Brrrrrr...... and Digging Deep -

Yesterday morning it was 15 degrees Below Zero here - uhhhhhhh - teeeeth chattttttering!!!! This morning, only 5 below - finally some global warming.....

Anyway - Been in a bit of a funk here - Haiti and some deaths of acquaintances etc... So very much sadness and heaviness of heart!

I've been taking this time to dig deep, doing lots of reading. One of the books I'm reading through for the second time in two weeks actually is "The Shape of a Pocket" by John Berger. I found it in the National Gallery bookstore; I've read some of his other works and this one practically jumped off the shelf at me.

It is truly a remarkable book; a collection of essays speaking to painting as an act of resistance. The second essay, "Steps Towards a Small Theory of the Visible" is one of the best pieces on art and painting I've ever come across. I highly recommend it to anyone asking questions of themselves and the world and paint and the visual!

I've been doing a lot of writing as well lately, trying to figure things out.... about painting .... why I must paint, what I want to paint and I've been feeling a certain meaninglessness about the whole thing - not a depression exactly, but a grasping, a remembering..... And I've come to many conclusions, but one of particular significance is that the state of the world and the state of the world as portrayed by the media, the economy etc... is supposed to effect a state of hollow, shallow, confused meaninglessness.

Now - I don't have a TV, so I have to make a very concerted effort to view one generally. While I was in MD, there was a TV in my room and I was appalled at the degradation that's taken place in the 12 or so years since I've had one. I turned on the tube twice, to try to find something interesting to watch (beside the weather channel or Fox News - Ugh!) Both times the scenes opened with a dead body; the first of a little black girl and the second of a pretty red-head who'd been bludgeoned to death in a bathtub. Wow - what I've been missing! Man! Between that and the news............... what can even be said -

Anyway - the point is, and one of the many poignant points of Berger's book is that the prostitution, (my word, not his) of images, cheap, in your face, over the top, and consumerism driven, -billions of them relentlessly barraging people, contributes immensely to the meaninglessness of them and a seemingly cheapening and devaluing of life. I see this in much of the contemporary paintings I've perused of late. Many of them I even love, they're beautiful, but what do they mean??? All these gazillions of images make paintings harder to see.

This has brought me to a necessary and impassioned conclusion for my own work here. For the time being, I'm only going to work from life! For thousands of years this has been the way artists functioned. I feel a bit of a death in a way these days, trying to make a painting from a digital image. Painting for me is about reciprocity, action - reaction, energy, and the precious use of my binocular vision that becomes neutered by both the flatness and limited color of a photograph.

So I am resisting - painting from life, insisting that painting and the richness of family and friends, relationships, walks in the woods, striving, changing, improvings, giving a damn and looking for God's will all do have exquisite and indelible meaning!!!

George Bellows - The Lone Tenement

I saw this remarkable painting in the National Gallery of Art. I made several trips there while I was working in MD. It is just an incredible painting - very approximately -it's 3 x 4 feet. This reproduction is really pretty accurate coloristically. I see it as painting at its best - real paint, light, content, design - the artist both disappears and is everything in it at the same time!

Well - been back for a week here - have indeed been neglecting posting, but not working. I've hoed out my studio - ahhhhhhhh.................. Been drawing, painting, making color studies, writing and thinking about gearing up for spring.

I was also extremely fortunate - in this economy - to be able to order some much needed supplies this last week - including a new color - Sennelier Cobalt Turqoise - can't wait to see it in person.

I've been using almost exclusively Old Holland and Winsor & Newton. Well I've had some serious yellowing issues with the Old Holland - particularly zinc and Titanium whites and I'm bitterly disappointed about that! Fortunately most of the paintings I've sold over the last two years have been watercolors.

Anyway - I've been doing some research and am switching out most of my Old Holland colors for Sennelier - the French Ultramarine Deep is awesome, I'm using their Titanium white etc.... I'll stick with the Old Holland reds I use - Cadmium Scarlet and Cad Red Light - they seem to be unaffected.

Later - And Happy Painting -