Week Three

Disentangle

Part of unraveling is a loss of control, of order, and of thing that fit nicely together. Awkward. The loss is a gain. My work is not precious. My work is what it is, nothing more and nothing less. My artist mentor told me to make turds and to get comfortable with my shit. Hmmmm. Yes, I would say this week was distinctive in the amount of shit that was generated.

Cy Twombly claims he works “in waves” similar, it seems, to the relentlessness and the repetition of seasons and cycles that come through in his work. I am intrigued by both his methodology and his work. The marks, the writing, the drawing, the painting, the scale and the subject matter are personal and intuitive and also somewhat everyday and accessible. From seeing, reading and listening to Cy Twombly this week I see the influence in my painting in using drips, layers, text, and scratches. I also love that he can get away with painting huge canvases of peonies. I sense an affinity and connection to the natural world and the space in Twombly’s work. The abstraction is recognizable and also implores the viewer to look and really see what is going on in the paint and the layers. A lot is revealed as I spend more time with his work. It is as though there is a tangle and then with time there is an unraveling of threads, a disentangle.

I have been painting without brushes. Instead I have sponges, rags, sticks, markers, eyedroppers, knives, scrapers, balls, and gravity in my arsenal. The bloody stripes with window piece is mixed media on panel, unfinished. The blue tape piece is also unfinished on paper mounted on wood. The pieces have gone through much iteration from dark night palettes to somber day beiges to bolder primaries. Some are over drawings and abstractions of a physical place and some of it is just play on canvas or panel.

These dark paintings are curious to me as I think of myself being inspired by all the wonders for the daylit world. I have always savored the quiet of the night, the focus and the slight tightening under my skin as I listen hard for sounds strange and familiar. The night attracts and allures me and my work reveals this. My piece on the right is mixed media on canvas, unfinished. I looked into Vincent Van Gogh’s 2008 exhibition at MOMA called “Vincent Van Gogh and the Night Sky”. The body of work I brought to the residency in January was very nocturnal. The colors of the night seem so intangible and challenging to me. I see in Van Gogh’s work the depiction of light at night which is composed of many layers and a feeling of something a bit off, a bit ambiguous, slightly revealed and then taken back into obscurity.

I find the period of transition between dusk and dawn compelling, surprising, and a bit mysterious. On an early run this week I was out before the sun rose, the air was frigid, nothing stirred except a skunk and a black cat. Minute by minute the sun rose and the day began, lights flickered on, cars pulled onto the streets, walkers emerged from their warm homes. The transition and the threshold from one thing to the other is where everything important happens. Either we enter into it or not, either we participate or we don’t. Getting into this space, articulating what is impossible to articulate is something I am continually trying to do in my work.

I spent some time looking at Edward Ruscha’s “Stains” for a diversion into Pop Art. I am interested in the resourceful, ready-made quality of his approach and the work itself. It is fresh. I used the back of a door to register marks and scribbles thinking of stains as a way to actually saturate the ground as opposed to painting layers on top of a ground. I like using inks because they get into the surface.

I have been walking around looking at the winter tree branches and the terminal buds that are getting fat and fueling up for their spring burst. It has always fascinated me how each species has a unique terminal bud signature. Like portraits I have been drawing them. I am thinking of scale and trying to employ these stems and buds like Twombly’s huge canvases with flowers.

Thinking of wood and trees, I looked at David Nash’s installations. The many characters and conditions of wood are celebrated in his work as well as a charming almost personifying treatment of sculpture having unique characters. I am finding ways to articulate and depict my own reverence and fascination with the natural world and specifically the plant world. Here David Nash’s statement sings to me:

“I want a life and work that reflect the balance and continuity of nature. Identifying with the time and energy of the tree and with its mortality, I find myself drawn deeper into the joys and blows of nature. Worn down and regenerated; broken off and reunited; a dormant faith is revived in the new growth of the old wood.” 1

This was a buffet week, an all-you-can-eat, with unraveling and letting myself absorb and respond to the sources of artistic inspiration and the otherwise ordinary winter week of clear cool days. Just when I was thinking I had found something new and insightful in Twombly, Ruscha, Van Gogh and Nash, I stopped by the Cambridge Art Association’s opening exhibition from local grade schools called “The Art of Love”.

Here, I am reminded of the creative genius and play in youth. Is this all a process in adulthood that is a search for that lost art of childhood discovery and irreverence? This show gave me as much inspiration as all the monographs in Borders. A big drawing of fishes piled on top of each other like a familiar family portrait, an installation made of old boxes colored with paint and beaming with dozens of smiling faces, and a pizza box cityscape – what a joy to see the everyday materials, the energy and the willingness to not be precious but to be free. Twombly is like an aged kid, with vitality and confidence and willingness to mark up the world with expressions. I love it.

Art Journal

This week I looked at Cy Twombly, Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Ruscha, and David Nash.

Cy Twombly

Twombly represents a full range of material and merges drawing, painting, writing and mark making with a subject matter that is nature and landscape abstracted but also familiar. I admire how this artist has survived and remained meaningful through a long career which bloomed in the 50s. He was one of the abstract expressionist and yet he moved away and retained an ability to be true to his self. I love the drips, the crayons, the scale, and the enormity of his exclamations about peonies and seasons.

Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons / Text by Nicholas Serota, Richard Shiff, Nicolas Cullinan, Tacita Dean. Tate 2008.

Cy Twombly At Inverleith House Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh / Afterword By Mark Francis. Gagosian Gallery, 2003.

Cy Twombly: The Natural World: Selected Works, 2000-2007 / Art Institute of Chicago, 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw62COTxJHo (Opening of "Blooming" at the Gagosian Gallery 2009)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQjHbazfxKg&feature=related ("Quattro Stagioni" in Lobby MOMA 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5_1m7MMXyE&feature=related (Tate Modern, 2008)

Vincent Van Gogh

I do not tire of Vincent Van Gogh. I can smell Provence and hear the starry night and the cafe. He was a fanatic about night life and something in me understands that.

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/60#related_events

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/vangoghnight/

Edward Ruscha

The work, "Stains" has shown me ways in which color can be found beyond the tube of paint. This I am grateful for and will borrow this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZBt2GXrvyg (Hayward Gallery London 2009)

http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/34/803 (MOMA on "Stains")

David Nash

David Nash feels that he works with wood as an element of time, weather, growth and decay. His passion for the work and material is far reaching and beyond the usual contraints of artists. He thinks about time and marks within the surface and material of trees and their wood. I also like that he works in his own way and seems unaffected by the trends or pressures more urbane.

1. David Nash: Forms into Time / London:Academy 1996, p13.

David Nash / Thames & Hudson 2007

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J--CARbn2eA&feature=related (David Nash interview)