It was a photographer that I heard say that there was not a need to become too concerned with art. The point is that if we start from where we are and focus on the essentials will the process will pull the art out of us. If, on the other-hand, the focus is on what we consider to be art the motivation may very well be a self-serving one. Both painting as well as photography (any creative pursuit for that matter) is best approach with humility. The reward for keeping it simple in this manner : a refreshing of the things within us that are essential : truth, beauty, deep feeling and aesthetic pleasures in all the important areas of life (The open door of each consciousness.).

Published in french as Peinture : les fondamentaux

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.

Luckily, we occasionally through our lives gain insights that give us a warm glow. Time stands still and the Universe sings us a wonderful song, some time passes, much of the glow diminishes but the wonder of the remaining essence can remain for a lifetime.

These experiences, the visual experiences and the magical moment experiences are, I believe of the same nature. Most of us have them. Some of us attach more importance to them. And many more are simply oblivious to them. Someone recently said: “The world without Art would be like a parking lot.” True. And, I would add, life without the soul of experience would be the cement that paves the parking lot.

The above is some reflection on a telephone conversation tonight with a good friend. We talked about understanding life, health, selling an apartment, relationships, the emphasis on technique in painting today, friendship and other things! Why am I rambling on like this you ask? I am afraid I’ll have to answer with a question, “Would you read this if it was poetry?” It seems to me that in the days in which poetry was part of our literary lives things were much different. Words had deeper meanings, paintings and photograph had deeper meanings, our lives had deeper meanings and the world was not becoming a parking lot.

Reclaiming the words used today by main street to make that cement is important, no?

Published in french as Merveilleuses expériences des yeux de l’esprit

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.

And yet I have been confronted in an aggressive manner because I was carrying a camera. This has happened in France by people who knew me to be a painter. To say that you need not to be affected by what other people think is, I believe, beside the point. We do not live in a vacuum. You have to at some point wonder what is going on here.

I’ll back up again, just a few years this time. In the mid-nineties I was walking along the lake close to Lausanne and met a couple from the U.S. It turns out he was an old art professor at a major University in New York State. In the course of our conversation he told me that he believed that I could find acceptance in France as a photographer but it would be quite difficult as a painter. I’ve often pondered how he had come to that conclusion. Let me state categorically that I do not think that being an American in France has had anything to do directly with my level of recognition. But I do question wether or not my photographic interest has compromised my painting. There is that nagging element of doubt that has been hounding painters for at least 100 years. We know as a fact that almost immediately after the introduction of photography painters began using it as a tool. Courbet used photographs quite a bit and the impressionists were enormously affected. Not only was photography used as a tool, it shaped their approach and theories about painting. It is not far fetched to say that the world of painting has not been the same since. We could dig deeper into how thinking about art itself had changed after the revolution but this is beyond the scope of what I want to say.

Bringing it back to the personal level and my original question: can a person be both a painter and a photographer? (Rather than attempt as I often do to answer my own questions, I would really like to know what you think.)

In any case, I plan to, in the not to distant future, to begin a blog on my photography. That my interest in photography has influenced my painting I will readily admit. However I have never felt the need or inclination to use it as a tool or make paintings based on a particular photograph. Why? Painting in its own right is much more fun. Painting from photographs is like assembly work.

Actually, during the last 20 years I’ve spent little time with photography. Up untill the 90’s I received much pleasure processing my film and doing black and white prints. I even went so far as to take a portable darkroom with me on my travels. (I was very mobile – what you might call a nomad during many years.) I would set up my darkroom wherever I was. Moving to France marked the end of this habit.

Slowly, I’ve become in recent years involved with digital photography. I bought a Canon 10D in 2003. No chemicals! And comparatively the creative freedom is incredible. I find great pleasure in it. After playing with Photoshop and Lightroom from their beginnings I begin to get “serious” about it.

Aside from this, we are moving house. After 15 years in the same place the time arrived to move on to greener pastures. It is off to Burgundy we go. Both Françoise and I spent our youth in a rural setting so it is a return to our roots of sorts – a village of 200 people. Calm, peace and tranquility.

Published in french as Un peintre peut-il aussi être un photographe ?

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As things in this regard began to quickly change a move was in order. Heading East was out of the question. There was only a lot of water to the west. I moved North. A somewhat nomadic way of life followed which ended with my arrival in France 16 years ago. Once again it is time to move. Hopefully it is the last one.

My formative years were spent in the country side in Northwest California close to the Sierre Nevada Mountains. I am looking forward to living in a small French village. It is like a return of sorts.

Published in french as L’esprit pionier de l’ art

Okay, I begin to rant. I know that things in general are much as they have always been. Since Plato the artist/painter has played a marginal role. But, at least he had a role of sorts. Even as a worker he had a role of sorts, may be in many respects a healthier one.

