Originally posted on March, 30, 2008
I spent the last month along the Mediterranean away from my computer. I was also removed from the normal run of activity that parallels my painting. During this month I went for walks and painted. It is during times like this that I get outside my box (see outside the box thinking).
Originally posted on February, 18, 2008
I believe that most people who read are aware of the anti-intellectual bias. That was written about periodically throughout the twentieth century. Recently, it was written about one more time by an American author, Susan Jacoby. Her decision to write this book was based on a real life experience that took place, I believe, in a New York bar on the day of 11 September 2001. She overheard a conversation between two young men. One of them said to the other that it was like Pearl Harbor. The other asked: “what is Pearl Harbor?? The response was that it was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs on a harbor and started the Vietnam War. Overhearing this conversation was the jolt that prompted her to write yet another book about the intellectual health of our culture. A major book on this subject had already been written. Richard Hostadter covered this theme with his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1963 book, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life?. We are today being informed that in the US two out of three students in their last year of high school cannot read beyond a remedial level. While Europe is in much better shape, the trend is not good.
What does this have to do with art and painting? To adequately address this question would require a much longer article than I have the time to write. Nonetheless, I will continue.
Read the rest of "Impressionism was the Day before Yesterday"
Originally posted on January, 24, 2008
My previous article, Freedom from Content, as well as an article posted June 15, 2007, Big Answers, approach the same problem from different directions. At the risk of being repetitious I will broach the subject yet again. Hopefully my attempts to get my mental teeth into this problem will be of interest.
Goethe asserted, “All that we perceive is simply raw material.? This short statement not only answers a basic philosophical question, it also states clearly a basic reality of life. There is an important and significant time lag which normally people ignore. Immediately following our perception of something a number of things happen at such a subtle level and so quickly we jump at the thoughts which come to mind. We all do it. It’s easy and comfortable. But it is these missed sensations, internal body processes, perceptions, etc., which make up the palette of life, the building blocks of experience. The artist is the person who intervenes in this sub-thinking process. The sensations of Cezanne and Matisse can be understood in this context.
Originally posted on January, 7, 2008
On the main page in the gallery section of my website there is a short introduction: “Somehow I have recently gained a certain distance and freedom from the content of painting…? I have just recently acquired this sense of distance. The paintings I am now doing speak to me of it. Understanding is slowly following.