Category Archives: Art

Two New Catalogs

Posted on by under Art, Life, Writing

I’ve recently collected some bodies of work into small catalog format. The Lamentations 3 Series, from 2009-2011, and shown recently at Gordon College in Massachusetts, is collected along with images of the copper plates in process, some installation shots, and an essay that I gave as a lecture at Gordon during the opening for my show there. Click the image below for more info.

The second book is a collection of some of the 100 or so Locus Series works that I created between 1999 and 2001. I present about 20 images along with a short essay I wrote in 2001 when I concluded the series. I also wrote another short contemplation this year to reflect on what the Locus Series has meant to me. Click the image below for more info.

Into Dust

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“Can I remember it only in some half-form? Can I remember it only as a chimera, made of memory and will and hope? Can I not recall it totally, fully, being in myself as I was? Does no one understand the fullness of the emptying time? Does no one sense it in themselves, that time when they lost the tether? Let it loose again, to feel that it is gone! Alone. This is the deep pit of sensing, where I know the contour of death and dying. Suspended above the abyss. Glory.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

“Look… an abyssal missive, a doctrine of smoke… ‘into dust.’

In the end I suppose that I wish for it, (and sometimes still seek it with nervous hope) that confusion. Sweet psychological instability – the wobbly legs of a newly drunken lad – here as the land curves away beneath me. I guess that, at times, the seeking is more interesting to me than the knowing. I’ve seen it here, right here on this land; is there self-loathing? What’s beneath the surface of us all? Did I see myself here for the first time, or was I just revealed anew, from a novel angle and in skewed light? The absolute beauty of being permissive, of stepping aside and watching oneself from the wings – it can’t be beat, though it stays with you in some way I can’t yet fully understand. I don’t think I ever will understand it. Watching others though – there’s the bittersweet fruit. The fallen human trembles and tumbles through life, and even at the lowest point renders to itself the most poetic, romanticized stroke.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Beside me today
A round broken in two
’til your eyes shed into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
’til my hand shook the way I fear

I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your face
Under…your face

It was you
breathless and torn
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
And two strangers turning into dust
Turning into dust.

“Into Dust” by Mazzy Star

All images above are from digital photos taken between May and August 2001.

Inspiration – Henry Ossawa Tanner

Posted on by under Art, Life

Henry Ossawa Tanner has been a major presence in my life as a painter for many years. His grasp of overt and subtle visual dynamics is astounding, as is his dual ability to modulate fields of colors and negotiate edge quality. In many ways his works prefigure the Abstract Expressionists who were to follow him 40 or 50 years later.  The work below, Nicodemus Visiting Jesus by Night (1899, Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art),  is one of his masterworks. You can read more about the image here, and click on it for a larger view.

To me, this work below is the painter’s absolute triumph:

Annunciation (1898, Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Click to expand.

At the Cincinnati Art Museum

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Alison and Miranda before Diebenkorn’s Interior with View of Building (1962)

Miranda crawling around beneath Corot’s Don Quixote (1868)

Miranda with Robert Henri’s Patience Serious (1915) – looks like Miranda’s got a painted doppelganger.

Sense of Place

Posted on by under Art, Life, Writing

There is a great Bad At Sports interview with long time Ox-Bow cook and Director of Chicago’s Roots & Culture gallery Eric May. It’s awesome. Check it out here.

Above: Eric in his grilling glory, summer 2001.

A lot of what Eric talks about in the conversation with Claudine Ise reminded me of my favorite parts of Ox-Bow life… it creates its own micro-cultural climate, its own peculiar and special sense of place. Here are some of my thoughts on it…

“It is interesting that the wonderful mixture of scents is always with you: air, fire, dirt, grass, and water. There is the staleness of cigarettes, the pungency of weed, the hoppy brews left after the parties. There are dinners of steak, shrimp, pork chops, Portobello mushrooms and ever-present feta and peas. There are soups, fish, teas, deserts, additions, and all; delights each and every day. All manner of body odors redound. The lesser animals also make their presence known, as does the mildew. Rain always works its strange rejuvenations to counter the constancy of the Lagoon. There is the rotting wood, the wet leaves, the morning mists, and my hair with its own unwashed, unkempt glory.” – – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

 

Studio Visit From Keith

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The talented and dinosaur-loving Keith Montgomery visited my studio last week to shoot some video and take some still images. Keith is a good friend and a former student of mine who has made tremendous strides in his photography over the last couple years. You can see a bunch of his work here, but also click on the images below for larger versions (there are also a number of other shots). You can also see our collaboration piece in The Larry Show, up at the University of Missouri’s George Caleb Bingham Gallery through August.

The Grand Studio

At Work…

Looks like I’ve got some new “at work” shots for my website, eh? Thanks, Keith!

Painting, like language…

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“Painting, like language, is not a progressive medium. Its vernacular changes over time, but its fundamental concerns will always assert themselves. The basic, the human, and the timeless find voice – as do the trivial, the vapid, and the passe – in painting, just as they do in language.” – from a note scribbled in 2003.

Transpositions Feature

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My work has been featured on the Transpositions website.

Transpositions is a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. The site has vibrant discussions going on among PhD students and post-graduate commentators (as well as contributors from around the globe) on a variety of topics. If you’re interested in the intersection of Art, Theology, and intellectual inquiry, I suggest you check them out.