The last blog was ridiculous. All I want to say is: I had spicy sausage, I have vascular headache, I should not have had spicy sausage, I know better, social interaction=joy/pain, I like metaphors.

much better.

Fits of socializing

This is probably the best way to describe my disorder, if it is one. Yesterday I was alone all day, which was a little depressing. It's very strange. Some days I crave the hermits life and would want it no other way, at least for a while, but other days I need, really need to do something with others. To be set free from my whirling thoughts. But, too much of that gives me a headache. So, there needs to be a balance, a median between the two extremes.

Also, I find it easy to talk to someone who I haven't seen in a while or just met. I can listen to them with great interest, relay feedback, enjoy their company and learn a bit of something. But, when I see them again I feel I am a different person. As I walk forward, the strawman I erected has blown away, revealing my twigs bound with yarn, awkwardly reaching out for a handshake*. It just doesn't feel like me anymore, at least not the me I displayed for them at first. I know I'll let them down, so why do I continually act as I am not when first meeting someone? Would it not be easier to act as I am, not as I want to be and cut the crap? If they like me, great! They can chose to learn more about me if they like. I'm not on display for your appetite. I'm an acquired taste and that's the way I like it! But, this may be a bit too hardshelled.

For example: It seems that when on an airplane, everyone, even the seasoned flyer who dares to inch his seat back and is utterly undistracted by the takeoff, even he has death somewhere close in their mind. Because of this, those that are socialites are frenetically eager to share their mind and those who are tired and withdrawn seek to bury their heads as far as humanly possible into the headrest and make absolutely no eyecontact or possible gestures of life, thus fofeiting their on board nuts and drink for blessed solitude.

It is during this time, when the O2 is pumping I almost inevitable engage or am engaged in some sort of conversation with the person next to me. At first it begins a little jerky, but when you slip into second, the words that come out of your mouth seem to be almost reactionary. Both our legs are swung over aisle armrest, each tapping the other with little hammers, anticipating a reflex. Most of the time, the other does the tapping, though. I can listen for a long time, feigning interest, sometimes even fooling myself. Somewhere near the beggining and nearing the end of the flight one of us bluntly asks where the other is going and makes some comment about the distance or some city we thought was in the state. They are never near that city. Finally, the conversation goes into rigormortis as the plane lands and we shake hands, force a smile, grab our bags and hope to high heaven we won't see each other outside of the plane.

So anyway, there's a few metaphors amongst jumbled text. I like metaphors. It seems that the only way I can understand things is through a visual connection with another thing. A kind of parable needs to be constructed for me to click.

Interesting, I looked up "metaphor" on Wikipedia and the word can also mean 'to transport or transfer'. So in a way, the meaning is being transported to another area of life with the result being enlightenment in both the original location and the destination. If this transportation continues, more areas become linked together, forming a web of connected ideas which can be drawn upon. Very cool! This is the way I believe great artists have worked including Terry Gilliam, Lautrec, and more scatter-brained artisans. Walker Percy seems to work this way too, as does Lewis. Syntopical discussions. Connections. Relations. Poetic metaphors. Okay. Loss of words, except for...neat.

On a lighter note: Have you ever had runny eggs and sausage on a paper towel? It keeps you moving!



*(I wish I could draw that or better yet film it, perhaps not a strawman but the flesh and gorey sinews all melting off to reveal the real individual, the soul. Perhaps too graphic, but necessary?)

Today was a lazy day. I had a leisurely breakfast a bagel toasted using the oven's broiler (we have to toaster yet) and I then finished the book on Toulouse-Lautrec, only 100p +pictures. I now love that man, but am saddened by what he could have been were his life not cut so short (39 and 10 months). He had a great outlook on life, one that found the lighter side in life's misgivings, but his moral choices were lacking, not that I'm expecting much. But, still a very interesting man and the forward was written by Frederico Fellini, Doug should be glad to hear, who himself was a dandy with the pen.

