ARTIST-ART

As I began work for moving our abode in early April I made a few notes for an article. The article did not get written but the move was duly made. We are now installed in a small Bourgogne village enjoying a refreshing change of lifestyle. A grange was converted into a very nice atelier and I am as they say, a happy camper. It seems appropriate to post the few lines as they were written.

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“Tim with window reflections”, Leica M8, 35 mm, Summicron, 2010/03/22

At a certain point in the process a Visual Living experience distills itself into some kind of essence. Something remains: not a mental reflection, the memory of what was seen, or the relationship between them which has now passed.

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“Two Ducks in a Pond”, The river Doubs, Leica M8, 35 mm, Summicron, 2010/03/22

This is not intended as a rhetorical question. Today, when asked the seemingly inevitable question “What do you do?” (Yes, even in France) my response is now “I am a painter – also a photographer.” So, I think maybe the question is “Can a person in today’s world be a generalist?” I’ll back up a bit, say 50 years or so. During this time I’ve spent the majority of my creative effort in the process of the understanding and the practice of painting. No doubt much more time spent in the understanding. Much study and reflection. During the times when there was some clarity the painting itself was relatively easy. This, of course after years spent studying the practice and the understanding of how different pigments behaved in different mediums and so on. However, doubt has dogged my every effort. Painting is, today, very very difficult if you approach it sincerely and consciously. As for photography: this has for me been a breath of fresh air. It can be a creative response to a relatively short period of time – a mere blink in the span of history.It directly speaks to contemporary times. In point of fact, it was invented the day before yesterday – a little more than 150 years ago. We have cave paintings dated something like 30,000 years old. We are not in this case, talking about the same ball game.

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Growing up on the west coast of the U.S. gave me the sense of importance which the pioneer spirit plays in art. I am not at all sure that a translation or explanation of this attitude is posssible. But it is what made the art of San Francisco dramatically different from that of New York. May be it was because it was somewhat free at that time from the market forces in the big art world of the East Coast and, of course, the rest of the world. At least that was the case 40 or 50 years ago. Critical thinking was unemcumbered.

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