PORTRAITURE
Painting a portrait is an exercise in finding-out the essential self – the self occupying a body, several bodies, in context and waiting to be known.
The part of the process that uses a machine, even your own machine, to produce an outcome is not The Art. The part that transcends machinery is The Art
Consolidated sentence. Compressed sentence. What a beautiful thing emerges. Like this one: “Those messy edges are not sloppy. Glow.” Perfectly revealing consolidated compression.
If the history of art tells us anything useful, it may be that whether a piece is “good” or not is entirely irrelevant.
Apply color. Posit Color. Get the color out there and see what it does.
In-process, Writing requires more immediate intellection than Painting, I think. Though perhaps this is just a discipline problem.
Anybody can do that; only I can do this.
I typically undo verbatim portraits – especially if they are done in charcoal. Rarely does the verbatim portrait say “leave me alone… I am good as is.”
The emergence of my artwork sometimes begins with a precise representation – usually close to photorealism – which I then start to push apart. The trajectory moves through a breakdown of the precise surface representation and has as its motivation something internal. The idea comes from a source, the source, and is informed by intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physiological/somatic intelligence. What is real for me is the upwelling understanding from the submerged aquifer.
I know what my job is as an artist. It is to penetrate into the unknown. That has been made clear to me. A lot of people, including some parts of my self, don’t like that kind of indulgence. The think it is sloppy, a distraction, emotional, sentimental, not real, not grounded in real things. For me, this job could not be more real. Though, to appease all of us, I do, at intervals, build photoreal things. To help maintain a firm footing, I suppose. Believe me there are consequences. A lot has been broken. It is my job. I love my job.
When a figure comes to me, it is like it or she or he punctures a membrane and tantalizes. The figure wants me to lure it into my world. Sometimes they are exuberant and willing. Sometimes they are shy and reluctant. Sometimes they are laughing at me behind a black fluttering curtain and won’t give me a scintilla of satisfaction.
Art is not for posterity. Art is not for later. Art is for now. Art is for Infinity.
My artistic expression necessarily challenges the surface challenges the medium challenges the color even beyond its capacity.
In this painting or maybe that one, I use paper because it WILL buckle (in upon itself).
Once the idea is posited and the surface is collected and placed, the color is first. The color is the way through.
I chose the surface that violates itself. Not the one that stays true.
Art is bullshit. I am a chimpanzee slinging feces.
Random painting – that’s how I understand my tools.
When it comes to some other discourse and discipline, the unlearned easily defer to the learned – financial, academic, artisanal, epicurean (even), etc. (ad nauseum). When it comes to artwork, everyone is an expert by birth(right) it seems. How often have we heard – wow that’s art! I could paint that. It is as it should be I suppose. But, it pisses me off.
I have spent my enter life becoming an artist – from the moment I remember and from before that even. I have expended my life with this addiction. What melodrama. I think I succeed and then I fail. The process is fundamentally erotic. Replete with moments of ecstasies and relief but always followed and moved forward by disappointment.
© BrightPort Fine Arts & Literature 