------------------------------------------------------------(Sorry, for some reason the paragraphs are being picked up as such) Anywho, so after that I walked around a block to the east of my apartment, stopped and drew someone's house with a silver permenant marker. The neighbor's pulling out beside me slowed down a little probably wondering if I was casing the place. Well, I was. And doing so by making an elaborate rendering of the architecture, just as all good thiefs do before they jump over the grass hose and pry off the screen door with a stick.

------------------------------------------------------------While walking back past a Wells Fargo, I saw a man sitting on the grass in the shade, cross-legged with two scrach-off lottery tickets. He was in the process of scratching the first when I walked by. For some reason Lautrec was still on my mind and I swear his legs were abnormally short. When I returned to the apartment I tried to sketch him the best I could remeber or as I wanted to remember him rather. As Degas said, "Illusion of life, not reality itself, is what matters itself." A stoic representation of life is absent of personality and a point most of the time. But, I may change my mind later. I need to work on writing more concise.

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silvertip marker - 5"x4"

Later in the day, on the way to purchasing new pens and finding dinner, I saw this man through the glass, sitting in a cheap mexican buffet with the most incredible dreadlocks and beard. As I walked past I was so enchanted by his dreads that I completely missing the rest of his face. At the store, looking for the pens, I caught another glimpse of him and took a very quick note of his features.

------------------------------------------------------------I then proceeded to a cool interior with seats as it was so hot out and landed back at the mexican buffet. I ordered a 98 cent plate of chips and unlimited salsas. They were very hot. So much for a cool interior, my mouth was burning and the air wasn't working. I was sitting down at least. I then used my new pens and proceeded to try and work out a sketch of the man I saw. Well, it became a little embellished, although the hair length and stylized appearance is not far from the truth. And it certainly was a lot of fun.

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black and silvertip marker - 3"x2"

Being so bored later, I tried to attempt the man in oils, but the idea of an enclosed space and an open turpentine bottle discouraged me so I opted for pastels instead. The colors were really bothering me so I wiped the board and started over now on a toned surface and in nearly monotone. I couldn't resist the title.

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Bard Blues or Blue Bard - pastel - 10"x8"

Lastly, here is a view from across the bus stop I was waiting (another place to sit down in relative shade).

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Leaf Forms - graphite - 5"x4"

That is all for now.

Contents of a small, white paper sack

So I've started reading Lost in Cosmos. It seems to be having an effect on a lot of people though their blogs, so I'll give it a shot. After reading the first chapter I was sure I'd stop. It was too complex, far too many latinate words used so well, that a dictionary definition would only confuse the matter. It seemed above me. And it is, but I'll read it now and take from it what strikes me. The rest will come in its stride.

Well, I've stopped before the 40 pg. Semiotic section. I think I'll skim that. But the section before, especially the discussion about suicide struck me. It reminded me of Denise Levertov's "Matins":

The authentic, I said
breaking the handle of my hairbrush as I
brushed my hair in
rhythmic strokes: That’s it,
that’s joy, it’s always
a recognition, the known
appearing fully itself, and
more itself than one knew.

The awakening that Percy describes and the touching of Levertov's "authentic" seem to be related ideas somehow. Both are about seeing life in a new light and involve a radical change or experience on the part of the person.

It is also a choice, like Frost's "Birches":

...
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree~
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

This part of the section above I liked:
"I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better."

The idea that is it good to climb to great hights and enjoy it, but know that you will return again to being one more human on earth. But this too is a good thing for it allows you to connect with others and share love. This is something to be cheriched when on ground and yearned for when soaring.

I wonder if Frost is describing an intellectual acent versus horizontal relations, or if he is just recognizing the enevitable diapointment as a reminder of life.

This is going nowhere far too slowly.

Heh-ah...achoo!!

"Hey, nice couch!"

"Yeah, it's from an old woman's house who had cats, though."

