1/6/2011 

Finished Awakened by the Light, 28 x 22 in., ink on paper This piece arose from picking out images from my "art resources" folder that interested me at that moment. As images got placed, omitted, changed, arranged, the idea evolved. Cosmic ray tracks though the bathroom window, a twig I had painted in watercolor moved all over until it united the living figures and the rocky hillside. A rock on that hillside was replaced by the history of man, a petroglyph. Underlaying it all was my head in one perspective, the rest in another, making a comment on Dali's Christ of St. John of the Cross. I certainly am no Christ; but then, the world is not known as it was in Christ's time.

 

1/12/2011 

Finished Vista Today. Time. Muse. Me. Universe. But, the personal times are very personal, as a young man. The reflecting (lamp) is recent. The finality of life being born is my daughter, Daiva.

 

 

1/15/2011 

Abide. Thinking about Vista Today (1/12/2011), which was heavy on the photographs, I felt the urge to use some of my drawings. As I viewed them, an unspecified thought began to take hold, which, I think now, relates to living and drawing life, to make some sense of it. The drawing of the woman in the mirror was made sepia, I painted some on the pomegranate drawing. had the woman's face overlap, spruced up the still life with paint, and angled the still life on the ledge, to, who knows, make the uncertainty of it all show up a bit?

 

 

1/17/2011 

Finished Shadow Stories today. Adding a shadow falling on the drawn twig built up the ambiguity of the whole piece. Started 7/13/2010, and called then Remnants of the Hours, I'd added the curtain shadow on the ground, and the red-lidded jar.The idea popped into my head to include a shadow for the jar, completing the pieces' ideas and composition--until I added the shadow to the twig. I wanted the piece to be jarring in its various handlings, not sure why.

 

 

 

2/3/2011
Bifurcated creating. A painting I'm working on is a reflection on the philosophical concepts of Nominalism and Realism, while the computer piece I just finished (Former) is about flesh, mind, and age...the way I've been formed by loves, time, thinking, and random events.

 

 

 

3/8/2011 
Finished Chary Of, acrylic and collage on canvas 24 x 24 in. The finish popped into my head as I was thinking about Nominalism and Realism. Here's the start, where I was playing with sweeping chaos and "Apollonian" light:



4/10/2011
The other side of nothingness--two beginnings in my studio.

 

 

 

5/27 
Yellow Cube Dark Vessel, ceramic with steel posts, 4 x 11 in. Having a desire to get back to working with clay, I began visualizing shapes and ideas. I'm not sure of the progression, but at some point the idea of juxtapositioning or creating a an alien presence that yet somehow belonged interested me. I started this piece several months ago, but pneumonia, followed by embolisms kept me away until now. I'm continuing with a larger triangular-based vessel, its relating piece shadowing the shape of the vessel entirely, rather than having some small similarity, like the circular opening in Yellow Cube Dark Vessel. The alien piece is very finished on the top and sides, but the bottom references the vessel textures, created by free-throwing the slab. I think the color of the relating/alien shape still will be different, though.

6/15
detail, Squared Fleetingly

This piece brings together an older work, Offshore, and my viewing of Roskovsky's The Swimmer, from an exhibition at the Dayton Art Institute. The result is less conflicted than Offshore, with its cool (sad?) colors of the moment contrasting with the warmer hues of play and Time. In Squared Fleetingly, there is more warmth and personality (the person is flesh and blood rather than a shadowed silhouette). Still, it is but a moment, and the stairs suggest something.

7/6  Shadows Not Socratic started with a drape of the covering wrap in blues. added in various subject matter that interested me, deciding on the dried leaf pieces on the spur of the moment. A charcoal line was made and knocked out a bit. Then the yellow bottom, which was to be just the first glaze looked so good, and changed the tenor of the piece, that I kept it. About two repaints of the leaf shape and 5 glazes on the curtain (at first, wasn't sure what that area would be, separate, harmonious other angle), and the piece seemed right in its tensions and beauty.

7/14
Glazed another "suspended" piece, related to Yellow Cube Dark Vessel (5/27). I was going to do six or more of these, but pneumonia and blood clots got in the way. Also glazed two other ceramic objects that are about shape, opening, and texture dialogs, which might have been lower pieces in the series.

8/5
Continue to re-work I Sat and Wept, adding some "events" to what had been the empty, suggested squares in the bottom, white area. Makes the whole idea better, having some quanta in the flow.

