Moonblog 2022

Pluvia #14

This painting lurks elsewhere on the website in the section called “Pluvia”. Pluvia is the Latin word for rain. I did lots of these in a burst a few years ago. They're small paintings done quickly with lots of frantic wiping and spraying. They're acrylic on prepared cotton muslin. They still yield things for me to look at and be pleased. I guess that's one of the big pleasures of “being an artist”. I put that in quotation marks because being an artist is a strange and possibly modern designation. Really, I was just wiping paint around and having a good time!

New Moon ~ October 26th, 2022

WormWorks

This is a photograph of worm or insect tracings under tree bark. I noticed this yesterday while I was stacking firewood for the winter. I have no idea how these creatures are able to trace these designs so precisely, especially in total darkness. This reminds me of certain kinds of art activity based on tuning into something quite other than “expression”, creating reality rather than saying something about reality. Whatever reality is.

Full Moon ~ October 9th, 2022

Brume

A small watercolor of fog in the mountains of southern Colorado. Fog here is actually being in the clouds, a condition I love. The word brume means mist or fog. This is a small and very quick watercolor. Sometimes these things look better on a screen, perhaps because the medium of watercolor is transparent; a screen lit from behind complements the effect. The music piece below is also called Brume.

New Moon ~ September 25th, 2022

Silver Cup

Here's a painting of a silver cup. I may have mentioned elsewhere that a painting in progress is often far more interesting than when it is “finished”. Here's a good example. I stopped working on this a few years ago, probably interrupted by the busyness of life. Then retiring, moving, and the rest of it. The painting was intelligently hiding from me, worried that I might try to “improve” it. It's a good thing, too; I like it just the way it is. To my eye it has just the right amount of information, and the colors surprise me. It's acrylic on canvas 20 x 22 inches.

New Moon ~ August 27th, 2022

B-25 Detail

I was recently moving some things around in the studio, which included the partial disassembly of a large, nine-panel painting of a World War II B-25 bomber (known popularly as the Mitchell bomber). The painting is a work in progress on a surface started some time in 2003. When I caught a glimpse of these three panels they looked complete, at least for the moment. So here you are. It's all part of learning to avoid being stuck on a particular outcome, in this case that the painting should be completed as a nine-panel job. Perhaps it will but at this stage it holds its own as three.

New Moon ~ June 28th, 2022

Mist Lifting

I've lately been painting in watercolor again, something I've flirted with off and on for about sixty years. One experience that intrigues me and that only seems to come by a grace I don't understand, is an effortless coalescence of the painting's subject and the paint itself. The experience is one of feeling led by the paint rather than the other way around. The subject of this painting was a sudden lifting of a dense mist following an unusually late snow storm in May. A strong breeze came up sending wisps of cloud scurrying. The snow had quickly melted and the greening of spring was already well under way. It all played out in a matter of minutes and was quite unlike anything we'd seen here at Mountain Water in many years. The painting above was from a phone photo and a fortunate coincidence of recalling the physical sensation of seeing the event. And this does seem to occur by a grace I have yet to understand.

New Moon ~ May 30th, 2022

May Day

I ran across this small watercolor a few days ago. It's from a classroom demonstration of proliferation, an exercise in producing a large number of paintings in an unreasonably short time, say, fifty watercolors in three hours. This doesn't leave any room for hesitation or perfectionist indulgences. Try it some time!

Let's call this one MayDay not only because tomorrow is May Day but because “May Day” is an internationally recognized distress signal. I just read that May Day as a signal of distress comes from the French m'aider, which sounds like mayday; it means “help me”. This is the world speaking.

New Moon ~ April 30th, 2022

Atom & Eave

This is a diptych assembled for the occasion of this moment. It's part of an experiment to draw people in motion in real time. One of the pleasures of teaching drawing classes at Naropa was the various experiments of drawing each other. A class full of people drawing one another has another gratifying effect: we actually see others in a way that becomes reflexively sympathetic. The drawings here are done “on the fly”: look at a nose and draw it; look at an eyebrown and draw it; look at a lip and draw it – all without being overly concerned with its relative location. This does require suspending any kind of judgement about how its going. Try this some time, it's a lot of fun.

New Moon ~ April Fools Day, 2022

Heading

I dusted off my watercolor box this week. It's been lying fallow for way too long. To get myself started I cooked up some imaginary seascapes. I suppose these reside somewhere in my memories of Ireland. Some of them may even be genetic memories, who knows?

While I'm writing this the country of Ukraine is under bombardment and seige directed by a ruthless neighbor guided by his own delusions of grandeur. The name Putin could be a shortened form of Rasputin, the infamous Russian “monk” from the early twentieth century whose own delusions of grandeur and skills of manipulation in the halls of power brought about havoc until he was finally assassinated. This green seascape was painted while witnessing in real time the terrible mechanized destruction in Ukraine meeting the riveting display of bravery and resistance of the Ukrainian people. It's a strange dissonance that I'm moving pools of colored water in a peaceful mountain valley while half a world away a whole country is thrown into mayhem and destruction.

New Moon ~ March 2nd, 2022

ChanceOps #430

This one came out during a printing blast a year or so ago. ChanceOps is short for chance operations, a mode of working that might be described as a form of play; you set up some conditions and then let the materials do what they will. This batch is full of surprises for me. I sometimes see specific imagery, sometimes not. The color scheme reminds me of etchings from many centuries ago in Europe. But etchings of what? It's a relief not to know for sure.

Full Moon ~ February 16th, 2022

Grid Portrait Copy

I've been intriqued by the use of a grid for many years. I've mentioned elsewhere that an art teacher visited our fifth grade class and showed us how to use grids to make copies of any image. The method amazed me then and it still amazes me more than sixty years later. The image you see here combines the grid idea with another practice: working very quickly. The original image is from one of the many hundreds of art books we have at Mountain Water. I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know the source drawing or who did it. Oh, well. At the time I did this, which would have been several years ago while teaching a class; I was trying to complete many drawings in one session of about two hours. Each drawing took about two minutes. It was an awful lot of fun in spite of the fairly high failure rate. Looking at these again today gives me a needed prod to get back into the studio.

New Moon ~ February 1st, 2022

Dragonfly Book mockup

I ran across this image recently in a sketchbook from a few years ago. It's a mockup that I photo-collaged in preparation for a painting. I like the series of paintings from that time - five or six years ago - and I'm only now giving any appreciation for the mockups. The tattered book page is an actual canvas made to look like a book that had seem some history. And quite a large book, I might add; it's 36 x 53 in.

Full Moon ~ January 17th, 2022

Wing Tracks (photo)

This is a photograph of fresh snow with the wing tracks of a small bird taking off. Coming upon things like this is one of the benefits of living in a remote place where the subtle workings of things aren't immediately trampled and shouted down by the din of human folly. Oh I suppose birds have their follies, too. And they can make quite a din when they see fit. I have noticed that crows seem to be unable to leave each other alone while flying. They dive-bomb, chase and harrass each other in what seems to be great, naughty fun. Probably unfair to call that folly. We did get a nice snow last night,  best in a while. 

New Moon ~ January 2nd, 2022