A Room to Draw: March 2011

The past weeks have been productive for me in terms of building a library of images, an archive of marks, gestures, shapes and colors. That these images made by me are a facade, however, is clear to me. There language is naturally borrowed from other image makers, remembered and painted from my own memories of materials and patterns, some inventing takes place as well. But like I say, in making them I can hear the water slosh behind a wall, a wall that I feel with my hands in the dark... there is something behind all this making, and I am tempted to think about it with my mind. Yet I know this is a trap (or is it?). It is best to think about this dam of images through making, thinking will make the wall stronger, guide me further away, and it will take a longer time to work my way around again...

I was looking at a celebrity image yesterday, and said out loud, "What if everyone's looking, everyone's vision, erodes her?" I was slightly fearful as I spoke. There are a few instances in which I can think that vision has this sort of occult/metaphysical power. One is narrated in "To Kill a Mocking Bird." I don't have the book in front of me to quote from, but the said section described the possibility of a tree catching fire if a mob stared at it long enough with that intent(?).

What about images of natural disaster on television, and the "viewer fatigue" that usually results. Isn't that a way of destroying the concept of an event via vision... Not to say, that I am not indebted to journalists for archiving and conveying happenings.

With the images of the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, the word 'incoherent' ironically takes shape. In 1951 Adorno wrote famously that, "Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." That was WW2, and strangely Japan's government said that the tsunami that has hit their country is the worst tragedy that Japan will have dealt with since WW2 (the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The images seem impossible, as if nature curated a free-installation (like free-wrting) of civilization. My heart goes out to all those affected in the tragedy.

My family and friends ask me what I am making images about, how I start, what it all means. I believe I am privileged to free-make (again like free-writing) presently. I imagine I hardly take a small percentage's worth advantage of that. I should like to forget more, make more, meditate more.

A box of books arrived for me today. I bought them from my good friend Al Brilliant's book store in Glenwood, Greensboro. It includes Al's Bike Journal (part 2 in his journal series), a Unicorn Journal his wife Teo Savory edited and he published the fall of 1968, a book of Eva Hesse's drawing, Picasso's work, and Joseph Cornell's work. I am very excited! I sent Al some of the images I have been working with. He liked them and connected the use of color to music. I have been meaning to write and re-see Klee's work, as well as Kandinsky's. I have always loved their work, which is often connected to musicality. Of course I needn't go quite that far back in history to find inspiring images. The blog (standard) Interview posts interviews by some very interesting image makers. I am particularly struck by how all of them seem to like the triangle... I can't blame them as I am drawn to it equally.

Now it is time to paint.