Category: painting

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Coleman Improvisation jazz Mingus Non-objective painting Pattern Spontaneity

Spontaneity: Painting with Ornette Coleman & Charles Mingus

I read a piece today on Ornette Coleman, by Miles Bullough, while settling into studio.  I was fascinated to read that bop king Dizzie Gillespie didn’t even think of Coleman’s playing as jazz.  The article went on to explain that Coleman didn’t receive any formal education and didn’t follow any of the previously accepted modal and measured solos.  Rather he played what felt right and sounded right to him in a spontaneous moment.  The head, or lead in the number would play, and then the sounds would be off to run the gamut.  I slipped The Shape of Jazz to Come on today after reading the article.  There was something in that album that felt so in tune with what I am doing in the “Gridlock” Series.  It is a spontaneity, an improvisation, but not one that has definitive rules.  It is more of a puzzle, finding the right piece to fit in response to the previous shape, with some basic intent at a cohesive whole, but nothing explicit.

Coleman’s wandering bars seemed like just the fit to my shapes and as I added color to finish up my pieces, I started listening to Charles Mingus, Live at Antibes, one of my favorite albums.  “Folk Forms” is one of my favorite jazz pieces.  It aspires to this same sort of mindset, I think.  Fitting the current piece with the previous piece.  Don’t obsess too much about the whole, because the decisions that you make are innate.  Let the artwork or music be.

It is important for me to allow this side of my brain to be.  When I over think work or focus too definitively on the details of the work, it never seems to happen.  I create a dud.  Only when I allow my intuition to take over to I find the peace of mind to make a successful work.  The successful work is a conversation, not in words translated to paint, but in paint to paint.

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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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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freedom painting parenthood train whistle Work

One Short Blast

The other night I felt really frustrated with life, more like I was a witness than a participant. It is a feeling that fatherhood has regularly left me with. The pressures of being a good husband and father leave me straining my psyche to place my wife and my son before everything, my job, my social life, even my work. Where I thought this would grow easier with time I realize that it may never be anything that is easy for me. I am on a schedule constantly. It is difficult to be creative in this manner, but I’ve found myself pushing in different directions, seeking different blocks of time, trying to retain my creative freedom and my creative space.  

Today I painted between classes I was teaching again. It has grown easier to carry a studio in a bag. It has proven necessary if I am to find the time to paint that I desire. 
This piece came a long way today. I’m extremely pleased with it and very confused as to where the yellow and purple piece fits with the rest of my work all bedazzled in earth tones. It is a good dilemma to face. Here’s to some vibrant retention of self in the near future. 
Keep up and I’ll keep posting. 
Peace
-Mike

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Installation jazz Maine Artist painting race soul

Dig

I am in Chicago sitting quietly on a friends couch waiting for the illustrious Shirah Neumann to pick me and drive us to Kankakee, IL, a town which I have never heard of, to install a show called “Transmissions.”  The installation is loosely titled “Coal Trane,” but I am not sure that it will stay that. En route to Chicago I started reading Amiri Baraka’s “Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music.”
Baraka is an intense sound. At first I found his writing very difficult to follow. His rhythm fell very much in an African realm. It felt disjointed to me, a person who had never experienced that language in a medium other than hiphop and soul music. But after I reached his essay on rhythm the text began to move with a strikingly poetic fluidity. It is always difficult to read the history of blacks and other ethnic minorities in America as it is near impossible to do so without feeling an immense amount of guilt, but Baraka lenlighttened me with a truth that was always right in front of my face. So obvious was the thought that I felt not guilty, but embarrassed when he led me to it. We were always taught about the history of Blacks in America. This is what THEY had to go through. Even in the sense of our learning about the Afro-American culture we are encouraged to view this race as other. It’s a little painful to be able to draw similarities between a David Attinborough special and the history of a people that make up a significant portion of our populace. 
And so Baraka has left me thinking. He goes on to speak about how people dig for information, for communication, for the need to feel as one, and for the love of life, exemplified rather than ignored through the need to get down. As I’ve read this book it has occurred to me how much the music has always meant to me. This piece started as a pun on Coltrane, coal Trane, because it sounded like soul train. This made me think of all the music that I thought fueled my soul, but I realize now that that is wrong. I realize now that the music is our soul. It is the personification of an idea that swims in the ether of our being. If you feel it you can hear, play it, paint it. But if you can’t then you are left outside waiting for your heart to beat. 
So blow that horn blow and feel that jam from the ground through your feet and all over this wide planet. The key to the world playing nice is feeling. You can feel the world if you feel their jams. Don’t listen. Be the vibe and find the groove.  Drop the needle and spin into another condition. You gotta git it in your soul man.  

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
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Birds City Scape Fichte Illustration Maine Artist painting Teacher

Working in a New Space, on New Ideas, and New Thoughts

The past two weeks have been as stressful as any in recent memory.  The day after arriving back from Thanksgiving festivities my wife answered the door to the landlord giving us 30 days notice.  Apparently our apartment was the cheapest one in the building and in order to comply with his mortgage terms he is required to reside in the building.  Ergo, we got the boot.  As we began our search for apartments I recalled a conversation with my good friend Shirah about sharing her studio space.  I immediately got on the wire with her and she told me that the offer was still on the table.  Eureka.

Two days later I was moving my stuff into her space.  It is a gorgeous space in the old State Theater building in downtown Portland.  I moved a number of my surfaces, my studio table, my shoe boxes full of small projects, sketchbooks and artist books into the new space.  There isn’t enough room for my pile of found wood nor, perhaps, for my drill press or wood working table.  I haven’t crossed that bridge as of yet.  That said, there has been plenty of room to make some new work and to escape from the emotional battle that is apartment hunting.  My studio assistant put up a quick blog post about the spot here.

