Category: Drawing

Categories
charles mingus Drawing Maine artists white supremacy

The Fables of Faubus (on repeat)

It has been one full week since the United States elected Donald Trump to President.  This week has felt like years.  Social Media has become a task even more difficult to champion than it was during the height of Bernie Sanders Memedom.  I am tired of the internet.  I also depend on the internet.  Without it there is absolutely no audience for my artwork or my creative thoughts.  Without it, my creative community is limited to my neighbors and knows nothing of NYC or the West Coast.  Without it, I do not sell much work.  Without it, I do not get more shows.  And yet, with it, this is as depressing as it goes.

I read, and wonder, where is the love?  Why is everybody bickering?  Why am I bickering?  I did not come here to bicker.  I do not disagree with the majority of the people out there.  But I am tired.  I have been attempting to read the paper, to keep up, to know what is happening.  Sadly, the plot line has been similar to Hans Keilson’s “Life Goes On,” thus far.  But then today, I read the front page of the New York Times and there was news of series of beatings conducted by corrections officers in Marcy, New York.  I just felt so overwhelmingly sad.  More sad than I have felt thus far.  It seems that prisons and jails should be relatively safe, at least safe from violence by officers. I spent so much time with people in uniform when I was a child riding around with my dad.  There were so many very good people working in that policing community.  Marcy is not far from where I grew up.  This news hit me hard.  It felt like the root of all that is getting in between us.  Multiple inmates claimed to be called derogatory names for race and orientation.  Multiple inmates filed claims of broken noses, contusions on the head, being used as battering rams through dry wall.  This is not the world I want. A few officers should not be able to sully the name of all officers, and no inmate should ever be victim of such crimes.

The article listed what the inmates were in prison for.  One fellow was listed at serving 17 years for drug possession.  I don’t know anything about sentencing, but 17 years is an awful long time.  I started to think about what one does when they get home.  Do they even have a home when they get out?  Seventeen years!!  That is just a little less than half of the time I’ve been on this planet.  I drew this blind contour from the portrait of one of the inmates that was printed in the New York Times.  

All last week I was consumed by two parallel lines of thought.  One was that white citizens do have power which is at a higher level than other races in this country.  It is undeniable.  We don’t think about it.  We don’t have to, because we are white.  But other races do.  People with different sexual orientations do.  Men seem to over women.  I’ve been reading W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk, trying to get a grasp on what it is to not have this power.  It is some sad reading.  Hopefully there are others who will read it as well.  It seems important, vital, to our improvement to understand the challenges that many people face.
I am interested in the structure of all things natural, and of things which are manmade that take root in the natural.  I think that perhaps if we understand the structure of everything better, we can come to more open conclusions, more inclusive decision making, decision making that will benefit everyone.

Inside the human body, barring any surgeries or birth defects we all have a knee that looks like the one above.  We all walk in buildings which have a structure like the one above.  We all witness insects which can be broken down into the parts above.  There is something wrong with the structure of our nation right now, but the people possess goodness at their hearts.  Let us find a way to help everyone in the best way that we can.  
I am not scared of the economy.  I am scared of creating more division.  Please don’t brainwash us.  Please don’t teach us to hate.  Please, stop being so ridiculous.
“Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em shoot us!
Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don’t let ’em tar and feather us!
Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

Name me someone who’s ridiculous, Dannie.
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won’t permit integrated schools.

Then he’s a fool! Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan)

Name me a handful that’s ridiculous, Dannie Richmond.
Faubus, Rockefeller, Eisenhower
Why are they so sick and ridiculous?

Two, four, six, eight:
They brainwash and teach you hate.
H-E-L-L-O, Hello.”
Peace
-Mike

Categories
Degás Drawing Gauguin Maine artists Vonnegut

We Are What We Pretend to Be

As I’ve settled into my study of great master draftsman and portrait painters, searching for suitable compositions to replicate, I stumbled upon a book of Degás that I had tucked away in the studio. I believe I found the book at a rummage sale for a buck. For the better part of the past 15 years I have collected art books but it wasn’t until I was through with graduate school that I really started to read them. I suppose my patience just hadn’t arrived yet. But I digress, there were two anecdotes that I wanted to share from Degás’ history. 

