Seeing Potential in a Painting

   A good painting is satisfactory; a great painting is mind-altering. There are times when I can move on from a good painting, call it done, and not be depressed about creating a disaster, but to really learn and grow as an artist I must provide opportunities for disaster. Sometimes a bad painting just happens because I am in a funk, tired, or over thinking. Other times it is because I have overworked a good work or have yet to grasp a new concept. Other times it is because I see how a good painting can transform into one that is even better, and these are the pieces I am speaking on.

   No matter what skill level you are, we all can produce art that we know how to do. This is not a problem until it waxes over our minds and dulls our ability to grow. Some paintings that are good have the potential to ripen into greatness. It is at this pivot place in the work that I can make a decision to go for greatness which means that I may commit to the carnage of a satisfactory painting. I have been a butcher of many good paintings, there is no glory in murder, and you have to kill the darlings if you are going to move on. 

   Fear is the serial killer here, not me. I am not suggesting that murdering is the goal, the goal is to bring about life, to lift that work into a substance of astonishment. Fear is the unknown and we are slaying that by pushing a healthy painting into that void of uncertainty. It is a risk, and you have to disassociate yourself from your work, from what you like about it, and from your ego. It is the ability to let go while maintaining focus.

   I am not suggesting that a life driven by chaos is a path to enlightenment. Chaos and order are inseparable in life but it is a human condition to give chaos to one's life as well as in one's profession. I can dish out Chaos or Order to any painting at any time and not every endeavor needs to be pushed. A number of these good paintings can just be. If I kill every good painting then I will have no way to measure growth, and the reward is priceless. The reward is to paint a work that is notably dynamic and masterful. It has steered you into a higher level of achievement and understanding. 

painting by Chaim Soutine

Primative

Advancing technology is a process of ciphering memories of what has worked and failed. It is important to note that many discoveries were made by mistake by the hands of amateur pathfinders. People who have the basic understanding and training but who have not solidified themselves to the title of being a master. 

From the cave paintings to today’s paintings hanging on gallery walls we have made great progress in painting. When the first paintings were still wet on the cave’s walls there had already been a history of artists fine tuning the craft that has long been erased. There had to have been a process of inspiration to aspiration that brought our ancestors into the caves to translate works with tools and skill. The history of technology  and who had painted these works are long forgotten. What we have is forgotten memories embedded  in line, color, and pattern. It is like that faded dream that you can only recall a feeling of without remembering the plot. You may be able to reflect on some vague image but the meaning is out of reach, all that remains as a phantom feeling. You don’t know if it is a sad or happy feeling. It is sort of melancholy and yet has no label or name. 

Today we have records of what, who, and when. Our painting tools and visual concepts are more diverse and complex. Color theories, to paint, or galleries are all complex and abundant. Nothing wrong or degrading about cave artwork, we just are different and more complex now. Now we have science and rules, schools and teachers. Still, painting is primal and arrives from our primitive core. From our inner caves that have no reason or home for science. You can use science and math to send a rocket into space and a heart surgeon can rely on a medical recipe to save a patient's life, likewise an artist can work with formulas of color and compositions to get a painting working. Yet, there are those artists who can reach deeper from their primitive being  and carry out works that are unbounded, mathematically free, and beautifully engaging. 

Painting is not an actual science that can be calculated with a mathematical formula, nor does it lack a skeleton of structural support. It exists as a bridge that connects the intangible dream to the collected mind. As an artist I am spiritually engaged by the visual discipline of how shapes work to support the whole design. This is a logical and disciplined part of me. I have studied, trained, and beaten my mind with as much knowledge as it can hold, and then tossed even more in for the heck of it. This part has no place for personal opinion, it is just give me the facts people and we can move on. I do like this part of me, love it, and while that is true I am at my best I paint while feeling that discipline as a faded dream. This is the primitive place where body and mind become one or even better nothing at all; a place where true painting happens. t is primitive and it is agile in discipline, so when it arrives on canvas it does so in an unforeseen way and it works. A method based on what you know and applying it intuitively; a calculated risk.  It is not a place that you would want your surgeon or engineer to be. They take no risks for mistakes and that is their job, an artists' job is to be primitive and make calculated accidents happen.

loud silence

Sitting Pretty

When you have a formula magic can appear magical, when you have magic it can appear misunderstood. It is not uncommon for one of my respected peers to say to me “They just don’t get you as we artists do” or “Not sure what the audience sees but you are an artist’s artist”. It seems that many of my contemporaries have the market and the business of art figured out while I still shuffle through the shadows of doubt and discoveries.

 Now I don’t claim to have magical powers, that would be a formulaic approach. I claim to have an honest approach, an honest magician who’s sleeves are only filled with arms and nothing else. Formulas are like recipes, if you follow the rules the results turn out in a desired way; a predictable way. The first time I saw a magician pull a bunny out of a hat my mouth gaped open, the second time I figured out the trick, by the third time I was bored stiff. Some painters are like a one act magician, they pull the same rabbit out every time. I get it, nobody cherishes a humbling experience of staging an act gone wrong in front of a full audience. And, nobody likes a sitting pretty performance. 

The Daredevil 

 “You are not like the rest, you are NOT a pretty painter” is another compliment I hear and one I quite agree with. Every painting I do is a risk, there is a chance of failure with every step. I do understand what is pretty, it is a safe painting. A safe painting is one that does not challenge the artist or the viewer to see something unusual. It is both easy to paint and sell. What is important to note is the word pretty only defines a timid safe approach. It does not intend to explain that the painting is painted unintentional or careless. In fact it is painted with great thought, observation, and proficiency. A well trained daredevil is a good act to watch, a bad one is what we hope not to see.

Silence of a Bang

 This approach is without a yardstick dictation of what it is. This is the intuitive insight to how the work should be seen and painted rather than a verbal essay on who, what, when, where, and why. A true artist listens to themselves, or that quietness of inner intellect; it is a listening to the silence of a loud bang. It is not adhered to style, popularity, or price. It is not brought on by rebellion or romance of how an artist is thought to behave. It is a way of being, a more of who you are without who I should be. The inner voice as it is called. A voice that has no name or sound.

Instinct Force

Along the way I find that the painting takes me to places over me taking the painting to where I plan to go. I give it a starting point, put it on a path, and set it ablaze, yet at some place along the way it is the painting that directs me of how it shall be interpreted. How it wants to be painted, carved, and dressed. Oh, I’ve tried the other route, taming it, harnessing its wild nature, only to stamp out the fire that gives paintings that honest magician touch. It is a matter of allowing instinct to run free and do what it is naturally good at. So I attain to let my horses run wild, fires burn sinful, and listen to quiet bangs.