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| Uptown Splash, Dallas, Texas acrylic, charcoal, paper, canvas and wood 12 1/8 x 90 11/16 x 1 1/2 inches |
The photographs for this painting were taken as I was
preparing to leave Dallas. What got this
started was not a photograph, but rather an abstract painting completed a
couple years later in Utah. Although the
photographs were taken on Super Bowl Saturday 2011, I had no idea that there was
anything special about the day until I started walking past all the banners on
McKinney Avenue. Snow is rarely an issue
in Dallas, but I lived there long enough to have seen many snowstorms.
Though not part of the plan, it is appropriate that the
painting grew out of abstraction. In
doing so, it captures the Dallas years from the very beginning. When I arrived in the city, I was an abstract
painter. I never planned on doing anything
else. It just became a very
uncomfortable way of being. I believed
that abstract painting was about chasing the unknown. It seemed like the sustainability of a style
didn’t really fit that position. I didn’t
see any way to continue that kind of openness and have any kind of a
career. Gallery representation implied
style, something I could not do and remain open to the lifeblood of discovery. And of course, there was the problem that a
life devoted to total abstraction was also a rejection of nature. There was no way to engage nature without
imitating it. The joy of abstraction may
have been fine for a while, but it didn’t resolve the conflict I had with an
art philosophy that expected the depiction of life to be designed. Though I absolutely hated the idea,
retreating to abstraction as though it were some kind of monastery had only
taken me away from the nature that had been the reason for taking up painting
in the first place.
Art history left an impression that art is ever changing and
that great artists redefine the expected. Naturally, I wanted to be a great artist. Who aspires to grasp the average? Although I graduated from college in 1983,
abstract expressionism was the definition of new for me. I often wondered how I could possibly surpass
it. I decided that drawing would be my
route to discovery. Years later, I
realize that the new can come from what is already known if seen through
questions. While the revolutionary is
almost always out of reach, it is not that hard to be a little bit different.
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| Volkswagen Bus charcoal 4 5/8 x 6 5/16 inches |
I was extremely shy, so I sought something
extraordinary. With the diorama, I thought I
had hit upon something that needed no explanation. Rather than compete, I ended up creating my
own category. Unfortunately, such
comfort and bliss never really lasts.
After having this truly beautiful thing define me, I began to resent the
fact that parts of me had been left behind.
To be totally invested in the diorama in the beginning made perfect
sense. It was new. Years later, you cannot remain a master of
your craft by repeating the past. I
never stopped loving the dioramas. I
simply quit making them in the same way I quit making many other things many
times before. There is no reason to hold
onto knowledge that always remains, and discovery should be thought of as a
journey through provisional truths. In
my quest to capture aspects of nature, I am never going to be handed the
ultimate answer. I’m always giving
something away in order to attain something else. What can be gained by walking away from
accomplishments? Knowledge. That is the one way in which I am better than
the 26 year old that made charcoal drawings.
I could never outdo those drawings today, but I am no longer at the
mercy of mood swinging muses or luck. I
can resolve most any problem, and artworks seldom end in failure.
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| Residential Romanticism, Richardson, Texas mixed media diorama 7 5/16 x 10 5/16 x 2 1/16 inches |
Entering the second year of the diorama, I began to realize
that the world was already composed. All
I needed to bring to the table was engagement.
And, how difficult could that be when life permeates the sparkle of
sunshine and the weight of cold winter rain.
Composition was quickly tossed away along with a need for the
painterly. I was no longer interested in
paint as a statement. A brushstroke’s
only function was to convey information.
I focused my attention on what had been previously thought of as
meaningless detail. It was not a heroic
brushstroke that identified the moment as time and place, but rather a wind
chastened paper cup meandering through gravel near the weed infested hedges of a Chinese restaurant that didn’t quite make it.
What happened when there was nothing but
content left? Awareness. Before
the time of the diorama, I never realized that most of the drama I saw as
evening settled in was not the result of stunning contrasts, but rather the
coming together of light and shadow. Trees
on a horizon only ignite because colors like orange, purple and pink are on the
verge of merging into obscurity. We
never think of contrast as noonday concrete and dark stunted shadows. But if contrast actually had anything to do
with drama, Caravaggio would have painted sun baked parking lots. Another misconception I had was the idea that
contrast created space. Try to imagine painting
the depth of shadows on grass or capturing the weight of a stellar sky after a
cold front has blown all the tiny clouds away.
Subtlety is the thing that is needed, otherwise a painting of a soccer
ball ends up looking like the moon, flat in any of its phases. There is no replacement for observation.
The making of dioramas and paintings can be best understood
if you think watercolor. I took a
watercolor course in college. As a
medium it never served my purposes, but the methodology of laying things out
ahead of time became vital to describing the world around me. The dioramas changed the way I painted. What I wanted to do required drafting. There was still plenty of freehand things to
do. In fact success depended upon them,
but in the long drawn out world of freeways and parking lots, mathematics kept
everything together. The very structure
required forethought and planning. Without
realizing it, art had become a kind of architecture. The photograph also became central to
painting because the details mattered. There was no other way to capture the nature
of place. I saw acrylic and pastel as
flawed mediums. Acrylic was dull and pastel
was just too vibrant. An acrylic base coat
close to the pastel colors on top solved that problem. In watercolor, detail is achieve by going over
what is already painted with what is called a dry brush. The brush has just enough pigment to catch
the tooth of the paper, leaving the lower areas unscathed by the new layer of
paint. I applied the same idea to the
diorama. The pastel and the glued on
bits of paper and fabric functioned as dry brush on washes of acrylic
paint. With something like pastel, it is
important to know where the light areas are ahead of time, otherwise you end up
with a dusty pile of mush that resembles no concrete street ever seen
before. Even with something like oil,
once the white canvas is gone, there is no getting back to such a light and
airy place. As transient as clouds seem
to be, they often need the permanence of a set aside blocked out from the very
beginning. Otherwise, you may never
capture the anvil rise of water vapor in the sky.