"Oh." - "Yeah."

"Your allergic to cats, huh?"

"No, old women."

After Noon Lounging

After having started a book on Lautrec, I was struck with a frequent thought I have had for the past few months. It is this: Perhaps I am not going to college, learning about art, asking the hard questions, and creating art in general for myself or others, but instead, for my son or daughter. Perhaps I am creating the beginnings of an enviroment in which she will flourish, grow beyond me, and do so faster than I can anticipate. I have read so many times about artists who's talent explodes under a professional tutor, atelier, perhaps this is my lot in life for them.

This is not to rule out my impact on others or communities. But, the greatest impact may not come for me. I may have begun too late to be truly great.

p.s. but i'm leaving a window open, just in case!

BTW: This is all presupposing there is an interest in art in them to begin with. But, I dorealize that a background of visual art can lead to other areas, perhaps in no way greatly related to art. This I'll accept...I guess. But they have to try their hand at visual art and attempt to keep it up. Even if only doodles on menus or receipts.

Hm...neat

Wine grapes are very small and very sweet...and cheap.

La bonne vie

Sitting is a cushy, leather chair, feet propped up, laptop open, listening to some amazing string arrangement on the local NPR station, and a stomach full of some of the most incredible deep pizza, potato skins and handmade root beer. Life is good. While I'm in an updating mood, here are some other pieces I did this summer, I hope you wasn't too scared with the last two, thinking I went off the deep end. "Too long in Cali-land, land of fru-frus and nutcases", they'd say. "No", I'd reply, "just trying new things. Learning all the while. I refuse to become a generic landscape painter, at least without a long, drawn-out fight." So here are some other works. Enjoy or don't enjoy.

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Midflight Sandwich (4"x5), graphite

Started and completed while on airplane from APU to home, with one guy trying to glance over inconspicuously

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Man I (28"x19"), charcoal with white highlights

Completed at CIVA (see links on right) conference during figure drawing session

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Woman I (28"x19"), charcoal with white highlights

CIVA

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Woman II (28"x19"), charcoal

CIVA

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Hand I (28"x19"), charcoal

Don't know why but my hand on the easel with a single light source struck me

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Hand II (10"x6"), oil on masonite

I think I was enfatuated

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Untitled I (which is a sort of title I guess) (12"x12"), oil on board

Inspired by Ed Knippers original; I love the handling of this figure

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Untitled II (5"x2.5"), oil on wood

Working with a figure form as composition, see Wayne Fort work.

Wood is from the trash bin at American Wood Products facuilty in St. Mary's, KS.

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View from Porch (boring title!) (5"x4), pastel and charcoal

Love the hatching in tree trunk and handling of leaves, see Marc Chagall's work

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Dad (12"x6"), charcoal on wood

Out on the patio one fine day

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Untitled (vaiable size), digital print

Fort Macon in NC

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Too Good to Pass Up (variable size), digital print

Ft. Macon in NC

I feel like a confirmed bachelor (minus the trendy clothes)

I guess I should probably update. As you, the casual reader, can tell, I have not been entirely faithful as to keeping a running sketchbook, but I have excuses. I've just finished washing all of the dishes, cheap-aluminum-bendableware, pots, etc. My fingers are a little numb due to the prune-fingers I now own. Before that I just walked back from Stater Bros. (a local Dillon-esque market) with a 24-pk of toilet paper (Angel Soft if you must know, 2-ply) under one arm and a 8-pk of paper towels (Sparkle's the best) under the other along with two tan sacks swinging by both sides. Yes, it would be nice to have a car, but then you couldn't have nearly as much fun. Besides, in a car your missing out on life: the fresh, unfiltered air, sun crawling down your back, not to mention the exercise.

Oh, sorry...I am now at Azusa Pacific University, in the apartment. Classes start on September 6th, but in the mean time, besides unpacking and arranging...that's another problem...I am being trained to be on the reference team (yea-rah!).

