What's true of oceans is true, of course, of ... paintings

Any fool can get into an ocean . . .

by Jack Spicer

Any fool can get into an ocean   
But it takes a Goddess   
To get out of one. 
What’s true of oceans is true, of course, 
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming   
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

I'm learning that it's a one thing to start painting, but an altogether separate process to finish it. How do I jump in with such joy and crawl out with equally joyful abandonment? 

Things coming together

Returning to a childhood home, I find my old work, finished and abandoned in progress. While there are many lessons in such a survey, I recently decided to repurpose many of my old panels. The <windfall> of such work for me is in having once pursued their making and now having considered them again. To work again atop, seems like the higher purpose for me and the wood and the paint. So... these apples from nearly 20 years ago have been officially sauced! 

detail from "Apples, Wilted Sunflowers". 2000. Oil on Panel. 36 x 24 inches.

detail from "Apples, Wilted Sunflowers". 2000. Oil on Panel. 36 x 24 inches.

Windfalls, by Florence Grossman

Windfalls, we called them, the apples
we gathered, my grandmother and I.
Sharp or sweet from tree to tree, apple to apple,

we cooked them with their jackets on for color,
filled jars of them
seasoned with cinnamon and sugar, the gift

from the side of the road.
You could hope for it
the rest of your life, things

coming together out of the blue,
like apples and wind, like words.
You could mistake it

for water, the wind building in the trees,
gathering the way a wave gathers
until it passes over your head.

 

how I paint

Really, I'm a painting machine. I'm so horribly efficient that most everything in my life gets turned into art. This is how I make a painting: I take all the things I love in life and do them. This entails a) seeking a balanced healthy life, which includes a lot of time outdoors on trails; b) looking around; c) trying to understand the world; d) documenting it with jotting down some notes and take a few photos as it goes by, and rather carelessly; e) messing around sometimes with paints.

I get so distracted with activities a, b, and c above that this is what every other shot looks like on my camera roll.&nbsp;

I get so distracted with activities a, b, and c above that this is what every other shot looks like on my camera roll. 

Waters of March

"Aquas de Marco" by Antonio Carlos Jobim

A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone
It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush
The knot in the wood, the song of a thrush
The will of the wind, a cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void, it's a hunch, it's a hope
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of the strain, it's the joy in your heart

The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone
The beat of the road, a slingshot's stone
A fish, a flash, a silvery glow
A fight, a bet, the range of a bow

The bed of the well, the end of the line
The dismay in the face, it's a loss, it's a find
A spear, a spike, a point, a nail
A drip, a drop, the end of the tale

A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light
The sound of a shot in the dead of the night
A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house, the body in bed
And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud
A float, a drift, a flight, a wing
A hawk, a quail, the promise of spring

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn on your hand and a cut in your toe
A point, a grain, a bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night

A pass in the mountains, a horse and a mule
In the distance the shelves rode three shadows of blue

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone, the end of the road
The rest of a stump, a lonesome road
A sliver of glass, a life, the sun
A knife, a death, the end of the run

And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart

Drafts in Spring

I caught a whiff of spring in the air, and with it a longing for how it felt to paint at the ranch. Here, some words in honor of the horses, 

The boys jostle in their harnesses,

spring warming their shoulders.

From their stalls, the young lady whinnies and the old man withers. 

Their driver steers their impatience.

In response to his calm, there is a flicker

 when containment is entertained.

But we are all too eager at our bits,

muscles, poised to work,

rippling motions under thick coats

kids punching in the the lunch line. 

Grandma Moses, even Picasso failed to inform me

of the flesh, its intent and warmth.

You Need to Be Vampires

Jerry Saltz's 10 Tips for Art Students

New York magazine senior art critic Jerry Saltz recently discussed his impressive career with a packed room during a talk hosted by the MFA Fine Arts department at SVA. Although he has been writing about art since the early 1980s and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, Saltz was a long distance truck driver for over 10 years. While driving through Lumberton, North Carolina, he realized his life couldn’t get any worse, that he really loved art, and decided right then to pursue his dream, he told the crowd. He has no degrees. During the very witty two-hour talk, Saltz discussed everything from dealing with artistic demons to the importance of pleasure and the effects of cynicism and envy.SVA Close Up reporter Blessy Augustine attended the talk and compiled this essential list of Saltz’s aphorisms on surviving a life in art.

1) Pleasure is an important form of knowledge.

2) Envy will eat you alive; cynicism will eat your work alive.

3) Cynicism simply thinks it knows the truth. It is Republican in character. It believes in certainty; the art world believes in paradox.

4) You have to have doubts. It’s okay if you look at a Rembrandt and go, “It’s kinda brown.”

5) Art critics cannot make or break an artist. Believe me I have tried.

6) You need to be vampires who live in the city with your fellow artists. And stay up all night together.

7) Be in contact with artists all the time. If you don’t, your work will die because you will wake up one day and think you know it all.

8) You need one dealer, one critic, two curators, and three-to-five collectors to be a successful artist. Can you get 10 to 15 people to like your work? You don’t need to be part of a big system.

9) Everyone is sincere. Even Jeff Koons. He’s kinda weird and speaks like a Teletubby but even he’s capable of creating the flower Puppy that made me so incredibly happy. It was like The Beatles.

10) Demons will speak to you till you start working. Then you have newer demons. Work with them. Work. Just work. Or don’t and…

"I would feel I had wasted my life if I didn’t try"

Synchronicity offered on Mutu's heels, this article in which painter Frank Auerbach has wise words for me in recognizing failure and moving onward. 

“He says the obligation to take account of the art that has gone before carries two demands: ‘first that you attempt to do something of a comparable scale and standard, which is impossible; second that you try and do something that has never been done before, that is also impossible. So in the face of this you can either just chuck it in, or you can spend all your energy and time and hopes in trying to cope with it. You will fail.’”