Rocks (for C.T.)

Rocks (for C.T.)

 oil on panel  12" x 18"

               The news of Cy Twombly's passing brought my thinking about my work into sharper focus I had been dissatisfied lately - too controlled, too tight, too much dictated by subject - what one artist called the tyranny of the 'things'.  Twombly's life's work of proving gain and again that marks are just marks - paintings are first and foremost just flat surfaces with scrawls and grease and pigment on them - and yet what a visceral effect the scrawls always had on me (the viewer).  I think this effect had to do with the envy/discovery of such freedom of exploration.

               This morning's paper had a column about surfer/adventurer Laird Hamilton. Hamilton is a man who has spent a lifetime finding the bigger, further, faster - riding the heaviest waves and courting fear as one would a pretty girl. The writer, Sally Jenkins, writes of Hamilton's 'ability to resolve it (terror) into grace', his 'agility and strength, courage yet surrender' and most importantly perhaps, 'recognition and release'. Hamilton describes how he functions as 'Its not so much the vastness of the wave, it is more about the insignificance of us. When you become insignificant is when you truly begin to participate. That's when it becomes a harmonious act'. 

             The description of what Laird Hamilton does in a physical, athletic world crystallized for me what I recognize in Cy Twombly's work - a surrender of any notion of control or dominance in order to become 'a harmonious act'; allowing the real experience of living, seeing, marking our place in this world to take over from any notion that we might control or know.   The best art, it seems to me, filters life experience through one's soul and is left behind like crumbs left by children in the dark forest.

So, I will cut loose and embrace the chaos of visual life, like riding an immeasurable, vast rogue wave. This painting, then, is offered to you as one of my markers, a pathway to my record of time and marks and shapes and space.

Early Spring Sunset

 

Early Spring Sunset

 oil on panel 6" x 8"

A fallow field just beginning to show some green and the rain storm starting to be pushed off by a brisk northwest wind - all these elements conspired to give me a brief chance at bringing the space and structure within my grasp. The wondrous thing about such an image is that it requires absolute speed and focus without any of the devilish analysis that can paralyze.  These kinds of paintings must be a leap of faith, just trust your instincts and go for it. 

Junkyard Late Afternoon

oil on canvas

12" x 16"

I've never been interested in a pituresque scene. Never been much interested in a nice view. I am always drawn to the juxtaposition of opposites and the visual dynamics encoded in shadow and light, as well as relative color intensity. Once a place and subject present themselves I simply need to become lost in the process and let the subject take care of itself. I used to do a lot of paintings in old junkyards because no one would bother about what I was up to and it was a wonderful source of the machine made subjects being slowly taken back by nature.There aren't many such places left as the suburbs gentrify the countryside. The old cars have been compressed and trucked away for salvage.