8/19 
Landscapes archival computer print This one worked much more smoothly at the beginning than usual. I picked out the images I wanted to work with, as usual. This time, instead of sandwiching them all and finding the focus, as I put them in, one by one, I sensed where they belonged. Some suggested changes in what had gone on prior. The piece deepened and deepened. Then, it took three days to "touch up." The first small touches I made screwed up the whole feel, but led to a new aspect in one area. Did that, then touched up areas that now didn't make sense. The intrusion from the right of the man's chair now didn't work, so I cut it way down. The angles suggested extending the corner of the door into a previous transparent area. There were a few other things, like getting the hint/irridescence of the trees right. Eventually, it has worked, though. One of the better flows.

8/24/2011 
Sidelong pastel 14 x 11 Sometimes, something at the edge of a glance leads to new being.

9/7/2011 
Finished I Sat and Wept, acrylic & collage, 36x48 Quite a path, this one: Beautiful Questions (3/12/2008) > Essay (4/8/2008) >Bring It (5/12/2008) > Coursings (6/4-19> Coursings Lattice (8/24/2010) > I Sat and Wept (12/17/2010) > I Sat and Wept (9/7/2011)

From talking with others about the piece, from submerging it in the deepest part of my mind, and from the force of time, I finally realized that it was too much a painter's, a philosopher's painting. The quanta ordering underlying the perceptions of life was in the paint, but no clue was even distantly available to the viewer. So, the problem was, how can I add to the clarity of the painting without it becoming an illustration, or the new aspects superficially laid on?

Seeing a square formation in some branches outside my house was the starting point. I put that in one of the discrete "event boxes" that were in the bottom of the piece as a clue. These branches were the randomness and necessity of nature "seen" by mind as a square.

From then on, similar events popped into mind over the course of several weeks. I like the rhythm these events set up, and the personal incidents they represent. Some joyful, some anxious—all a realization of the full, passing moment.
detail, lower left detail, lower right

 

10/12/2011 
Fragments Presently inspired itself. Seeing the round particle board in the garage as I was cleaning it out gave me an idea to do a rondo. The various fragments of wood were a new way of seeing chaos/cosmos, a theme of my work. I had just been been painting a ceramic with iridescent acrylic, a rare use of that paint; now, it seemed right, it's evanescence creating tension with the humble hunks of wood.

The first several coats (of blue, then iridescent glaze) didn't excite me. By adding and blending white, things got interesting. The dividing line between the white and blue moved from horizontal to vertical. The edge hole (something breaking into the system) was just too subtle, so it became "light," yellow. I began picking out images that I liked from my sketches, and placed them in the piece, one (the stone) even on plastic, yet another layer. The composition became bold, triangles arc and overlap, generating motion in the rondo. The empty spot generates a feel of motion, something have been there, but rotating away, like a constellation in the night sky.

All this is somewhat different and somewhat similar to previous work. I'll have to see where it leads.

1/11/2011  Core archival computer print
So many source objects here, from a clay “self portrait” that exploded in the kiln around 1975, to a photo I took accidentally in New York last week. That photo was the “click” that gave final directions to the compositions that I had been working on for a week or so.

12/23/2011 Triptych of Sorts, Collage, 22x28 in.
Made for Tara Palmerton-Jacula. We swap material from which each makes a collage. I pulled out some key stuff, got the idea for open and closing, refined the idea with more stuff and arrangement. My idea of Tara.

2012

1/2/2012 Sorted Partly, ink on paper, 18 x 24 in
From the beginning, I planned on taking the piece I made for Tara Palmerton-Jacula, Triptych of Sorts, and turning it into something of my idea of myself/life. Sometimes artists doing such things make a hash of Art. I don’t know if my Form and Content are esthetic, but I like the connections, associations, and progress that come from the composition(s) colors, shapes, and metaphors.

1/13/2012
Not the Mona Lisa, but still a smile. This self portrait is going on the figure in the painting, Inputs, which may be half finished or so, an acrylic, 36 x 48 in.

Self Portrait, pencil on paper, 12 x 9 in. Inputs (unfinished)

 

3/1/2012 
Multipliers started when I saw an image of Pandora’s Cluster that showed both matter and dark matter. As I was pulling things together, for the figure I reached all the way back to a litho I’d made in graduate school, Figure Yesterday: 

How far from then, and how close.

3/24/2012
The heart operation slowed art-making. Recuperating in Mexico, a sketch of an idea
turned into a print
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4/25/2012 Finished Yellow Dialectic. 
One of the pieces I was working on in open studio, before health complications. The first one, Yellow Cube Dark Vessel (5/27/2011), I finished months ago, and, after removing two of the four steel supporting pins, liked a lot. It is in the Lakeside Gallery West exhibit, and was singled out for compliment by Leah Balsham.

Yellow Dialectic is a re-do of Transitions (9/28/2011), which I liked except for most of it.
The red oxide showed the texture wonderfully, but that wonderful area didn’t work visually nor conceptually. Now, the transitions are better, just jarring enough. 

