A Palette Film

I got an idea a while back about a painting film that is just a stop motion animation of the palette slowly changing throughout the history of a painting. I think the idea originally came from a professor talking about Elkins and alchemy and what I thought about the paint on the palette. Anyway, the idea has been there for a while and was revived by a fellow artist complimenting me on how my palette looked. At least something came out of it(bad painting). Maybe that was its purpose. So the palette film would basically be the palette as a metaphor for life…. I guess, somehow. Hopefully the painting and video will collide, although it’s a lot harder to do a painting about the painting process than it is to do a video about it. That’s pretty obvious though. The paintings are shaping up to be more like a rock song. A ton of ideas thrown together, revolving around a girl (or girls). It’s still about the personality though and how it relates to painting. I was thinking about the word epic, how a rock song can be epic and then how a painting can be epic. A lot of transitions, some slow parts, at least 8 minutes long. Not that The Band is epic, but I was reading about their recording process, and it sounded pretty interesting. They’ll have a a song and decide which instruments they want to use for it. Then they Jam for a while, then the next day they record the song. It’s like the painting process. You come up with an idea, decide which medium/colors/size you’ll use, you do some sketches/color studies, and then you make the painting. The thing about being an artist though, is you need to be the lead singer/songwriter/lead guitarist/rhythm guitarist/bass player/drummer all in one. Anyway this is a still from the film. It’s pretty rough since it’s the first one I’ve done. Next time I’ll take less pictures. You don’t notice it’s changing unless you look at it for a minute. Maybe that’s its charm. Since I wanted it to go slow it’s about 14 minutes long. Very meditative

On Beuys and the Image of the Artist

Yesterday at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard I was looking at a show on Joseph Beuys. There’s always been something about Beuys that really interested me, ever since I came across him in an Art History class. I didn’t know what it was but he seemed so mysterious to me, like delving into his work would unlock some essential secret about art. I tried reading a book about him back then but it was so over my head. The more I read the more confused I get, and I can’t help but feel let down when I read all of the generic phrases describing his art. I feel like I understood more before some heavy thinkers over-analyzed it for me. I f that’s all there is to it, there’s nothing in his work that could directly benefit my own. I’m still amazed by him though. In Berlin he is like an art god. But looking at Beuys is not like looking at Beckman, where I’m blown away by the actual piece and each one can stand on its own. I get more from looking at old pictures of Beuys than his actual work. I realized at that show it’s actually the idea of the artist as this legendary figure, a type of art god/mysterious genius that amazes me. When I think of Beuys I don’t think about a chair with lard on it, I think about him with that hat and vest on, talking to a rabbit about art. Of course that was one of his performances and technically is his work, but you get the point. The best part of the show was a picture of Beuys laughing, surrounded by security guards/police or something. When I think of Beckman I think of his self—portrait. Even then, it’s still about the image of the artist. Maybe I need to do a large self-portrait. Too bad I cut my hair.
I’m getting this image for a painting of Beuys at the top of a mountain with a rabbit, looking down at their insane followers.

“I’m not entirely in control of the subject matter.”
-Claes Oldenburg

You could be mine

The other day the phrase “with your bich-slap rappin’ and your cocaine tongue you get nothin’ done” popped into my head. I thought it would make a great title for this drawing. That’s usually the “title coming up with” process. Sometimes if I can’t come up with one I’ll just write a ton of phrases and titles free form style in my sketchbook till one comes up. After this one, I then decided it might be a good idea to title all these pieces after song lyrics. Then I thought about Rock N’ Roll clichés, which can also be painting clichés, “all you need is love,” “give it your all,” “just jam.” It would be along the lines of the Rock legends along with the Renaissance compositions. If only De Kooning were alive, imagine what he would say: “Help, Help, let me out of this box, I can’t breathe in here.”


"You could be mine
But you're way out of line
With your bitch slap rappin'
And your cocaine tongue
You get nuthin' done
I said you could be mine"
-(Stradlin/Rose)

On Mainstream Creativity

Why come painting can’t make its way into the mainstream? There will never be another Warhol. Music and movies a painting cannot be. My little dream has always been to do art that can be appreciated by a wider audience than art people, a little something for the layman as well as the stiff intellectual type (those thinkers). I always feel like a scholar when I drink while reading something about art history or the classics. Maybe using these familiar Rock stars and other popular characters from history/pop culture, with their familiarity with the mass consciousness will help me to bring my paintings into the collective thought along with them. I was thinking about using the more familiar icons of Rock. Along with Kurt I would make an Iggy Pop action figure, or the Stones. The type images that pop into the head when you think of Rock N’ Roll. That seems like I’d be trying to hard though to make a statement about something I couldn’t put all my energy behind. Maybe at another point. That seems to be going in another direction, away from painting, although the energy of Rock and Iggy is something I want to bring back into my painting. It will help me in my goal of fooling everyone by being honest. Too much thinking. It’s something I never did but have been trained to do now.

