Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Recap of MAY: New Approaches, New Insight, New Resolve.

I have had another wonderful month of creative expression. And I have reached more conclusions. Art should be from somewhere emotional and personal. Although part of me agrees with making art for peoples enjoyment, another part of me views art as something therapeutic and personal to the artist. I am going to make these pathways very clearly different. But, they will both take their expression through drawing. Painting will remain something I do as a hobby, something for personal enjoyment, and I will avoid thinking critically about my painting.

Two methods of Drawing. One will be to continue the kind of drawing that I feel streams from my imagination, and creates an illusory worlds of creatures, melting together within an abstract atmosphere. The other form of drawing will focus a lot more on the emotional aspect of my individuality. I will dig into the paper, with ordinary office pens, and they will be guided by geometry and curvilinear shapes. These will be works that when you feel them, you have a visceral experience because they will mold the paper into a type of skin.

I have come to the realization that drawing is the most important way, and perhaps always has been, the most efficient way for me to express myself. This is because I can draw directly and precisely. I look forward to posting these two separate directions on this blog, and I look forward to hearing any criticism that people would like to offer.

no- just a pen- what made those drawings at the museum great was there lack of structure- they became something else- a record of time passing
they were repeated again and again like a mantra
so much noise morphed and became quiet
do not over aestheticize them
no "high lights"
think, "what would steve do?" and then, do the opposite

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Forest Bess

Bess turned his attention to "that source," which he identified as the real author of his now regularly recurring visions. They were not elaborate visions, like the Dutch village or the grotesque animals he had seen at the time of his mental breakdown, but crude abstract shapes that seemed to appear on the inside of his eyelids just after he awoke in the middle of the night or in the early-morning hours. Bess found that he could not summon the visions and that they could frequently elude his attempts to record them on the sketch pad he kept by his bed. "I have no control over the duration of the vision (I'm lucky if I have time enough to make a sketch in bed). The only thing I do have is a choice as to which one I will sketch. One night they were all in black and white and happened (changed) so quickly that I sketched and painted only one." Bess also discovered that any of the visions that he didn't copy would be lost forever, his conscious mind was simply unable to retain them.

Monday, May 9, 2011

The Future Is the Present

The future in the present tense

Last night I did not get much sleep. But in the little sleep I did get I managed to have a pretty vivid dream. I was in the city, most likely Brooklyn because of the ruggedness of the streets and the way the streets looked. I was in and out of a house. The house had a glass exterior, like a half dome at the top of a building with nothing blocking its view from the sky that resembled the front of a spaceship. The interior of the house had all these cool gadgets to look out upon the universe. Every now and then I have refresher dreams about the cosmos. There is so much going on in the sky, and on earth we tend to never think much outside of our terrestrial boundries. Life has so much mystery yet to be discovered. Yet, we are caught up in our earthly disorder. We only live one life, and I chose to not let that life go to waste without at least acknowledging the immense presence of the universe that surrounds us, and the enormous potential it may have for life on other planets, and galaxies, and the potential it has to bring us into contact with things that we have yet to know. The latter part of the dream, which occurred in between the time of 5:20, and 5:50 am, was me at a slide lecture where I was about to make a presentation on my artwork, A look into one of my sketchbooks. I was coming up with a thesis statement for the presentation. The thesis statement was almost very clear. I was on the verge of tackeling the subject as I was awakened by my alarm, of course! I was going to say something about how I am very interested in artifacts from the past, like sculptures, and monuments of the ancient world because it gives me a perspective on the potential of mankind on the future. I was giong to open the statement by saying The past is< and the future is the present tense (this statement seemed a lot clearer as I was suddenly awakened by my alarm.) I was about to make a presentation where I was going to present drawings that I have made relating to history such as drawings of artifacts of the past, in conjuction with some of my futuristic abstracts. I am going to try and make sense of all of this by looking up quotes. I've been reading the Watchman and there's a character that is able to trancend time and space. The possibility of that, and the power of our memory make it entirely plausible that our existence is an immortal experience, if we are able to detach ourselves from the materialness and focus more on the spirituality and mental capacity of our experience. Overall, the fact is that we have only begun to understand the power of our brain, and the cosmos as a whole. We are venturing on the tip of the iceberg as far as our species capacity to understand the power beyond materiality. This is something to be pursued, questioned, and examined, all while keeping a close eye on the cosmos.