Risk in Painting, November 28 2004

It occurs to me that while risk helps in getting attention for any kind of art, it is necessary when it comes to painting.

Just making pretty pictures is not enough. One must make the kind of images that some will love and some will hate. You can’t have the approval of everyone. In fact maybe it’s best that you don’t. There are several hot art-world painters which come to mind, loved or hated by many.

You have to stick your neck out when it comes to painting. An installation, it still seems possible to make something which rocks everyone’s world. Like that suspended VW bug (Damian Ortega) or an exploding garden shed (Cornelia Parker) --- what’s not to like? But make paintings and people start licking their lips and sharpening their knives.

Perhaps this is because painting is up against such a rigorous and well known history. For it to succeed it must be committed. And some will simply hate your particular commitment. The stronger it is the more likely this will happen.

Of course I’m thinking about my own painting here too. I am someone who could draw. For years I followed a certain path, learned a lot and produced paintings which, while being sometimes beautiful,  were not particularly remarkable --- not in the art world sense anyway. You have to take some risks for that.

So it fosters a certain amount of dislike. Not everyone wants a vibrating painting, first of all. Not everyone wants to be woken up. Some prefer to be put to sleep, even with art. Or at least be able to perch something above their table which they can easily walk by and ignore. I just don’t make that kind of work anymore. At a certain point that became a choice with me.

I should be jumping for joy that my work is breaking through to those contrary reactions, is making a mark. I am, but still controversy hurts sometimes. The reactions of ‘friends’ never ceases to amaze me.

The Other, November 27 2004

A recent Art Forum devoted an issue to Andy Warhol, as seen through the eyes of artists working today. One artist --- can’t recall who now --- said a key to Andy’s success was his generosity. He taught them to do a lot for others.

He had the Factory, he produced a band, he made films and maybe most importantly, he created a magazine based on personalities. Artwork aside, his life work was rooted in the Other. And the more he included others, the more he was loved (and hated).

Sure, someone could look at his art today and say: “It stands on its own. His ‘good deeds’ are not a part of art history and are unnecessary in a discussion about what is essential to him.” But I would not agree. All of the deeds and connections are somehow woven into every image he is known for.

I think of this because on my own, I came to the same conclusion about my own work. Just making it was not enough. Even if I had the option to just make art and stop all the other exploits, I don’t think I would.

       International Lake Blue, 2002

Open, November 25 2004

I do not mind one iota that Richard Speer loves only my Before Dark. The Red One received the most attention at the reception and in fact sold, so I happy for the love to be spread around.

      Before Dark, 2004

What Speer enjoys is the ‘view’ (and experience) that the larger square affords. I’ve noticed that different sizes of squares produce different experiences in the viewer.

After all of the work I produced to create the show at Ogle in 2002 – 2 years, 18 paintings --- I wanted a break and was happy to open Lovelake and think about ‘the other’ for awhile, as opposed to my own drama. Something was burning inside though.

I had this vision one night as I lay in bed before sleep. This is often the time of great visions, as the brain is decompressing and thoughts meld into a sort of freeform. All it was --- was the empty sky, framed in a square. No lines, no composition really. It was like the curtain was finally raised and behind it was an empty perfection, only graduations of color. I knew vaguely that I was going to paint that. And fell asleep and didn’t really think about it again for months ---- until I closed Lovelake for a spell and got back into painting.

When I first conceived of this open space, it was a big space, a big square. But obviously I took the idea into several different formats or interpretations. I found that each one could do a different thing to the viewer.

The smaller, tighter spaces create a pattern and you tend to focus on the pattern itself, how it weaves and changes and moves. The larger squares however give you a space to climb into, which was my initial goal. You can still see a pattern and a unity but you can also get lost within the simple shape.

So the shape itself gets more attention, not just from the viewer but of course from me as a painter. I spend much more time and use much more paint. Layers and layers go into them, something the smaller spaces don’t need as much (and thank God, ‘cause they are Hell to paint). 

As above, so Below, November 20 2004

I’m not wild about glass art or glass galleries, though I am sure innovative work is out there. Maybe there’s the sense that I’ve just seen too much of it, but not so when I ran across Mark Zirpel at the Bullseye Connection Gallery.

I loved the space, all dark and full of nooks and crannies that looked like small prison cells and maybe areas for torture. And it’s probably been there for years.

Celestial/ terrestrial”  addresses time, tides and lunar phenomena. Everything in this show is some sort of elegant measure of how nature moves us along, in both the subtle and big, all-encompassing ways.

The saying “as above, so below” is beautifully illustrated in these works, expressing a connection as subtle as it is undeniable. What looks like something from another planet comes from our own and vice versa. The lunar imagery is actually made by water, but then again, of course the water is greatly influenced by the moon.

