Recent Assumptions

Recent Assumptions (and The Importance Of Being Resolute)

Sometimes we say things, myself included, that we may regret.
You may not know when it’s going to happen. But then, when they sneak out and sometimes embarrass you, you may try to ignore or hide them. I think that’s called “Denial”.
Of course, we don’t, or maybe can’t, or won’t consciously record our blunders, but drawings and paintings can be embarrassing like that. But what if we saved them - those drawings for instance... and in all those stacks of blunders, we find, often embedded with some clouded intent, some useful notion that only fails by some partial ignorance that a new day’s dawning may resolve? What if the resolution was a good night’s sleep, or the revolution of our planet around our Sun?
What if you came upon those drawings, waiting in a stack after thousands of revolutions of earth around the sun, and you find them where they now sit moldering, offering you a solution, begging for rebirth, waiting for your instinctively irrational, yet perfectly balanced, awkward charm? Waiting for a mind made for dreaming - for sailing on the drifting thoughts not bound for shore. Thoughts whose maze-like configuration of lines, somehow, against all odds, complete the circle.
A conception of revolution, now changed into time and patience.

Would I have the time, patience and spirit to be able to resolve them - these drawings that make more sense sometimes, up-side-down?
Or would they find me in the same old place?
Or have I grown?

And am I new?
But what do they signify?
And what is significance? That which signifies?
That which is an indication of?

Or is it - - What’s Important?
And to that, you may say to me, “Nothing really matters in the scheme of things.”

The simultaneity of thought with speech intrigues me. How do I know what’s about to come out of my mouth? It might belong to the realm of the subconscious - some realm of automatism. Am I comfortable in my own skin? If I have no fear of being honest, or dishonest for that matter, then it makes no difference.

Putting down what you see with paint is another matter. There is not the same simultaneity as with brain and voice.
Yes, it’s a language. Yes, there’s spontaneity; but obstacles sometimes step in - steps that can stall the process.

The obstacles can be significant, especially with no one cheering you on.

But what’s important, I remind myself, is that some physical evidence of progress is accomplished, that establishes advancement toward a goal - that the result is both familiar and new to me. (Is that too subjective?).

Did I know that the goal was endless - an illusion - that perfection was only an idea, a wish, a state of mind?
Yes, I think that’s what spurred me on. The endless possibility of going forward endlessly. The privilege of being able to do that.

Did I know it was only an illusion?

Yes, but I also saw it as tangible. A tangible illusion of a carrot, before the cart, enabling me to go forward.
There aren’t many things you can do with a tangible illusion.
It’s like having an imaginary friend.

The trick is, to get other people to believe in it, but you have to believe in it first. so that then, they can sympathize with your denial.

I think what I’m trying to say is...That the importance of being resolute - signifies something.

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Projecting an image onto the canvas, one that someone would actually enjoy willfully suspending disbelief on, is more a matter of belief than you might think. Going down that path, attempting to transcribe the quality of a thing seen in all its labyrinthine complexity, and mark it down on a two-dimensional plane, is wrought with obstacles. Discouragement and frustration might follow, significantly deflating your enthusiasm.
It may go something like this:

First, something catches your eye. Some kind of metaphor - some internal significance in that. A distinct, distant memory perhaps, or an emotional flash that sparks the pure way you saw as a child. The involuntary consciousness of clarity is not something you reach for (It hits un- expectantly and takes you with it), you know you’re there but have very little to do with it. It’s usually something quite familiar, and by that I mean a great comfort and a safe place. That’s not to say there’s no immediate connection to an unpredictable subconscious.

So, you go forward, a bit trance-like, trying to protect a certain familiarity, and confront the blank paper or canvas - scale this wall of resistance, carrying the worry and weight of an image - a memory feebly etched on the back of your brain. You’re careful not to drop it, not to forget its power, but the formal rules of line and color and pictorial organization, begin to stifle you. Before you lose the resolution of will, before a cloud moves to dim the sun, or contrary spirits obstruct the road in front of you like a fallen tree, you search for a reference point on the palette, assess the geography of your colors, and focus back at the subject.

And the question begs: Do you still see it the same way?
And because there are also real physical obstacles here — canvas, brushes, paint, gravity,

space - along with the interval of time and the separation that it imposes... It’s nothing at all like the simultaneity of thought with speech.

Thinking is faster than speaking. Speaking is faster than music. Music is faster than painting. The speed of light, the speed of sound, the speed of thought.

But perhaps the best thing (and the fastest) is to sit in a dimly lit room, first thing in the morning, half asleep, and witness the images flit by, and the newly hatched notions race elusively... not knowing what they mean!

