As seen the week before Christmas outside Hobby Lobby in Columbia, MO.
Category Archives: Life
Peking Duck With Jackie and Jade
I’m so glad to know Jackie – one of our grads here in the Art Program at Mizzou – who recently finished her requirements for an MFA in Painting. Originally from Guangzhou, China, Jackie has been here in the US for about 4 years. Here’s an a short piece about her from Vox Magazine and another, longer piece from the Columbia Daily Tribune.
Tonight she (and Jade!) took my family out for Peking Duck at House of Chow. It was amazing!
And here is one of Jackie’s works for which I posed… Right or Left (“Not with that hand, my granddaughter!”) 40 by 32 inches, Pastel on Mi-Tientes Board.
Thanks for the meal, Jackie… and for all the good work!
Remembering Dancer in the Dark
The last time I saw a Lars von Trier work in the theater it was the single most devastating experience I have had with a film. My wife (then girlfriend) and I saw Dancer in the Dark in late 2000, and had to travel to see it since it had a limited theatrical run.
The movie stirred the sort of emotional tension to which most films can only remotely aspire. Bjork’s performance was so direct and full; a true lived-in reality for her. It was a performance for which she won best female performance at Cannes. It was also one she reported as being extremely difficult emotionally, uncomfortable intellectually, and nearly torturous overall. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I mean. Bjork has been widely quoted about her experience with von Trier and her feelings about the film, but one thing she has said sticks with me: “Lars doesn’t consider it his responsibility to make sure people are psychologically stable after he’s worked with them in such an intense way.”
I expect he probably operates the same way in regards to his audience as well.
After the epic final scenes in Dancer in the Dark, so charged with emotion and a visceral sense of anger and hopelessness, Alison and I openly wept for minutes on end. Feeling the horror of what was to happen, our eyes streamed, but the silent tears were transformed to loud cries and groans as the credits rolled. Many others sat there in the dark as well; they were crushed and crying, too. I’ve never been as emotionally undone in public before. It was an unforgettable experience.
Kirsten Dunst in a still from Melancholia
So it is that I am filled with some trepidation… tonight I’ll be seeing von Trier’s Melancholia with friends. Will I find myself as torn, as moved? Will I have such an unforgettable reaction to this film as well? Great artworks are like this: so pungent, so evocative, that they literally precede themselves with palpable force.
An iconic, alchemical image from Melancholia
I’m looking forward to this experience.
Inspiration – The Crusty Accumulation of Paint and Effort and Love and Meaning
Fall 2011 Color Drawing
Every semester I have to make more posts about how awesome my Color Drawing classes are.
Above: Marissa Valentino’s amazing Colored Pencil drawing of a head from our group project.
Students assembling one of our large group drawings.
Hannah and Vincent hard at work on a final figure work for the course.
Emily Armstrong’s 44 by 30 inch figure drawing in progress on the easel. You can see our parachute stage setup there behind. We love that parachute!
Above and below: A selection of drawings from the second half of the semester we pulled out for a group crit – some in progress, others complete. Overall a great effort by my students this year!
India Watts working on her Matisse master study.
The final group project installed in one of the stairwells at the University of Missouri.
What I’ve been musing on recently
I’ve been thinking about overtly shifting the direction of my work for a while now – perhaps a year. I don’t know that this shift would be easily discernible from the outside, but it represents a significant change of focus for me. As I look back over the last year of my practice and then cross-reference what I’m seeing there with some of the artists and artworks I’ve been looking at during that time, I can really see some connections forming.
For instance, check out these recent pieces:
The Teachers, Mandala for the Murky History of Beginnings and Endings #1, Portrait of Miranda at Thirteen Months, Two Bells, and The Seedbed #1.
Then compare their compositional formatting with aspects of the works of artists I’m looking at here:
Richard Diebenkorn, Miyoko Ito, Barry Le Va, Nicholas Byrne, David Rabinowitch, Julian Stanczak, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Marcelo Bonevardi, Frank Nitsche, Sharon Butler, and Vincent Fecteau.
It seems to me that my previous forays into more formal explorations – such as with the Locus Series (book here), and the conceptually interconnected Quintessence Series and Dodecahedron Series – are becoming more and more deeply apparent in my main body of work. In some ways I’m finding myself less drawn to the figure as a necessity and more drawn to the composition itself. I’m deeply interested in the perception of formal dynamics and the sense of haptic maneuvering that can take place within two-dimensional forces.
So it is that my recent miniseries, three of which are shown above in progress (9 inches in diameter, collage, gouache, acrylic and graphite on paper), have come about. They call back to previous works, such as this one from 2005, which was part of a side project I did while finishing up grad school (I needed a break from my thesis paintings):
First Bend, Oil on Canvas on Panel, 14 by 23 inches, 2005. Destroyed. Click to enlarge.
Anyway, who knows? We’re all moved and pressed and pushed, often by things we don’t entirely recognize. That’s why painting is so much more like getting lost in the woods than it is like jumping in a car and driving to the store for milk. It’s not meant to be that simple.
If it were that way there would be no discovery, no evocation beyond what we already know… and what good would that be?
Inspiration – Connections (Shins/Rush)
“but when they’re parking their cars on your chest you’ve still got a view of the summer sky.”
–know your onion, from the album oh, inverted world by the the shins.
“all of us do time in the gutter; dreamers learn to look at the stars.”
The Size of Eyes
My eyes are significantly reduced in size by my glasses. Here’s a comparison (photos taken from same position just a few seconds apart):
And here’s a tighter juxtaposition:
It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s actually huge – the smaller version is only about 75% of the larger.
I wonder what this alteration in the size of my eyes does for my interactions with students, colleagues, and friends…
Visiting Ocean Park
Recently I visited Fort Worth to experience the retrospective of Richard Diebenkorn‘s Ocean Park paintings. I have spent the last two weeks trying to process what I saw and what I think about what I saw. I’ve loved Diebenkorn’s work since my first encounter with it. I had to wait nearly 15 years to get the chance to really see the work in context. I’m in the midst of writing my reflections; they’ll appear over at Neoteric Art sometime in the next month or so. For now, check out some pictures of me and Marcus taking in the majesty of Ocean Park.
Marcus sketching from Ocean Park #30.
Marcus scrutinzing Ocean Park #135 – that’s the corner of Ocean Park #93 above his pencil.
Me taking in the glory of Ocean Park #40 from across the gallery.
Here I am considering Ocean Park #79.
And jump here and here to see some pages from my notebook written/scribbled during my time in the exhibition.
If you can’t make it to the venues the show will travel to over the next year, be sure to see this nice photo essay from the current iteration of the show.
Chromatic Totality
I’ve got another amazing group of Color Drawing 1 students this semester. Below I’ll highlight just a few of the many who’ve distinguished themselves this year. Please click on each to see them up close.
A work in colored pencil by Marissa Valentino. About 18 by 18 inches.
A drawing by Lirong Gong. Chalk pastel, 24 by 18 inches.
Megan Schaffer has an amazing sense of material handling. Her oil pastel work here is 30 inches by 22 inches – it’s just one of 4 or 5 that are really stellar.
Carly Kurka working the chromatic shadows, 18 by 24 inches, oil pastel.
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Becca Wholey’s grid work fulfilled the project parameters expertly – 16 by 16 inches, colored pencil.
It’s been a privilege to work with these students – here’s hoping they continue on with me in Color Drawing 2!
eikonktizo 