Vive Chrome, November 19 2004

Some people are already asking me what I will do with the squares, where will I take them and so on. Like maybe I could get stuck.

Not so fast! I’ve only had one very small exhibition with them, at my own gallery, in 2003 – and I know just how many people saw them. Not a cast of thousands. Plus I'm still learning so much.

Over the past two years I worked with a lot of different artists and promoted their work in some way. After awhile I realized that much of the world sort of forgot (OK – if they ever knew) that I was an artist too. “Oh you’re an artist too?” I heard. As I’ve been showing since 1980, ouch.

Art shows, mind blowing art shows with images to seer your eyes will hopefully change that.

Meanwhile, successful art world artists churn out some variation of the same thing over and over again. In a new gallery or in another town or maybe it’s just a new year, but onward goes the same message.

Sometimes it takes a long time for people to get it. I moved fast in the past and I wonder how well that served me. How about Tracey Emin and her bed? I must have read about that bed for years. Then the announcement is made that Saatchi bought it. I remember thinking gee why hadn’t it sold before? If someone in Portland, Oregon knows about it, has seen its image more than once, how could this thing have not yet sold?

But the idea has to get drilled into everyone till they get it and then of course they act like they’ve always loved it.

Or look at Agnes.

For many decades she has gone on her own journey with quiet, meditative grids in grays. And of course she was ignored for decades too. Her style was maybe not of the current vogue but also, she was a woman, making this kind of art during the gestural, ejaculative 50s.

She carried on. Eventually she became a legend for her style. In fact these days you cannot make a gray painting full of lines without someone telling you Agnes Martin.  She owns that territory.

You’d think people might get bored by now but that is far from the case. The woman has a waiting list for her paintings. She is old now and produces very few a year --- not that she ever was a factory, mind you --- and you’ve got to get in line.

So if that artist can follow her hearts content and make grey lines for decades and get all she’s getting now too (and I say you go girl), I think I can hold on to my Vive Chrome. For just as long as I need to.

Homage, November 13 2004

There is a professor of art history at PSU who, though dry as a bone is still one to remember. She can be practically a caricature of the old art history professor. But she is quite the scholar and in the one hour I have with her I learn a great deal. You have to strain to keep up sometimes. Those who don’t take a load of notes are missing out.

I often don’t agree with her, but she’s got me thinking.

For instance, she defines certain artists as not making art for your enjoyment but to further the course of art, to make ‘strides in the field.’ She sees these artists as rational and analytical and furthering greatly the course of art but not particularly interested in --- humanity --- for lack of better word.

Actually, I do not agree. I think such work can speak to anyone, and on various levels, provided you have the mind and eye and heart to receive it. I also think that of course it’s all personal; it’s still the work of a maniac, even if it’s not ‘expressive.’

She even said: “It is very rare that you will see someone in a museum standing in front of a Mondrian for any length of time.”

Funny, because I did exactly that, time and time again! I saw Mondrian’s retrospective at the MOMA sometime in the mid-90s and went many times, thrilled. But the Prof implies that Mondrian is not exactly the kind of artist you get thrilled by!

She said the same of Malevich and Joseph Albers, 2 of my all-time favs. I love them with a passion she implies is not really possible. You see, this ‘passion’ would be reserved for art, again, like Expressionism.

But I can say ‘all time fav’ and mean it, as I remember loving Joseph Albers in childhood, in the 1960s, lovin’ his squares. When I lived in San Francisco in the early 80s I went countless times to the old Museum, where they had a beautiful octagonal room, filled with Albers. You could spin around and keep seeing his pulsating squares.

The Prof did say some interesting things about Albers though. She said that he was about nothing but color, that color was his thing all of his life. He advanced modern knowledge of color to such a degree that he is still the patriarch of that area, still the ultimate model of who knew what. How it moves, what it does to you, he learned all of it.

I have never really taken him apart like that; I was just into him, without knowing why. It was instinctual. And I hadn’t thought of him for years till this Prof went on about him. However when I see where I’ve gone with my work, it’s obvious that he was of immense influence. His books have always been dry to me and I've never finished one. I suppose so much in the end is really up to the viewer.

Madonna and Child, November 11 2004

Speaking of icons.

Though of course --- not really a typical Byzantine icon as we think of them. They say that this painting is the breakthrough painting from Byzantium into the Renaissance.

And only 45 million! Or so it has been speculated as the price paid by the Met for Duccio’s Madonna and Child. The experts say that this is the Madonna ad Child that all others were shaped by.

The lovely strange green, almost verdigris undertone of the skin. All else golden. Even at its pixeled form one could worship.

And such is what I want for my own painting in my own humble way (a joke --- there is nothing humble about wishing to create elitist art objects for reverence in the museum).

