Merlin Carpenter

I saw this painting online in the past couple of days.  I wondered what kind of a presence it might have if I was in the same room with it.  I pondered this because it seemed so one note, so obvious.  Not too far from the sort of petulant thing that seems to be popular at art fairs.  I wondered if I was missing something.  I never expected to see it since Merlin Carpenter is an artist who is shown more in Europe.  Then this morning I walked into  LA MOCA ( Museum Of Contemporary Art Los Angeles ) and there it was in the recent acquisitions.  It really does look like a lot more of a painting in person.  It's really well painted.  Seeing it in a gallery changed the nature of the text, it seemed like a lot less of a one liner and more just a sampling of something obnoxious that someone else said.  Not that that is something one might not conclude from a reproduction but just that way it was painted made it more convincing when standing right in front of it.

Recent Paintings And Drawings

This is a kind of painting I wanted to make where I could explore form and space and colour.  Although I think I left colour aside to a large degree even when it does appear I was still more concerned with the form and the blocking in of space with the grid lines.  I thought the crisscrossing of lines might be a good way of filling in space and creating a good optical effect. I practiced and explored it a bit but began to feel like I was getting locked into something that was just not close enough to what I wanted.  I think it shows they never really came together.  It just didn't feel right, but they are quite recent and I do like where the basic inspiration was coming from.  It makes me think of Keith Richards talking about other musicians trying to play his music and really struggling not understanding that he uses open G tuning. I think about that a bit just finding something that fits right and feels right and then you can really make something great.

Assemblage

There are certain things you only see on a screen.  I feel like a detonator is one of those things for me.  That's not the particular reason I assembled the above but it's something I thought about while I was making them.  Also how film and T.V. acclimatize you to certain things and that in turn plays a role in your acceptance of those things.  I grew up on Reagan era action films and I still like them but I do wonder how much they shape views towards military action.

Mental Physiognomy

Physiognomy (from the Gk. physis meaning 'nature' and gnomon meaning 'judge' or 'interpreter') is the assessment of a person's character or personality from his outer appearance, especially the face. The term physiognomy can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object or terrain, without reference to its implied characteristics

The Legend of Bigfoot.

Dore Ashton's wonderful essay The Physiognomy of the Mind

Phillip Guston  at The Los Angeles County Museum 

Various Small Paintings

Here are some paintings I made over the course of the last six months.  My main goal was just to have little more flexibility in terms of exploring ideas and different ways of painting them.  I find that I often get frustrated by getting bogged down on idea that not only may not be working in of itself but even if it was is also exclusionary to the other elements I hope my work will have or that I feel I should be pursuing. It's just easy to go down a path that does not seem to be the right one.  I go back and forth between various methods and approaches of painting.  I think there is an editing process that just has to happen.  I don't think I can just consciously decide I will paint one way or the other.  Nearly all of these are ideas and fragments for paintings I was thinking about on a larger scale.

Daniel Richter's Paintings

I went to see Daniel Richters paintings at Regen Projects.  He is an artist I have grown to like more and more. I think I saw a reproduction of his work about five years ago and have always been curious to see his work in person. I did like the show but while I was looking at his painting up close I couldn't help but feel there was a degree of production perhaps something even mannered in the work.  This is something I think about a bit.  It's not something that I am sure about but I can't help but feel a certain touch enters the work and begins to become a liability for the artist and something they need to get around to avoid that produced feeling the work can have.  It almost as though the work lacks it's own necessity and so certain effects and techniques begin to seem like they have been added in without real reason. Or maybe it just seems too crafted for my taste.  I feel like that happens with a lot of older artists with established styles and interests.  It's hard to tell with Richter though because I have never seen his earlier work in person and all those effects and techniques are such an integral part of the work.  He is definitely an artist I have found interesting and it was pretty cool to see his paintings.  I think I like their garishness and volume and I really like they way they are composed and drawn especially in contrast to Pete Doig who favors a more planned and choreographed kind of painting.  You can see more at  www.regenprojects.com/current/

Volcano

I have been painting a lot of small abstract paintings lately and I am also noticing how I always seem to going through phases of a certain kind.  Recently it's volcanos that's the first thing that was on the Geography course in school.  I just remember the blackboard diagram drawings and getting to make my own crude drawings with a lot of orange and black. Anyway I was thinking of aerial photographs in a very approximate way. It also looks like an eye.  I painted it today.

Paintings

Here are some paintings from a series I spent a good amount of time and effort on.  I stopped painting them this time last year.  I don't think they are very good.  They where the more successful in terms of being finished things that showed some level of ability.  In the end I did not get what I had hoped and they just never really came together.  I thought they might open up a bit but in fact the reverse happened and it became recessive.  Also in terms of how people viewed them I don't think I succeeded especially when people would ask me who the people of the faces where I always just meant them to be motifs or stand ins just a functioning part of the painting.  And the awkward composition just seemed to be something people didn't appreciate and that was my favorite thing about them.  I think I learned something from them.

Here are some more that preceded the above.

Welcome!

Welcome to Droge CX 9 named after the opening song on the soundtrack to Vampyros Lesbos conducted and written by Manfred Hubler and Siegfried Schwab. Here I hope to share my interests in music, painting and film as well as my own creative efforts.

I thought I would start with ten images I took with my camera from various movies I have enjoyed.