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| Uptown Splash, Dallas, Texas center panel |
The abstract painting reminded me of a splash. I immediately thought of the photographs from
Super Bowl Saturday. Snowmelt flew into the
air as momentum divided standing water.
The phenomenon was easy to catch, it happened over and over again as
traffic passed through poorly drained intersections. I made a little painting of a shining
intersection and placed inside the abstraction. In drawing and painting, I’d been playing with
black and white and sepia toned imagery. I included both as a part of the design. Although the abstraction was based in white,
the right side of it leaned sepia, while the left end leaned more towards a black
and white spectrum. The paintings of the
woman and the splash extended that pattern.
I wanted both ends to be in color and painted them on slanted panels. I didn’t want any sections to be the same. It is an odd thing to say, but I was looking
for irregular symmetry.
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| Uptown Splash, Dallas, Texas 2 right panels |
As I hit McKinney Avenue, I began to see people out and
about. Some were even walking. A woman walked ahead of me for a couple of
blocks until she reached her destination.
I don’t hesitate to photograph people if they happen to be a part of the
landscape, but I never set out capture them anymore than I seek out cars or
utility poles. I am not searching for specific
things, but rather all the information that a moment can hold. Having said that, it is always more difficult
for me to photograph people. I require a
lot of personal space to feel comfortable, so when I photograph others, I feel
like I am violating privacy. The nice
thing about painting the woman is that it dealt with a fallacy I’ve heard my
entire life. The idea that people are
harder to paint is never questioned. It
is easy to see why the idea thrives. It
is simply a matter of focus. We are
people, not mountains or trees and we want to see ourselves portrayed accurately. We’re not nearly as concerned about our surroundings.
In some sense, this was obvious to me
even as a child. I remember seeing kids
at the park pounding out mountains of sand that resembled loaves of dough. Obviously, they had never really looked at
mountains or sand. The forces of erosion
are the same on any scale. I have to say that the woman was the easiest
thing for me to paint. The slush of
melting snow was much more trouble.
Without a people bias, that should not be surprising. Our environmental surroundings are more
varied than we will ever be.
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| Uptown Splash, Dallas, Texas inner right panel |
I saved the splash for last because I thought it would be
the most difficult panel to paint. What concerned
me was the waves of water droplets raining up and down a randomness that is
never random. There are always patterns,
so it was a matter of capturing those patterns while maintaining the sense of
energy that had created the splash. I
wasn’t sure I had it in me. But once I
had the basic structures established, my hand began to catch the kind of
brushstrokes that evoked the joyous rage of water droplets in flight. Thankfully, it was not as hard as I thought
it was going to be.
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| Uptown Splash, Dallas, Texas 2 left panels |
I became aware of Gerhard Richter sometime in the mid-80s’. Flipping through a magazine, I saw representational
and abstract paintings made by the same painter. Finally, someone did what should have done
from the very beginning. The divide
between figurative and nonfigurative painting created a kind of
schizophrenia. Art world factions
couldn’t seem to see that all painting was related. Art talk
can be a bit misleading. Although action
painting as a phrase is descriptive, it veils the fact that it is also all
about inaction. What makes a De Kooning
great is all the brushstrokes that never happened. A lot of inaction allowed the movements that
mattered to remain. In this way, a De Kooning
has a restraint that something painted outdoors simply cannot afford. Plein air painting can’t escape chasing the
sun. The imitation of nature as an idea
completely misses the point. It implies
that rendering the visual world around us is less thoughtful, that it isn’t
that sophisticated to replicate what already is. The problem with that attitude is that a
painted cloud is no copy. There are no
readymade brushstrokes that symbolize sky.
Painting is always a form of abstraction. There is the idea that a painting that does
not try transcribe the visual world around us is somehow newer than a painting
that depicts an old neighborhood. There
was a time when that would have been true.
But such occasions are rare and never last very long. Once painters like Rothko and Pollock painted
the unnamable, all the hard work was already done. At great risk to themselves, they pushed the
limits of what paint could be to where it currently stands. Many of the brushstrokes and splatters we now
use are the ones they made acceptable. So
contrary to popular belief, an abstract painting is not any further from the
idea of imitation than a painting of an ominous cloud. A cloud must always be invented. Although abstract painting may not be about
the predetermined, it does imitate the language of paint. That is what gives it credibility. That is not to say that abstract painting is
no longer relevant. Not having an
objective can be extremely dangerous and requires a tightrope kind of focus
that doesn’t happen painting puddles of slush.
Slush has its own challenges. As
a surface it is hard to quantify, and it really pushes your ability to see
color. The two disciplines enhance one
another. Although art is all about
ideas, it has no capacity for language.
Whether it is a graphite grid on canvas or field of sunflowers this side
of a railroad crossing, the question that always remains is an abstract
one. Is it beautiful? As old fashioned as that may be, that highly
subjective question is the only one that really matters.