What I found most interesting in the article of the New York Times was the bit about size matters. One curator pointed out: "If you think of the great Renaissance paintings in the Met, they're all small. Our Botticelli, our Mantegna, our diptych by van Eyck - all our greatest pictures are small pictures.''

This was some kind of comfort. I painted small to please myself; when I painted big I was doing more than that. But in the end, maybe all you have to do is please yourself… like Duccio did, with this 8 by 11 inch, 45 million dollar painting.

Icon, November 10 2004

This is for all you freaks who feel (and are) largely misunderstood and unappreciated. That no one pays attention. But sometimes they do.

In my last entry I wrote of someone I ran into in the 80s but knew a decade before. I used to see him on campus all the time around ’75 or ‘76: an east coaster, real clean cut, intellectual. I somehow knew he was in the journalism school. Of course he barely gave me eye contact; I was too weird. No doubt I was not his type!

Then fast forward to San Francisco around 8 years later.  A man comes up to me on Sutter Street and asked directions. I give them but also say “Yea, I remember you. You went to the U of O etc.”  Then he really sees me and says: "Oh I remember you now. I remember you and your crowd. You people were something. But now everyone is starting to look like you did."

(even this memory seems like such a joke, for in 1984 people didn’t look like us nearly as much as they do now exactly 20 years later)

He asked me out, many messages left on my machine, was way hot to trot. “You’ve got the face of the 80s,” he declared. But I knew something was a little amiss. Any man THAT hot must be married! -- and I told him so on that first date. He was and urged me towards ‘a friendship,’ if anything. Yea right, I said, a friendship that always takes place in my apartment, not yours! What a scamp! At this time he was a hot reporter on TV but as I never watched I could not fully gauge his power.

OK, so now it's New York, 1991. I run into him on 56th street and he says next time he's in NYC we'll get together. He's in DC now, divorced, a reporter for channel 11 in NY and by then I have a television and check him out. Still very camera ready.

I too was single but on the rebound from something that nearly killed me and not ready for anything. That first kiss with someone new was with him and I broke out in tears. He said to me: "It hurts not to feel love, right? You're used to having love in a kiss. I know that feeling and this feels hollow next to that. But maybe I can help you through it."

He said other very kind things to me. Out of all the people from college and youth, he said that many had not held on to that integrity and ideals but I was still plugging away. This was some kind of cold comfort as I was still in this illegal sublet in Hell’s Kitchen.

Talent, November 6 2004

At home he feels like a tourist
At home he feels like a tourist
He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer
He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer

You might recognize these lyrics from Gang of Four. I always enjoyed the message here, without being able to articulate just how it applied to me. But it was true that I felt not so much a part of the standing culture, that I wasn't really a participant, thankfully, but a spectator. I had my own culture which very few wanted part of.

But changes made my subculture part of the popular view and it wasn’t easy to take. It's not that you want to stay in the gutter. But you want to be fully understood and in the process of gaining popularity, many things are lost.

At home she's looking for interest
At home she's looking for interest
She said she was ambitious
So she accepts the process
She said she was ambitious
So she accepts the process

I’ve enjoyed Dave Hickey's AIR GUITAR: Essays on Art and Democracy. That piece on the Looky-Loos really hit home with me.

Dave is on the road with Waylon Jennings, who goes off: "They think you just get up there and sing your songs. They think it's just a one-way deal, but it's not like that at all. Because you start out playing for people just like you. That's the only place you can. They know where you come from and they know when you're going wrong. Then one day you look out there and you realize that you're playing for people who want to be like you, and you can't trust these people. Because whatever you do, it's cool. But they don't really know what they're looking at. They're loving me until they start hating me, when their Waylon duds wear out. They already hate me a little because I'm me and they're them.

…That's why they always go on about how talented you are. Because if they had this talent, they would be you. The fact that you've worked like a dog, lived like a horse thief and broke your mama's heart to do whatever you do, that means nothing to them. To them it's just talent. You've got it, they don't and you're bound to disappoint eventually."

David Hickey's father called them the Looky-loos. Or civilians. Dave would ask his dad how the crowd was at some jazz club and dad would say "Oh, too many Looky loos." Just looking, thank you.  

I used to think of them as vampires if they got into my life too deep but otherwise, tourists. Not really committed but just out for the main chance to make themselves feel more viable (what they call hip now).

The real participants need no seal of approval. In fact they are making one without even knowing it. The tourists wait till that seal is pasted on enough. They can't operate on their own inane sense of things. And because they don't have that interior sensibility they are hungry and resentful and fickle, on to the next hunt.

Hickey said the distinction between the two is critical to the practice of art in a democracy, as spectators always align themselves with authority. They want to be right, to be chic and well placed. This will run havoc in the life of the artist eventually. I suppose we are talking about the perils of success, but I personally am no huge success and am still sensitive on this.