The man was a bachelor, but he delighted in the movement and rhythm of the human figure, studying ballet dancers, opera singers, and horse jockeys. He studied from class Greek and Italian works, venturing to Italy several times. His aim was to be as immediate as the impressionists who worked outdoors trying to capture precious moments of lighting while drawing the figure with an understanding of classic anatomy and drawing. It is said that many women desired that they have their portraits done, to which he would respond, “I would love to paint your portrait, but would probably dress you in the hate and apron of the servants.”
I adore this mindset. The expectations of people seeking portraits is often counter to the dialogue that is painting. One can make an accurate portrait but have achieved nothing in the sense of emotive paint. I’ve had a good deal of struggle with this with people who have wanted to model for me in the past. I am just not seeking the same thing in the portrait that they are. 
The second tidbit from Degás that I was looking to share was to the point of his funeral. He was said to have suggested, “If there has to be [a duneral], you, [Forain], get up and say, He greatly loved drawing. And so do I.”  There is something so cavalier and charming I. This statement. As a person who struggles feeling love for one person greater than the love I have for many, and who certainly feels more passion for the act of drawing than I do for any person(other than my son) this is music to my ears. I feel, suddenly, less alone. So hears to you Edgar Degás. You were a champion drawer and a true inspiration of a life. 

Here are a couple more drawings that I have put together in preparing my homage to Gauguin’s “Woman Carrying Flowers,” from 1889. 
I am very excited for this piece. My model seems to breathe a similar life into the pose which Gauguin’s model also did. My line work is getting a little softer and a little more confident. The process seems like it is more akin to the lifestyle that I’d like to maintain. I saw a Kurt Vonnegut quote online yesterday, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”  I’m going to pretend to be as great as Gauguin and Degás.
Peace
-Mike

Categories
Creative Confidence Drawing Figurative work Gauguin Maine Artist

Be Impressionist to the End, and Fear Nothing

“Be impressionist to the end, and fear nothing,” Gauguin replied to a friend upon the accusation of terrible mysticism.  A terrible mysticism is surely what an artist needs to avoid in order to escape the labels that society so often casts upon creatives. How then, does one tow the line between symbolic, purposeful and thought provoking work and pedantic dribble?  Grandiloquent gestures aside, it still seems imperative to couch your work in some form of symbolism.  And symbolism almost always finds itself speaking for too much; racial issues, religion, or ecological issues.  There is too much there.  Hopefully the artist is capable of utilizing the juxtaposition of symbols in such a way that it will speak to these larger issues without either growing too big for its britches or being too straight forward.

We all utilize a library of our own symbols.  In the past I have relied on a myriad of archaic devices and machines, like the cassette, steam engines, and antique telephones to attempt to begin a dialogue about what it is we’ve discovered, used, and ultimately cast off.  What is that process I’ve wondered. This has allowed me to create a fairly vast body of work that I’ve been proud of on the whole.  As I’ve been drawing more and more in my sketchbooks over the past 9 months, I’ve realized that utilizing these symbols isn’t really achieving what I had hoped for.  I had hoped to make some pretty grand statements, to provide pause, and to ultimately affect people in some way.  I am not getting through. When I created a show of extinct birds, I received comments on how pretty the birds were.  When people saw the patterns that were coupled with each bird, they assumed that they were random.  People did not look and try to solve my riddles.  Perhaps there were too many riddles.

I’ve realized that what I want to communicate is a compassion, an acceptance, a contentedness in the daily routine.  It isn’t so much about what we have cast off.  While I do care about what we have cast off and I think that what is left behind does say a lot about our level of contentedness in life, I think that I have, perhaps, missed the mark a bit.  That said, I do think that some of the symbols are important, just not all symbols all of the time.  It is the juxtaposition of symbol, of the signified and the signifier that I need to master.  Gauguin understood that dichotomy very well, even if he didn’t always expect the viewer to come along for the ride.  He went on to say, “It is evident that the symbolist path is full of potholes, and I have only treaded it with the tip of my foot, but it is, after all, part of my nature, and one must always follow one’s temperament.  I know well that I shall become less and less understood.  What does it matter if I separate myself from the others?  For the masses, I shall be a riddle, for a few, I shall be a poet, and sooner or later quality finds its rightful place.”

In studying Gauguin, I am finding a language within myself that I had given up on.  The human figure is making more sense as a moving object, capable of communicating allegory and emotion.  I am finding in the figures that I am studying the very slimmest inkling of an idea of how to communicate what has been swimming in the ether just beyond my mental grasp, and it excites me deeply.

“For the masses, I shall be a riddle, for a few, I shall be a poet…”  I am slowly stamping out my creative fears one by one.  I shall be a painter to the end.  I will find my voice.