Nuf' with the update...here are some piece I did on August 22nd out off of K-4 in western Kansas. A local artist I know Cally Krallman (check out her website) went out to paint for what we thought would be a few hours and turned into six. This is the first piece (5"x4") on a gessoed massonite:

(Click to enlarge)

...here's a closer look, the brushstrokes are a little blurry above...

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Here's me out there, overcast now we began to roast soon after...

(please, don't...Click to enlarge)

I would also like to debut the new and improved signature.

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The second piece (8"x18", roughly) took twice as long to do, but it turned out fantastic and I very much enjoyed doing it...

Tuesday, August 9th

A study of a back from Barcsay's Anatomy for the Artist. It got a little messy, some things are lost, but I did learn that I need to punch up the contrast. Messing with this image with Photoshop showed me that I should have used the darker values more. Oh, well, there's always tommorow.

h6"xw5" oil on gessoed massonite



This is an attempt at formal cubism, inspired by Picasso. Yeah, it's a little rough, but hey, it was fun! Oh, and nevermind the left side, unless you like it. It was a false start that I just included.

h12"xw12" - Oil on raw wood (it'll rot soon!)

Well, perhaps I will put a few words on, after all, it is another language I speak. And I don't want to lock myself into some rediculous box. So, there may be words...BUT,...PREDOMINATELY ARTWORK. I say this with a somewhat laughable firmness. We'll see.

I've decied to post pictures on this blog. It will be my daily sketchbook. So, starting tommorow, well later today, I will purpose to post a new picture or series, or photos that I created on that day. It will be my requirement to have a work for each day, however small. Now, this does not mean each item must be posted on that day, I'm mean come on people, I do have other things to do and shooting and editing and posting is a laborious process, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Big sigh.
Here goes...something.

Words from Degas

"Illusion of life, not reality itself, is what matters itself."

"...I caught hold of my eyes"

"There is an emptiness that even art cannot fill."

"The heart is an instrument that rusts if not used."

"My idea of genius is a man who finds a hand so lovely, he will shut himself up content only to indicate fingertips." (paraphrased a little)

"It is among the common people that you find grace."

"Artist's make beautiful things without being aware of it."

"Beauty is a mystery. No one knows it anymore, the secret is forgotten and the
recipe lost."

"One sees as one wishes to see"

"The real traveler is the one who never arrives."

Afterthoughts:

Degas cherished the unfinished for its own sake. Because
in art, which is after all illusion, Truth is obvious only in an incomplete
state.

Some Quotes...

"Beauty is the form that love gives to things."
~ Ernest Hello

"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold
--For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage."
~ Alexander Pope, Prologue to Addison's Cato

"Art is for civilizations."
~ Edward Knippers

"Form, color, harmony
Oasis or mirage
For the eyes, the heart, or the spirit

Toward the moving ocean of pictorial appeal
"Tomorrow will be beautiful," said the
shipwrecked man
Before disappearing beneath the sullen horizon

Peace seems scarcely to rule
Over the anguished world
Of shadows and appearances

Jesus on the cross will tell you better than I
Jeanne at her trial in her brief and sublime replies
As well as the obscure or consecrated
Saints and martyrs."
~ George Rouault, preface of Miserere series

"We inherit from the Greeks a peculiar arrogance about the
species of animal to which we happen to belong."

~ Chinese Art, book

"The skill to do more, with the will to refrain."

~ Mustard Seed Garden, p 46

"A good painter has two chief objects to paint, man and the
intention of his soul; the former is easy, the latter hard, because he has to
represent it by the attitudes and movements of the limbs."

~ Leonardo da Vinci's notebook

"Should not such things be called 'still death'?" - i.e. still life's of dead birds, fish on plates or cut flowers in vases

~ Chinese Art, book

"The different types of men included in a landscape must not
be too detailed, nor must they be too sketchy. They must be related to the
landscape; the man must appear to look at the mountain, the mountain appear to
be bending over to see the man. The spectator should feel regret that he
cannot enter into the picture to change places with the person there
depicted. Otherwise the mountain remains merely a mountain, and the man a
man."

