Rearranging Things and Invisible Things
I don’t want to write this, but I’m doing it anyway. Writing for structure, a container. To prove to myself that what’s wanted isn’t all of what’s needed. I’ll find a way to want it because I want the structure, the container, the invisible vessel—without it, I could drift forever, disappear into my curiosity, fall in love with nothing, and maybe that’s what I’ve already done. Maybe. I love the process—the sifting, sorting, finding and rearranging.
I’m talking about the creative process. I think that’s what I’m talking about. Or maybe it’s just what I’m saying—just commenting on something vague, the mountain behind the fog as if I hadn’t already seen it.
We Must Create: And Say It Again To Each Other Again
There are still tears in my eyes—tears of laughter. I just got off the phone with one of my Creative Fellows, a filmmaker from Los Angeles. His wife had already given him the *Greatest Advice of All Time, but he was calling his creative friends to vent anyway. Sometimes we need each other, us creatives. We need to say the same thing five thousand four hundred and fifty-nine times—to know it well enough for it to become something else. The dream is that it will expand—it will become the dream currently shadowed by fears, doubts, or stresses of whatever variety. I vented some, too.
Brother. We talked like brothers—fought over …
Great: The Greatest Abstraction So Far
Greatness as a painter? Or artist? It makes no sense to me. Okay, yeah, I get it. We define certain artists and people as great. It happens. Opinions accumulate. Things are noted. Other things are never seen. Which is the greatest?
The more I thought about it, the more “greatness” felt like an odd thing to measure—it has no shape and is slippery. What does “great” even mean? When I think of the artists I’ve known, the ones others might call great—highly successful in their work, some of them famous for it—I’ve seen some great performances and shows and witnessed a fluffed-up ego or two. But I’ve never heard one artist say that they think they’re great—
In the Woods: Collaborating With Dirt and Snow. It’s time.
I'm in the woods—and the kitchen. Hello from the table where I sit with a view of the Pike Forest. I can almost see the exact spot where two of my canvases are buried in the snow and ice.
One thing led to another. Months ago, I was working on the ground, feeling the shapes of the earth beneath me and the canvas, outlining them with a soft pastel—until the season changed. It snowed. I got the urge to bury the paintings. They'd already been outside for months. For whatever reason—not knowing what to do, curiosity, attempted surrender, a deep desire for change, grief—I had decided to let things (wind, rain, dirt, fallen branches) influence my work …