Peace
-Mike

Categories
Drawing Maine artists Parenting Sketchbooks

You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Create

My brain is open.  It is open to all sorts of information and ideas, but it is far more evident that it is open; as in it is open spilling out of my ears and pooling on the floor.  There is just too much to keep track of all of the time.  I am combating it like a champ though.  I am drawing and taking it slow.  I am keeping up, but keeping myself at a good pace.  I’ve been making my coffee with a pour over.  I made myself lunch.  I did the laundry and picked up the house.  I have been more efficient with my lessons and grading, more prolific in my tiny doodles, and much more apt to have my nose in a book.  I have been working on watercolor studies and final pieces and every morning I create a watercolor bug.

 My phone is the devil.  I need to put it down.  It is just oh so easy to pick it up and check Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and repeat though.  Chasing a toddler around makes your brain feel like soup.  The release of the phone feels like a nice crusty bread to mop up the last of the broth.
It makes sense.  It is a fight to be able to create.  
In order to help myself both calm down and keep up the momentum of creating I’ve started to catalog all of the quiet moments I have with my son.  I’ve drawn just about everything that he has brought me or given me as a present, and also some of the moments that we share.  It has been a major help in attempting to be slow.  The world operates very quickly.  It is a fight to be slow and meticulous just as it is a fight to be creative.

I am not always winning this fight (see thoughts on smartphone above.) but I am feeling better about the it.  I am slowly trying to implement changes in my life to return myself to the creative entity that I once felt myself to be.  I am also realizing that for all of the time that I spent telling myself that I was working, I think I produce almost as much work now.  It is quite possible that it has more to do with the type of time you spend rather than the amount of time.  I’ve had several ex’s try to express that to me before.

I’ve been fascinate about this idea of time, however.  There are periods of time where all I do is produce artwork and other times where in the past I have spent with my girlfriends or wife.  It does seem like this is one of the better instances of balance that I have ever mustered.  I feel as though I am making but not impeding progress.  Now all I need to do is line up a couple more shows for 2017.  Although, that might just break my balance that I’ve been trying to cultivate.
Peace
Mike
Categories
Drawing Maine Artist Portland Maine Watercolor

New Projects in the Mix

My world has become so full.  I am doing more design work and illustration than I’ve ever had before.  I have had at least three shows and a couple extra projects each year to work on and I now have a family to take care of and a son to raise.  I’m finally starting to feel okay with it.  This is it.  I’m living now.  Whatever that now is, I’ve got to live it.

I’ve been working on a watercolor of a bug every day this year.  Until about a week ago they were straight forward watercolors.  I’ve never used watercolor very much.  It was too unforgiving and I used a heavy hand.  I really just didn’t have the patience.  Enter toddler.  I suddenly have so much more patience than I ever thought myself capable.  The watercolors have advanced though, and I knew that sooner or later I would find myself adding myself back into the project.  This past week I started adding some geometric elements into the pieces.  I really like them.  Here are a few of the best ones.

I have also started another small side project.  I’ve always collected a number of sketchbooks.  One of my favorit types is called Dept. de Poche.  I have a small square book that I’ve started making simple graphics of whatever imagery I’m into on a daily basis.  I’ve started thinking of them as Squares of Vitality.  I hope to fill the whole book with foundation pieces of my vitality.  Here’s one of Mingus and some lettuce that is growing in my garden.

I hope this blogpost finds you well.  I’m wrestling with myself to get back into this space.  It used to be so good for me and I think that now more than ever it could be that outlet that I am not finding in other ways.

Peace
Mike

Categories
Drawing Insect Portland Maine artist Watercolor

Insects, The Lagoon, and a Daily Creative Thing

Over the past several years I have watched many artists working on a drawing or painting a day sort of projects. They always seem so fascinating. The very idea of maintaining an idea or theme throughout the entirety of a year seems downright daunting to me, but here I am on day sixteen of doing a watercolor of an insect every day of 2016. 

It started with the idea that there is such a multitude of insects. I have been reading Armand Marie Leroi’s “The Lagoon,” a history of Aristotle’s scientific observations on the animal kingdom. The book is fascinating, well written, and stresses an attractive idea of study through observation. (At least to an artist this certainly sounds attractive.)
Before I had reached a full week into the project, however, I became aware that it was not merely important in order to maintain a theme (which I suspect I may not be able to do) but also to set aside a half hour or so a day to myself and my own creative endeavors. As a father and husband, often my time is shared time. This is mine. I’m hoping I can make it through the whole year. 
Here are a few of the highlights so far. 