As usual i erased the beginging marks as much as i could. The tape is to keep it from buckling from the water. These washes are watercolors and coffee concoctions. I chose these colors because I read somewhere that the old masters would sometimes put down a green undercoating and then paint browns on top of it. I figured I’d go on top with brown conte. I’m planning on having the Barbies jump out by having them through their opaqueness and amount of color. Light against dark on the bottom, dark silhouetted against light at the top. It’s all about reflections.



"I’ve never believed in doing paintings for the ‘happy few.’ I’ve always felt that painting must awaken something even in the man who doesn’t ordinarily look at pictures…And in my work, just as in Shakespeare, there are often burlesque things and relatively vulgar things. In that way I reach everybody. It’s not that I want to prostrate myself in front of the public, but I want to provide something for every level of thinking."
-Elmer Bischoff

Drawing 2

It’s early on, and once again I have to go through the same routine. Not that I don't enjoy it, the two best parts are the very begining and right after it's done. But nothing beats this excitement. It’s an exciting routine though this early stage of getting to know you. It’s always the same process only a different…subject? That’s not very romantic. It’s early and I’m ust feling my way around, not trying to think too much, just react and go with what I know. Things seem to click early, seem to fall in to the right place, and it feels right. This is going to be a good one. I can feel it. I know a good one when I come across one. Some you have to put a lot of effort in to make them work and sometimes it’s just useless, not meant to be. Not this time though. There hasn’t been too much correcting here in the begining. This is gonna be a good one. I think we’re gonna be all right, we just might make it.


"A painter shouldn’t suffer. Not in that way at least. I suffer from people’s presence, not their absence"
-Picasso

On Goofy Haircuts

The composition for this image was based off of a Tintoretto painting to appear later. I’m thinking of working exclusively off of him from now on. There is just so much in every painting. I could get 3 or 4 images out of each of his works if I tried. He’s just that good. The Barbies in this setup came from a recent score. I happened to drive by a yard sale and this little girl was selling all her dolls, Barbies by the pink duffel bags. It was like I won the lottery, something you come across only in dreams. It was perfect because I had been on the lookout for some females to pose as groupies, which I realized had been lacking and were needed since I’m working with Rock stars. When I came up with this image I thought of this one time in Grad school, coming out of the gym, I saw this cute girl walking with this guy with a huge white man’s afro. I thought to myself “Why do girls go after morons?” Not that this guy was a moron. I mean, he might have been, but it just made me think about all the times I wondered how some guys who are just complete idiots get cute girls. I guess it comes back to personality. You don’t have to have a good one, but as long as you are outspoken you will do all right. This image represents that inn a way since Kurt is being a clown, though he actually had interesting things to say at least. By the way, the drum set is made out of old linseed oil tins and pieces of old paint tube.


"I'm so happy 'cause today
I've found my friends ...
They're in my head
I'm so ugly, but that's okay, 'cause so are you...
We've broken our mirrors
Sunday morning is everyday for all I care...
And I'm not scared
Light my candles in a daze...
'Cause I've found god - yeah, yeah, yeah"
-Kurt

Painting 2: Track 4

I’ve been thinking about realism and how I’ve wanted to bring it back into my work. The extent to which I finish a painting or drawing has been an issue with me for a while. There are so many points at which I could call it finished that I never really take it to the next level. Sometimes I can get a little ridiculous and think everything is done after an hour. Back in the day art was so much easier (In school I mean). It used to be all about production, quantity over quality. Although quality has always been desired, you could do a couple crappy paintings when you’re doing 20 in a month. That’s because of the early learning phase, before intent; or rather the intent was to find out what you wanted to do while focusing on formal issues. Art has changed for me gradually over the years. I feel that everything I have done up to now has been a logical progression to where I am, I can find a reason for every decision. But you can only do that by looking back, which is why I need to make ideas concrete in a painting to figure out what this series is about. In terms of process, so much more goes into a painting than just whipping something up. Everything is considered, the reason for its existence, the size, narrative, color and all that formal stuff. So much more also goes into research. In grad school it took me a summer to read a bunch of books so the work could advance. Aside from research I started to make these dolls/action figures and videos. It’s no longer all about making paintings, although even the videos are still about painting. It’s a much more involved process.
I really want to take this painting to a place I haven’t been in a while.


"You think this is easy, realism"
-Bowie


"I saw that if I would accept subjects, I could paint with more absorbtion, with a certain enthusiasm for the subject which would allow some of the aesthetic qualities, such as color and composition to evolve more naturally. With subjects, the difference is that I feel a natural development of the painting rather than a formal, self-conscious one."
-David Park