The new space has left me thinking about some new ideas, but mostly has provided me some privacy in my creative habit.  Since I’ve been married my schedule is much more chaotic.  There is a lot that needs to be organized and prioritized in a relationship that is quite often completely ignored when you are a bachelor.  I’ve started reading a couple art theory books there.  One is by German philosopher, Johann Gotlieb Fichte.  He argues, essentially, that we only know our own perspective and that we cannot understand any others, because other perspectives are still filtered through our own perspective.  While this is certainly an obvious thought, it is an obvious thought which I had not given much attention to recently.  An old friend used to tell me when folks were making life difficult for him that their perceptions and opinions were “their story.”  I couldn’t help but think of that concept while reading through Fichte’s theories.

What this really meant from a creative stand point was that I felt more open to the work that I had in various stages of development in the studio.  There are times when I feel like work that is a little older is actually work produced by an entirely different individual and to be sure, I don’t think that this idea is far from the mark.  I’ve heard that individuals live a different life every five years.  I might have thought this a load of malarkey roughly 8 months ago, but am thoroughly confident at moments when I am sitting in a midwife’s house watching my wife’s blood be drawn and asking questions about hemoglobin levels etc., that life is completely different now than when I was 28 years old. 

With this new ability to accept some of my old work as work done by another hand, I started to work in a sketchbook that my studio assistant brought to me the night of the last art walk in Portland.  I filled at least ten pages of the book with new ideas, heads, characters in more elaborate scenes and lighthouses.  Lighthouse paintings, for obvious reasons, have not been a source of terrible interest for me in the past, but for some reason it dawned on me that it would be interesting to manipulate some of the imagery that is most common in tourist pieces. 

The fourth piece is an old piece that I never finished.  I’ve actually done some more work to it since this point.  It is now referencing some Hiroshige trees and landscapes that I really enjoy.  I have always wanted to find a way to mimic some of the color in the old Japanese and Chinese scrolls as well, so it would appear that there is some learning to be done within this piece.  Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to work with the old and bring in the new.

Lastly, I have been working on a small series of city scape slices.  While I was looking out the window during a class I was teaching I began to draw the top of a building that I have always loved, and the sketchbook drawing later worked into this piece and two others very similar to it.

The piece is very tiny.  I have been working on some tiny interpretations of the old birds with headphones within these works as well.  I need to get a few more tiny brushes to finish the paintings up, but it seems more appropriate to fit the avian audiophiles into scenes with ordinary birds.  The audiophiles were always meant to be representative of some sort of outcast, an individual cut off from the rest of their own by choice.  Music serves as the friend that sometimes people cannot be for those of us who have found a spot inside ourselves that is perhaps too accepting of the sad.  That is what I was always trying to get at with those birds and I am not sure that I was getting it across.  The bird paintings were always a little too happy.  I am hoping that the moody atmosphere will make that point a little more obvious to the folks who look beyond the city scape. 

So, let me thank you for listening to my perspective.  Please do enlighten me with yours.  It would be good to hear from you.

Peace
-Mike

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Experimental Painting. A.K.A. Painting

I was asked to teach a weekend class to high school students called Experimental Painting.  One doesn’t really think about a word like experimental until they are thrown in a lab coat or they are watching old Boris Karloff movies.  I was left wondering what experimentation even means.  What does it mean in reference to painting?  The definition seems innocent enough at first: “(of a new invention or product) based on untested ideas or techniques and not yet established or finalized.”  Experiment on the other hand seems much more approachable.  Of the two terms, it certainly has all of the charisma: “a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact.”  I then was left trying to relate the word experimental to the creative process.  At the outset it seems fine.  Everyone attempts to make work that is inherently new and different, however, do any of us make things that are on the regular, “not yet established or finalized?”  Who of us has made something that does not neatly fit into some curator’s little catalog of monikers? 

It does seems that perhaps a painter could experiment.  Why wouldn’t we, as artists and people, attempt to make new discoveries and test our own beliefs on a regular basis?  It is part of the responsibility of being human. 

This led me to think of the word experimental once again.  I decided to break it down into its parts.  If you cut the word in half it becomes “Experi” and “mental.”  I took the liberty of translating “experi” into experience since the word is almost there to begin with.  Mental already makes sense without me trying to decipher it.  This left me with “Experience Mental.”  Now all that was left was to flip flop the words and I had “mental experience.” 

I was left with painting leading a student through a mental experience.  This makes a lot more sense to me even if it is not what the description in the course catalog is suggesting.  Painting takes me through mental experiences on a regular basis.  I think out every important detail of my life while ensconcing myself in surface after surface.  The process is cathartic. This is not even to mention that by analyzing something, painting that thing, and then looking at the painting may make an individual realize that what they see and recognize as thing a or thing b, may not be that essence of thing a or thing b at all.  Because as we look at things long enough, we realize what we are really looking at.  Preconceived notions fall by the wayside.  Is that what I am supposed to be teaching?  I don’t think so.

This piece has totally messed with my mental state.  I am love with it even though I’m fairly certain that right now it may in fact hate me.  We’re fighting.  It doesn’t want to be done next Thursday even though it needs to be.  My mental is experienced.  Thanks Jimi.

In other news, today I hired an artist assistant.  She will be in studio on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This is a big step for me and I am very excited about it.  That’s all for now.  So much to do in the interim. 

Peace
-Mike