“Talent” is something I specially take issue with. A child is "talented". Me, I'm just a hard worker and like any artist, the road is full of history and choices and maybe sacrifices that the word talent can’t begin to cover. Talent doesn't cover life as it is lived and is some kind of catch-phase to generalize a whole complex experience.

Girl Exploits, November 5 2004

I had some great exploits as a child. In 5th grade we had a "witches club", about 5 of us girls. We danced at a "sacred tree" and did our spells.

Our schoolhouse (in Talent, Oregon) has long since been condemned and then pulled down, but it was a load of fun back then to be in a haunted schoolhouse, an old brick building with sealed-off staircases and a bell tower. Recently I came across a progress report from sixth grade where my teacher writes: "She is being more settled than she was and doesn't wander off so much to places she's not supposed to be." That, I am sure, is a reference to the bell tower! I was always checking it out.

Not to say I was reformed by 6th grade. By then I had an "ornery club".  It was our goal to be ridiculous and play tricks. I was editor/publisher of our "newspaper," a mimeographed sheet I produced. This was long before the days of Xerox and oh what I would give to have one of those now. A true labor of love, I still remember it. It had cartoons too.

We even wrote a hate letter to out 6th grade teacher, poor Mister Muruska, RIP. Actually I was already a writer and penned most of it. It started out in a straight-forward, clean style: “Dear Mr. Muruska, We hate you!..”

You know what is nice about this memory? Mr. Muruska liked me anyway, and when the old librarian tried to send me home from school for my short skirts (this was in 1968), he said he saw nothing wrong with it and would not let her.

At an opening not long ago I saw two ten-year-old girls playing hand-clapping games. I stood there spellbound, trying to remember my own. We talked for awhile and I shared one of my jump-roping chants: "Not last night but the night before...24 robbers came knocking at my door…" ---If you're female, I assume you understand what I'm talking about. I also asked the girls if they played jacks. No, but they wanted to. I was Queen of Jacks around that time too.

Maurice, November 4 2004

It's truly the mark of a good storyteller if they can interest us in something we might not be generally interested in. It's not like I want to immerse myself in gay stories in particular.

A man who was not particularly spectacular or extraordinary, completely set-up in society, Cambridge, stock-broking in the family, established. He's a snob though has no reason to be. But it does creep up in him that he's really not like everyone else. And he would like a family, a place in society, love.

You see someone who was a sweet boy grow into a bitter, rather mean person. The novelist E. M. Forster does a great job of taking him into being an asshole, yet you know the inside story and you feel sorry for Maurice. You see how it can happen, how a person grows bitter from lack of self-realization and then has no compassion, and how this anger spreads like a virus throughout a family. That is really what the story is about.

Wait and Hope, November 3 2004

The Count of Monte Cristo (one of my favorite novels) by Alexander Dumas ends with a famous line:

All of human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope.

For much of my life it was a big slogan. Maybe too much.  Around 2001 or so I decided that this was no longer the line to take. Fuck waiting and hoping. Nothing beats just doing and so I set out to do.

In terms of this election, at a certain point this mantra returned to me. I had done my bit to encourage participation; what was left to do was wait and hope.

Hope is a delicious thing. It’s like a good drug which lets you feel warm and fuzzy. You have time. Things are possible.

Watching results come in created a varying spiral of emotions in the pit of my stomach. I went to bed wanting to forget it all and then restless, unable to sleep. But the fact that we were still in wait and hope in the morning was a good thing to wake up to. That feeling however was very fleeting.

The End of Nature, November 1 2004

The title of a book I never actually read --- but read the outtakes in the New Yorker.  I was quite impressed, though most people don't seem to believe it could happen.  The idea out there is that nature always adapts and survives, while we're killing off various species all the time.

Down in southern Oregon I've got several old pals from high school days. One is Penny, who likes to play devils advocate and make "cut down the old growth!" harangues. She seems to think that all of the economy's problems down there are due to not being able to cut more forests. The idea that maybe the economy needs to change its direction isn’t really considered.

But I have often wanted to ask her: "Penny, where have you been?" Have you spent time in a place that has no forests? I don’t know that she has.

There was a time much of the world was covered with forests. Europe was one big forest.

In the E.M. Forster novel Maurice, it is imagined that Maurice could go off with his lover into the greenwood.  The greenwood came off as this infinite place in England where you could go to lose yourself or hide your identity. Later on Forster wrote a postscript, saying that the element in the novel which dated it the most was the reference to the greenwood. For it existed no longer. He said the cinema was the closest Britain had anymore, as that place to go lose yourself and change identity.

More recent entries:  October 2004

                                       September 2004

                                       August 2004

                                       July 2004

                                       June 2004

                                       May 2004

For information about the diary, read here

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