~ Mustard Seed Garden, "Men and Things", p 50

Art History Revealed

"I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun was setting. I felt a breath of melancholy— Suddenly the sky turned blood-red. I stopped, and leaned against the railing, deathly tired— looking out across the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and town. My friends walked on—I stood there, trembling with fear. And I sensed a great, infinite scream pass through nature."

~ Edward Munch
January 22, 1892

This was once the explanation for the Norwegian painter and printmaker Munch's The Scream or the The Cry (1893), but recent radio-carbon research in conjunction with a laborious litmus test, revealed that the true reason for his nightmarish works was the result of a childhood trauma involving a beautiful autumn day in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway and a renegade rodent. As astrologers had speculated and psychics had only guessed, it has been confirmed that this squirrel in question had accidently mistaked young Edvard for a very large nut and attempted to reveal his contents over a rock. Needless to say, the child's psyche was irrecoverably damaged. Then, twenty-three years later, this childhood drama came back to haunt him on that fateful bridge, whether Munch himself wanted to admit it or not, it was because of this past experience that he had a panic attack and proceeded to paint this emotional work.


Well-endowed art critics all agree that Munch even left clues for later generations to dicipher. On the right side, one can see the evidence of a tall form rising up and out of the picture plane. This has been calculated by colourologists to be the precise hue of the indigenous skogrotte slektshistorie family of trees known by locals as the dwellings of a squirrel-like rodents. The very species that may have inspired the young Munch to paint his famous work. This is a great day for all art historians and aficionados alike. Soon it may even be confirmed that Claude Monet's numerous paintings of waterlilies was actually the result of a brief love quadrangle with a horny toad, and two slippery-backed frogs on the banks of Sainte Adresse. Only time will tell.

Midflight Sandwich

I don't like flying. On Southwest airlines, there is no first-class, all are in coach, all are equalized. Southwest is the Great Leveler. It's kinda like a secular communion. Speaking of that, the Great Leveler is exactly what Crocs are. I went in Brown's shoe store looking for...shoes...and there they were. Millions of brightly colored, soft plastics. Hung like engorged plums, ready to please. Gathered at their feet were men and women from all walks of life, some young, hip and latte-ing through life, others older, simpler, wrinkly folk, marveling at the stimulating hues. It was just amazing to me to see so many different types of people who would in no other circumstances ever talk or even see each other all come together in the name of fad footwear.

Also, it seems like there are some basic principles when trying to market a product. There needs to be variations, customizability (nasty word), but not too many. If there are too many options, people get bored, disinterested. Most people want the simple and easy, they don't want to think hard or long. In the Crocs, there are only three major styles and very basic sizes, no half sizes or widths only the S, M, L & XL of clothing sizes. But, once those selections are made, the options explode in color. This is the part most people look for. It's the look of the apparel, not the actual functionality or quality that matters. But, for those that do care, the shoes are perported as extremely comfortable, letting the foot "float" - a concept many people like and can easlily relate too. No more techno-babble about absorbants, shocks, springs, rubber qulaities, construction techniques, etc. All are injection molded plastic, easy and simple and loveable.

God bless Crocs, even though I cringe everytime I see them.

One of Them

So, this is blogging. Feels...hm, a little bit funny...this feeling inside. Like a virgin blogger! typing for the very first time. Like a vir-ir-ir-irgin, a blogging virgin! It feels so good to type! Now what? Do I hit Publish Post, or Save as Draft, or just the View Blog tab? I don't feel very connected, where's this fantastic connectivity everyone's been talking about?! Who's here to help me begin this great adventure in socializing, I don't know what to do!! HELP! Wait for it, wait for it...hold...hold...psh, nothin'. I'll try Publish Post.