The project has been really fun and I’m optimistic that I may be able to make it all the way to December 31. If all goes well I plan on drawing mushrooms next year. 
Peace
-Mike
Categories
Art Drawing maine Painter Peace still life

Slowing Down

My wife a and I have been slowing down. After two years of chasing our tails we are starting to settle into what I can only assume will be our life going forward. To maintain the illusion that everything will calm down and we will catch up, feel less stressed, or find our pot of gold seems less an less plausible. However, the joys within that rushed an stressed schedule are becoming more intense. People talk about the ability to focus when you have that time to yourself, whatever the time may be. 

I’ve always found that I am more likely to find my peace through organization and through my work. I am not very good at organization, but it is a battle I like to fight. My work is always there, but what I’ve been realizing lately is that I haven’t been using it as a tool for my own self medication quite enough. When producing at the right time I feel that I am able to steady myself. One of the big steps in steadying myself is to ignore the outside voices; the voices telling you about marketing, success, the way to make it. I feel more steadfastly than ever before, even with my marginal bit of success, that no one ever makes it purely by following other peoples paths. Even if you do follow someone else’s path, success is only reached if you own that path and make it yours. I am not the people from Red Lemon Club, CreativeBoom  or Illustration Friday.  I am something else. I am me. You’re you too. 
I have lived my life creating work for galleries. There has always been that voice telling me I need to create illustrations, because I went to school for it and I am fairly good at it when given a project. The white elephant that I have chosen to ignore for so long is this; I spend so much time working, creating art, drawing and painting, but I do not spend this time creating illustrations. It is not a matter of discipline and I don’t want to feel guilty about it anymore. I simply want to follow a different path. I am a painter. That is the life I want to live and teach.  There is nothing to feel guilty about in that. 
I have been working more with my studio mates under the moniker, Freehand Armada. We have a small show of remixed still lives coming up. It has felt so good to focus on still lives. It has allowed me to enjoy my use of color and arrangement of shapes. It has helped me create that order out of the mathematical chaos that roger Allard talk about in The Blue Rider Journal. Here are a couple of my recent pieces. 

It’s nice to find the things that are slow. Life will always be hectic if you let. Drama begets drama. I can’t do it any more.  I have to she’d the things that don’t work an embrace what does. 
Peace
Mike
PS Courtney, it’s all for you. 

Categories
Art creativity Drawing Portland Maine Fine Artist streetlights suprematism

Letting Go: Allowing the Creative Mind to Wander

When I am busy with my daily life, I often have trouble maintaining my creative focus.  When I am allotted time to work in studio or at home I will often feel bitter that I must work right then, that I don’t get a day to just be off from work, free to do what I want.  I begin to constrain my creative ideas by overanalyzing daily situations, absorbing outside pressures, and ultimately trying too hard to make as much of my time as possible.  When entrenched in one of these ruts it is difficult to remember that I am most successful when I allow my mind to wander.

The other night I was sitting in my easy chair looking out the window.  I began to draw a street light in a sketchbook and three days later have done over ten drawings of these street lights.  Mind you, were I not working full time over the summer, I would probably have more of these drawings done, but that’s okay.  The idea is down.  I will be more prolific in the fall when I start teaching again.  For now the idea is down, I have something to noodle with, and I am not gritting my teeth trying to work too much out of myself.

More to come when it comes.
Peace
-Mike

Categories
Bic Pen Coffee Coffee Mugs Drawing Lewis Acrylics Maine Artist Pattern Pen and Ink Saul Bellow Solitude The Dangling Man

The Dangling Man, Coffee Mugs, and Solitude

This afternoon during Experimental Painting class I finished The Dangling Man, Saul Bellow’s first novel.  Saul Bellow’s characters always bear such a sense of solitude.  In Dangling Man, Joseph is waiting for the draft board to call for nearly a year and in the meantime, slowly loses his sense of control and balance, but also gains a sort of comfort with the solitude.  It is a feeling that I am often curious about.  Much of art is this solitude.  Until my recent marriage, the majority of my studio days were accompanied only by feline companions.  To be sure I played a variety of music in studio and listened to a number of podcasts and different musicians but at the end of the day an art practice is a quiet practice.  It is one that has traditionally been accomplished in solitude.  What of this type of man in wait for his calling?  Joseph was waiting to be called by the draft board.  Is that so different than waiting to hit your big break.  Eventually we see in Joseph that his inability to act, which is exacerbated by his depression which is in direct correlation to his loneliness and lack of purpose, becomes the very source of his lack of happiness.

With this in mind, I started to think about my ability to act.  I have been taking some solid steps in the right direction these past few months, but still have a couple major steps on the way to success.  An inability to act on these steps will only result in loneliness and depression, or as the rock band AC/DC put it back in the 70’s, “It ain’t no fun waiting ’round to be a millionaire.”  I’ve got to take some action and it is important for me to prioritize these actions.

