volume of low income traffic that roams through the neighborhood and sometimes you will find interesting tidbits of the night before, post-its, receipts, paper bags, etc.  There is also the architectural salvage store and a few warehouses and a drop off for a good will.  Sometimes people will drop off items, like plywood or busted furniture, which are not going to be useful to anyone in the future as actual furniture.  To me, these items are gold.  Often you will find small pieces of wood around warehouses that were used as packing or for trucks to drive over icy patches, etc.  I try to take nothing that looks like it is being used.  Lastly, the architectural salvage has a bin outside which houses pieces that they do not want to resell.  This usually results in a bunch of less than ideal looking surfaces, but sometimes there are some real gems.

I then tend to walk around the neighborhoods.  The West End is usually devoid of good building materials.  If you catch someone remodeling on the right day you could very well find something, but people in the West End clean up rather quickly.  It is the nice end of town after all.  If nothing else a walk through the West End is pleasant.  I then head down the hill and Close to the water.  Sometimes you will find some wood towards where the ships come in.  I do not generally walk up and down the docks as I don’t want to irritate the folks working on the ships coming in.  It is generally early after all, and the folks on the docks usually have been up far longer than me.

I then swing  down Grant and Sherman streets.  Apartments are cheaper there, so there is a high turnover rate and you can quite often find interesting things that people have left behind when they are moving out.  Tomorrow I intend to try walking around on Munjoy Hill.  I haven’t spent much time walking up there because until a year and a half ago it was way on the other side of town from me.  Now I live at the base.  There looks to be some good construction projects going on so I will probably be able to find something in the way of materials if I’m patient.

When I see something that I want to use, it isn’t a casual thing.  It hits me in the face with the wave of creation.  I want to use it immediately.  I want to hold it.  I want to carry it, however heavy it may be. There is no question in my mind as to the materials I should pick up and the ones that I should leave behind.  The right piece of wood can fuel entire studio days.  My energies have settled a bit after some intense work.  It’s time to find some creative fodder.

Peace
-Mike

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Uncategorized

Winding Down

The Dinosaurs of Industry and the Rhythm of Man goes up on Friday.  This past week has been a feverish push to be ready to hang and packed up by late Thursday.  The work looks great, but I had thought that spending six months on the show I might have escaped some of the last minute ideas that always come to me, that I might be done and not looking for anything more out of myself.  I wonder if this isn’t a ridiculous expectation, however.  That last minute expectation is the creative urge.  That is pure adrenaline, not in a diffused coffee sort of delivery but in the purest of idea forms.  It is a beautiful feeling and as much as my wife likes it when I am home in the evening I just can’t do it this week.

I was so very concerned about the balance within this piece.  I didn’t want the color to drown out the drawing and I didn’t want the colors to be placed in such a way that it made the the contrast in the moth wings difficult either.  I started in the lower left of the piece and moved up, only to find that I had lost three sets of wings immediately above the foundry bucket.  At this point I determined that I needed to break the pattern and so I started to paint the shapes exploding out from their initial spaces.  It seemed to match the way that the moths were ascending out of their dark past.  Even still as I was creating the exploded pattern I was still set on covering the whole top bit of the image until I realized that it wasn’t balanced at all.  I put out the word on Twitter and a friend suggested I just leave it the way it was.  I hadn’t even considered that, but when I did the piece started to feel more and more resolved.  

The week has looked like a lot of this.  I realize that most people work upon panels that have already been made.  I work a bit counterintuitively on my pieces.  My studio is so small that is difficult to find space to move around a bunch of panels with backers and also I like the nature of found and weathered wood.  Sometimes these piece end up needing something different than the typical backer and so I like to leave the work open to options.

This is the last piece that I am working on.  I was uncertain about the left half of this piece for three months. The rest of the image was all figured out for three whole months.  I had drawn a robot head in the sketch that I was working from and it just didn’t feel right.  It felt out of place with the rest of the elements in the show and so I returned to my sketchbooks and flipped through the development of the imagery within the show.  Upon doing so I became confident that I needed to place the moth eye in that space.  Today I am working on possible tessellations to occupy the negative space around it.

 This has been so much work and it feels so good to see the accumulation of images all in one place. I can confidently say that this is the best body of work that I’ve ever made.

Peace
-Mike

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Uncategorized

1 Week, 1 Day, and All’s Well

The Dinosaurs of Industry and the Rhythm of Man goes up in 8 days.  I feel surprisingly good and my nerves are doing relatively okay.  This is amazing.  I have been working on this body of art for roughly six months.  My stress level is low.  I am primarily working on finishing touches and making sure that everything hangs as it should.  Logistics in getting to Bangor actually look like the most difficult aspect of the week right now, so life is good.  Here’s the card that I put together for the show.

If you’re in the area, pop in and fly the flag.  It would be awesome to see some friendly faces.

Best
Mike

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Uncategorized

Tainted with Success: Thought on Diamonds & a Few Drawings

 I have an image stuck in my head.  While waiting in the car with sleeping Austin, puttering in a sketchbook I started playing with triangles again.  I had been working with a checkerboard style of shading and primarily bounding my patterns in squares.  However, the sketchbook allows me to experiment more.   I was looking for a way to literally break out of the box.  This sketch grew organically, despite its measured geometric components. The result was a diamond.  I wasn’t thinking about diamonds, nor has it been something that I have visually obsessed over before, but as this was hitting the page I knew that it was soon going to be something that I would obsess over.

Thinking back, diamonds have really only entered my conscientiousness when thinking about engagement rings and in a lone short story by F. Scott Fitgerald, Diamond as Big as the Ritz.  Fitzgerald is super important to me, as I read him exclusively during the rough patches at the end of my first major relationship.  Diamond was from “Babylon Revisited,” a book of short stories that I read on the plane to and from Minneapolis.  My time in Minneapolis is qualified as both the most crestfallen and defeated that I’ve ever felt, but also the most able to function and live on a small means.  It was interesting then, to be reading Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age stories of wealth and extravagance.  I think that the image of the diamond sort of sits in the back of my head as an unconscious sort of relic to that era and the subsequent breaking off of my first engagement.  It is all of the things of luster, but imperfect and valueless too.  
The diamond is also the perfect metaphor for the art star.  The poor, struggling artist attempts to create something to live on.  The story is colloquial, universal.  Our stereotypes depend on it.  The efficacy of the art object is lost out of prudence.  We’ve built a society that expects artists to remain poor and so, in order for the artist to make money, not only must they develop an authentic and unique style, but they must surpass the overwhelming hurdle of precedence, and vault themselves into the land of the prosperous.

The diamond is a sign of hope, however.  It starts life as just another rock and until it is discovered remains a rock.  Upon its discovery however it undergoes a metamorphosis.  It becomes an object of desire.  It signifies love and stability.  It is tainted with success.
Peace
-Mike