4/25/2012 Finished Thoughts Upon Her Death. 
I wrestled with this from the beginning, the start, a what-the-hell brush stroke with small counter strokes, combined with two deliberate vertical strokes, never sparked. Then I thought, “thought, with reality poking through;” and laid in several layers of iridescent blue ground, followed by pure iridescent medium, partially wiped back from the free stroke. Nope.

When Blanca died, I got a whiff of an idea: that she was the free stroke, or, rather, her spirit was, and that a “shroud” could not contain it. So, I kicked up the intensity of the stroke a bit, and started working on the shroud-like area, white, heavy strokes. Then, I thought of how things may or may not be part of grander existences, and painted a gray-green line off the ends of all three main areas and grid lines emanating from that. More iridescence, building up the more deliberate strokes, and finally adding some penciled-in transience (bird and shadow on one, horizon on the other)–and it was finally finished.

5/9/2012
Finished The State of Being   Whatever the hell it means.

 

 

 

5/12/2012 Finished Actualities and Configurations  Started out with the first sketch I did on my iPad, of a woman reclining at poolside. I like the dimensions that suggested themselves from the woman’s thinking--very fertile ground for developing.

6/23 Been recuperating from an operation. Started the book project “Narrative,”
working on the box (“Flow and Pauses”),
and a painting with a background of rectangles swinging upwards towards the right, an iridescent disk, lower legs of two people, and a landscape from scrap paint and paper.

7/10/2012 The box (entry above) has been glued, some changes in scale made; now have to put glass on and paint exterior.
<== Click on the image. A new window or tab will open.
Narrative” is up to ten spreads.

The painting has gone off the rails, the many glazes not working at all as a color, although the shapes and idea still grab me. So, I’ve started to impasto white over the shapes.

7/11/2012 Finished interior of Flow and Pauses Box, assemblage, ca 16 x 14 in.  Personal time and Time. The composition(s) are enjoyably complex.

8/11/2012 Finished Some Continue That Last Day, archival computer print. 

9/16/2012 Finished Templates, archival computer print. 

11/5/2012 Finished It Must Mean Something, acrylic, oil, pencil on canvas, 36 x 48 in. 

11/9/2012 Finished With Conversing I Forget All Time, archival computer print.

11/11/2012 Finished Travels, archival computer print.

11/13/2012 Started Better Angels from a pic I took last night of Jurgis’ Daugvilla’s questioning angel and one this morning of a corner with skylight falling on it.

11/14/2012

On way to the studio this morning I was thinking about what might go with Better Angels I saw a yellow tractor by the side of the road, and it came to me that something yellow might go. Then I looked up, and saw contrails in the sky, and thought a sky might make a great layer. So, I was looking forward to coming back from the studio, and playing with the various ideas and layers.

Then, walking into the studio, I thought “why not start a study playing with a yellow on the right, which might cross-feed into Better Angels?" Then when I saw a part of the print Noche Mexicana with a dancer in front of a lit nighttime street, THAT struck me as a great place to start. THEN, that very section of the print popped into mind as a great addition to the painting Tentative that I had started. I did a study using the dancer, then pasted the print image (it was a proof, on rag paper) into Tentative. A good morning

 Noche Mexicana dancer

Study: Passing Moments, oil and collage, 14 x 11 in.

 

Tentative stage 2, acrylic 30 x 20 in Tentative stage 3

Better Angels, stage 2, computer

11/20  Better Angels, computer Finished Better Angels, changing some contrasts and integrating the dancer’s clouds. I like the announcement of the sad, joyful, and cosmos. Worked on Tentative, adding cave painting colors to the celebrating flutist, and deciding against going dark indigo with the shadowed figures. Especially with the underpainting showing through, the feeling of transient shadowness is better expressed in the painterly manner of the underpainting.

11/30
Tentative, acrylic and collage on canvas, 24 x 20 in
Finished Tentative Worked a bit on Celebration. It had started with the flute figure at the bottom, in the middle. Got the idea to grid it. But today, that looked awkward. Turned upside down, and am destroying the obvious grid, planning on letting some hints show through.

12/5/2012
Celebration is turning into being about appearing-eroding-disappearing. Was going to have the cave-painting flute player might move to the left, with the black panther gazing at him. Now however, I liked the left un-wiped-out. So......? Still like the player’s celebration. Maybe top left?

 

 

12/11/2012 
Person in Eden manipulated photo, size variable was made from a photo I had taken in Edens Park Cincinnati when I'd organized a Happening. I had solarized the photo to catch the spirit: 

As a young man, this was probably acceptable, but when I recently came across it, I got an idea for creating something with a bit more depth. The original dark jumble became a focus on a central figure, with the box behind her becoming a drawing board possibly. And she's me, possibly. Art periods the world, and the artist's "ordering" are part of this.

 

 

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