In contrast to this thought I have also been very much involved with a new series that I am producing for Art Stream Studios’ “Off the Grid” show coming up in December.  All work is 6″ X 6″ and under $250.  I started these four panels by painting a color pattern field in the back.  Actually, to be fair, I indicated the colors, mixed them and laid the panels out like paint by numbers for my studio assistant.  You can read about that a bit over on my Tumblr blog, which she has taken over as a sort of process diary from the studio assistant perspective.  It is certainly different hearing these perspectives from outside of my own head, but I digress.  As I looked at these color field paintings, I had originally planned on doing a few more pipe and drop pieces, but realized that that had nothing to do with the way that I was feeling about this show.

I started to think about the ordered chaos of the color patterns.  None of the shapes were really the same scale.  The colors alternated back and forth and so the pattern was the same but the color and size varied from piece to piece.  They were all very much related but would never be mistaken for being in the same pattern.  They fit together more like a quilt.  Recently I had been visiting my nieces and had broken my favorite coffee mug which they have set aside for me at their house for some five or six years now.  I have since found one which I use at my own house, but that has only been in use for maybe 2 years.  I thought about how objects hold some of that relationship, working as a sort of totem and concluded that I needed to do a series of mugs over the top of these patterns.  It would serve as my source of mental pause over top of the ordered chaos that is the world these days.

This first mug is the mug which I spoke of that my nieces would always hand me.  It carries with it my memories of my past relationship, the roots of a couple fantastic friendships and a family which is not really mine but which I will always feel is mine.

 This second mug is a mug which I purchased on a trip back to Seattle after I had moved away the second time.  I was staying with my friend Jill in her First Hill studio apartment, where she had shown me images from her recent trip to India and her adoption of Buddhism.  It was a defining moment in my life.  Her apartment was so simple and cozy.  We had tea.  We lived quietly those two nights and she worked very hard.  The morning after I finished staying there we had coffee at Victrola on Pike Street.  I left with this mug and it now carries that story with it for all time.

My father was a forest ranger in New York State, as followers of this blog well know.  There were two mug designs that I remember from growing up.  There was this one and one with a simple green tree on a very tiny mug.  This commemorative mug is the mug that holds my paint brushes.  While drawing this mug I couldn’t help but think of Jasper Johns castings of his mug and brush set up, but also was taken with thoughts of my dad, and drinking coffee at home.

It is a little odd to be drawing from life and perhaps a bit odder to find so much meaning in these inanimate objects, but it seems natural and I really like the way the pieces are coming out.  I’m doing at least two more; one more for Art Stream and an additional one of the mug that I won at a muzzle loading match with my father in the 90’s for my folks.  Coffee mugs have always been my family’s jam.

Peace
-Mike

Categories
circulation series Dishwasher Drawing index cards library due date cards Monsters

The Luckiest Man Alive

Change has been brewing.  Nothing seems to have stayed the same this year.  I started teaching.  I now make more money from art related ventures because of teaching than I do from working in a restaurant.  I am now a dishwasher again.  Dishwasher Pete thanks for the power.  I am married.  I have a child on the way.  My wife is starting to show the tiniest little bit and everything has finally started to settle in.  As a result I’ve used my number one coping resource, drawing, as a way to work through my thoughts.  I’m going to be a dad and I am so incredibly grateful and excited for it.

As long as I have been growing up in the fashion, I figured that it was about time to make some other steps.  I have begun matting my artwork.  I am excited about that too.  As my incredibly talented friend Caleb told me, it’s”like a suit coat for a drawing.”  My pieces have looked rad that way.

I have also been extremely excited to be working solely on index cards and circulation cards from libraries lately.  There is something very interesting to me about working completely on supplies which are over the top ready made.  I recently read an article in Art Papers mentioning Dave Joselit and his view points on authorship.  Also nestled within the article were some comments on Duchamp and his ready made ideas.  It said he considered all painting to be ready made since someone else was making the paint.  After I read that comment I determined that it didn’t make sense for me to be using art paper any more, especially since my art panels are reclaimed.  I determined that I would use either twice used materials or I would use the most mass produced materials that I could find to do my artwork on.  I think the results have been really great.  I am very much into them.

The library due date cards I plan on making into several small books.  I have wanted to do 50 monsters, 50 robots and 50 birds for quite some time.  The disposable quality of these materials makes me feel more capable of working through that idea.

I hope you dig the new work.  Keep up.
Peace
-Mike