A few days ago I found an English translation of the important speech of Aude de Kerros, pronounced (march 09) at the French “Académie des Beaux-Arts”. It looks at word games played with Art since the Second World War. I highly recommend that you read this. Then I would hope that you can understand that this sort of chicanery has been going on at least since the time of Plato. Recently, Courbet was imprisoned and then run out of France. Cezanne was stoned by village children and so on. Not to speak of unknown artists who starved to death in their garrets.

The thing interesting about this article is the suggestion that a big change in the business of art is taking place. It seems that the financial bubble burst has disturbed the connections between the good old boys who manipulated artistic matters on a global scale. There is the suggestion that art and the world of art is about to become more democratic. Imagine, then if you are an artist you will no longer be a degenerate outcast.

Published in french as L’artiste est un exclu

The slave to beauty artistic attitude developed in the void of this rather sterile social/political situation. Oops, I wrote a rather judgmental word here. My wish is to write clearly without any reactionary digressions. When we begin looking at stuff like this clarity must be maintained. Understanding can only come when we suspend judgements and wipe the words from our eyes so to speak. That said, we have to ask why it is that mankind has found it so difficult to peacefully co-exist with each other. Social history in this area is not a pretty picture.

The relationships we can observe in recorded history between ideologies, social groups, religions, prominent philosophical thought, and the creative individual becomes pertinent when clearly considered. In saying “creative individual”, let us remember that we did not have anything approaching what we know to day as art until a mere couple of hundred years ago. We need some understanding of what we have on record (the text) and what had preceded it (social history, i.e., the context) which will be pursued in subsequent articles. Hopefully this can be done in a straightforward fashion. Simple but not easy!

Published in french as Rapport entre le social et la peinture à l’huile

The other day my wife read on FriendFeed that “a society without a stable arts base is a parking lot”. I do not know who it was that said that but they nailed it. I began writing this blog (first article posted originally in April 2007) with this essential core thought. I mean what in the hell are we thinking of. Art is today exactly whatever you want it to be from a pile of rocks, a dead cat, to you name it, n’importe quoi.

Many art pundits tell us that Marcel Duchamp is responsible for this state of affairs. They imply that exhibiting a urinal and signing it “R. Mutt” started this slide to nothingness. What utterly simplistic bullshit. Having said that, understanding what has gone on over the last couple of hundred years with European Culture is not easy. I do not by any means consider myself an intellectual but I am a thinker with good intuitive instincts. It has literally taken me at least 50 years of continual reading and pondering to just begin getting my mental teeth on the problem. This blog is an attempt at clarification. For these fifty years I have been a slave to this pursuit: paint is the symbolic medium and writing an exercise in understanding.

Interestingly, the interest as measured by traffic to this site is significantly weighted to French readership. The English visits are very low. Reading anything from this is difficult at best. (For one thing I live in France). However, I am very thankful to have a strong French following. Having said that, my purpose in writing is not strong reader following. I am attempting to learn how to talk about things I am beginning to recognize as important. Understanding seems to be the name of the game. Making money and fame have never been the goal of honest painters.

Published in french as Esclave de la peinture Partie II

I believe we need to get past it and move on to more important issues. Otherwise, art has the risk of becoming irrelevant. It clearly already is for all but a very small number of people. And I’m not at all sure this is a healthy sustainable situation. But, then again, progress in art is not a straight line. It has often moved in reverse.

Published in french as Esclave de la peinture Partie I

The World Wide Web has expanded in some sense the horizons for many of us. This conflict directly, however with the social interactions from which we drew our substance a few years ago. One way in which it has done this is the explosion of self professed authorities and experts. Consequently, the process of connecting with an audience has become actually much more complex overnight so to speak. A rule of thumb for the working artist (i.e. professional artist) was that it was necessary to spend around one-half of the time devoted to the business side of things. Boy; has that changed. I don’t know about you, but for me the time left over for painting has dropped dramatically. Where is this leading us?

Leaving aside this question of time, another aspect reared its ugly head for me recently. No matter how sincere you may be, some individuals truly detest what they perceive you to represent – a charlatan world attempting to overturn the “natural” and “normal” order of things as they understand them. That they may be missing a few important screws never occurs to them. The elevator simply does not reach the top floor.

Now I do not find fault with this state of affairs. After all it has been going on quite some time now. I certainly do not fault the individual as his condition corresponds to precedent. However, I do find offence with the individual with mental abilities very much above the status quo who participates thus with the zeitgeist. He, or she, should know better; shame, shame on them.

Whenever and wherever I encounter this particularly offensive person I am compelled to point them out. This, even though today you are at great risk, more than just a few simply consider you as another self-appointed authority without moral foundation.

Again, I find myself being quite vague. In this case I quite simply do not wish to spell out the ugly details. They could easily be lost in translation as well as though cultural misunderstandings. Suffice it to say that even at my advanced age I sometimes find cause to question my justifications. But to pursue the explanation of these justifications is to play bad poker. An intelligent poker player does not bet good money after bad. Likewise to spend good energy after the fact in another context is to avoid the obligations of your day-today life as a creative personality.

Published in french as Le quotidien des peintres