Category: maine

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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. 

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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
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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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cassette hip-hop installation art maine Portland

An Artist Statement An Artist In Tent

The role of the artist is to create and allow the writerly reader to bring the meaning to the work, or so I was taught. Actually, if I’m to be completely truthful, that was merely one theory that I was taught. Nowhere do I feel was it mentioned that the artist should direct te viewer unless the piece presented is a performance piece. Then the artist has invited the viewer to be a participant in the piece. Ultimately the goal is to make the viewer a participant. 

I have also been told in my many shows to not be too specific in my artist statements. Once again, the goal isn’t to direct the viewer too much. The viewer is educated and wants to bring their own theories and experiences to the work. I was fine with this logic for some time, but now I’ve grown curious. What is the difference between my process and my completed pieces. I wonder this not because the research is such an engaging one that I need to share it, but because my work is ever growing more than it may be changing. I keep refencing the same types of objects and systems. Slowly the systems overlap. The logic blurs across different topics. I am talking about an entropy and an order. The order is given to us and the entropy is created by our own decision making. 
I have begun working on an artist book for my next show wherein I will explain some of what I am doing, share writings that are arriving at the same sort of questions that the artwork is after and images of sketches and preparatory drawings. I will be doing a wood cut for the cover. I think it will be much better than Posting the artist statement. 
In the meantime here are a couple images of a piece that I have been working on for the installation at the center of this show on May in Bangor. 
This piece is really exciting me. I’m very pleased with the ideas of migration and rhythm that keep popping up in my head. More research on that to come
Peace
-Mike

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Art hiphop jazz maine painting Portland rhythm Trane

The Trane Keeps Rolling

I have two projects weighing on me as I come into this holiday week. I’ve scheduled an illustration to be finished before Christmas and I have an installation to finish by the first. 
I am putting together all of the artwork for the new Seasonal Disorders 7 inch EP that is coming out next year.  I’ve designed the front and back cover, the a and b side artwork, and possibly artwork for their t-shirt. I’m excited about the project and the drawings are coming along pretty well, but I’ve had the installation leaning on me heavy for the past coue of weeks. I feel like I can never get enough done for that. I would rather be assembling that the lady couple days than still painting and drawing. 
The installation is called Soul Trane. It is an assemblage of stereos, cassettes and trains. I’ve tried to listen to nothing but blues, hip hop an jazz while making the piece as an effort to channel some of the energy that I have garnered in my work from primarily black performers. I’ve been reading “Clawing at the Limits of Cool,” which tells the story of John Coltrane and miles Davis. There is a lot of blues to reading the histories of famous black men, a certain reckoning and an overwhelming guilt. I’m a contributor to White Mans Burden ethos simply by not offering any alternatives, by not protesting, by not being politically active. I am not this outgoing extrovert, however. I am a painter, an introvert. My best friends are questlov, q-tip, Trane, Elmore James, lightnin’ Hopkins and James brown. They give me a groove and a freedom to create. I am on the soul Trane and I will not get off, but I will not protest for anything. I will, however, hold the cause deep down in my heart and do my best to take that cause and push it along, push it along, push it along…..

Peace
-Mike