Sometimes, you just need to go back to nature. To reboot. To refresh.

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You may find yourself in a cabin in Maine where time stands still. No internet, spotty phone service. The knot on a dead, painted table plank, still oozing sap around its perimeter.
It makes me think - that I’m more naturally a sculptor.

The beauty in the country seems to demand slow, observational painting,

but how can you be deliberate when the changing light changes everything so fast? Nature’s like a foreign language to me, urban animal that I am.

A sense of light in painting depends on the ‘Totality’ relationships comprise. A sense of place comes afterward. Detail can be a distraction to that, when all that you see divides, rebels and clamors for individual attention. Drawing a large grove of trees is like remembering the names of a hundred people you just met. The whole process calls for a reserved approach - if that doesn’t kill it.

On the other hand, retaining an image, in order to make it be seen again so it speaks back to you, is really very simple if you have the focus and you’re egocentrically self absorbed. But It may not necessarily investigate and/or explain our differences, or be worth wading through the thick fog to illuminate some common barrier - projected on the wall we all share. Nor explain ‘the other’ with a mere glimmer of understanding, a bearing, something to learn, a direction to set right the sails for. Perhaps it’s not the absence of self that you desire, but it can be a comfort nonetheless.

But the whole point of something that catches your eye - the thing that asks you to give it substance and urges you to build an altar of thanks to it - is that it says something about who you are.

It shouldn’t be a surprise then, that the things you remember most have an emotional attachment to them, but it is to me, and I hope to assume it is for everyone else as well. They’re really feelings. It’s the kind of surprise that pricks the dog ears up in your brain. The kind of surprise you appreciate, even if it’s a memory of something that challenged or threatened you, because, after all, you must be wiser for it, now that you’ve survived.

Because of the rain the other day, I visited the Brunswick library.
I discover the ‘Quiet Reading Room’ - 19th century paintings hanging here, and a fireplace, and I’m the only visitor. Big selection of 2” thick, large coffee table type, artist monographs - and without thinking too much about it, I bring back David Hockney and ‘Corot in Italy’ to my plush leather arm chair.
Hockney, because, after all, I’m on vacation, right? (If that’s possible, for an artist retired from gainful employment).
But he works hard, Hockney, at being easily pleasing, a lesson I might learn - instead of regurgitating some sad complaint. I’m reminded of what Paul Georges, a painter and a sort of surrogate father figure, once told me.
“Life can be a struggle sometimes, but you’ll always have Art to comfort you”.

Artists are sensualists, and sensualists can be hedonistic sometimes.

You may say, “Nothing really matters in the scheme of things”, but what’s our answer to that? Do we just ooze out like sap, to become a hardened relic of narcissistic over-indulgence on some undisclosed table top?
There is something to the whole conservative premise of being reserved. A defense mechanism for survival. You keep the best for last. And why do we say, ”over-indulgence” and not just ‘Indulgence’, to get the point across? Why indulge in redundancy?

When I returned again to the library on Thursday, I became engrossed with Felix Vallaton’s carefully wrought, focused, but not too fussy still life paintings. For me, Nothing else he did comes close. I learned that he spent a lot of time, unsuccessfully, trying to become a published writer.

But then I found a book on Paul Klee (writ around the Berggruen collection at the MET).
I Read that Klee sought out Robert Delaunay in Paris when young. Delaunay’s talk of “rhythmic simultaneity” by which, Delaunay meant, ”the reality of depth through light, the harmony of simultaneity in light and the rhythm of color”. This impressed Klee as something totally new. But then - what Klee did with it - and went on to share it with early Kandinsky (Although they didn’t mention Kandinsky).

But really, doesn’t all great painting share this quality?

Rhythmic Simultaneity made me think of what the nuns told us; that, “God’s in all places at all times”. How polytheistic!

And that reminded me of something Bobby Diaz said to me, when, I was around ten.

Each week on Wednesdays we went to choir practice at the church after lunch and got to go home an hour early when the kids from P.S. 203 came for religious instruction at our school. Bobby’s father Jerry, who worked in construction and would later become our football coach, was a good guy, even though he used the same tactics on us that he learned as a drill sergeant during the Korean War. He once told us, shouting proudly, “I built that bridge” referring to and pointing at the Verrazano Bridge... And I once witnessed him eating a half

stick of butter while getting dressed to go to a wedding. He held it like a banana with the paper peeled down over his knuckles, as he explained that this enabled him to drink and not worry about his ulcer.

Well, what I remember, was that, after religions instruction, Bobby says to me, “How can God be in all places at once?”, as if the nuns didn’t know what they were talking about.

And I just looked at him in silence, and thought to myself, “That could happen”.