Out of a hole

Works in progress 8.18.23

    

    I got around to making some base layers on some new 9" x 12" panels that I purchased recently. These are going to be more pieces that will be included in my "Soft Poems" series that I've been developing. Most feature some iteration of the glyphs, along with other marks, amid translucent layers of matte gel. I'm hoping to make a lot of these and have at least twenty available to show at my next solo exhibition. 

    I wasn't going to come to the studio today. This morning, I was feeling the weight of this week in a real way. It was mostly thinking about mistakes I've made around the business side of my art practice and some things around my work itself, especially some of the newer things that I'm exploring. It's always like this when I'm working in an unfamiliar creative space that I'm also attempting to develop into something more than experiments. The mistakes I referred to was me trying to figure out what to do about the internal dialogue I was allowing to go around in my head. The good thing is that I'm at a point in my life where I'm not comparing what's happening now with how I dealt with similar things years ago. I'm not wallowing in a negativity loop like I used to do in my 20s. I've made great strides with being kinder with myself and better about moving towards solutions. 

    Regardless, as a human being, you'll feel things. It's better to give that stuff a little space and move on, rather than remaining stuck there and not making room for taking steps to remedy whatever bad choices were made in the past. It's hard, sometimes and I have to be intentional about moving myself out of a down space to a less down space in my mind. The "less-down" thing for me to do was to come to the studio, even if it was much later than I would have liked and I wasn't going to have the usual time to be here. I made it work and moved these new pieces forward. The next time i come in, I'll be able to do so much more, now. Making the choice to come here regardless of how I was feeling was the win.

TM

  

 

Enter the void(s)

     Going into the void(s). I'm about to break out the old goth clothes, paint the walls black and throw on some Bauhaus for good measure, haha! Ok, so the most I'll probably do is listen to some Bauhaus since it's been a moment. These are actually just the starting point for new paintings. The reason I'm giving this any special attention is that I almost NEVER start a painting with a dark background; I've insisted on beginning almost every work with a white or light background. It's mostly out of habit, really. I generally like lighter backgrounds because of how they can affect the subsequent layers. I start off thinking about light and transparency in the colors, however, considering that there is an overall opaqueness by the time I'm done, it almost never makes that much of a difference. 

    Dark backgrounds like these are going to definitely change how I think about and use color in these paintings. I'm excited to see how I navigate my color choices, range of hue, transparency/opaqueness and compositional choices along the way. I'll let you know how it turns out once I've gone through the process a bit. Should be fun. 

    

    On another note, I was saddened to hear of the passing of painter Brice Marden last week. Marden's work was a big influence for me early on as a student. His early work contributed to my understanding of how subtle color can be used in a minimalist way to make a big impact on the senses. Marden's sensitivity to color and how he used it at scale really drew me in. The lyricism of his subsequent works continued to draw me in over the years. He was a true contemporary master and leaves an amazing body of work. 

TM

Music in the air

Works in progress, studio, 8.11.23

    Had a most productive day in the studio yesterday, partially finishing up with prepping several new canvases and working on three new small works on panels and canvas. Before I started, I was easing into the session, trying to figure out what I wanted to listen to and whether I wanted to listen to anything at all. I was noodling around on YouTube, seeing what I may have missed while I was away recently. After refreshing my home page a couple of times, I saw a video for the latest song from Fever Ray (Karin Dreijer), a musician that I became aware of back in 2009 or so. I remember at that time seeing a video of her's for a song called When I Grow Up, and really responded to the music, vocals and the aesthetics of the video. I didn't keep up with Fever Ray much past that, but was curious to see where they were now creatively. The new song, "North", is every bit as haunting and beautiful as I remember of her earlier work. 

    Well, I went down a rabbit hole and watched a few other videos from FR before discovering The Knife, a band that she had with brother, Olof. I don't know how to describe the music of The Knife, but I can say that it's highly addictive and energetic, based on this concert video that helped amp up my own energy in the studio yesterday: The Knife-Live at Terminal 5 (2014). Check it out, I hope it gives you the boost that it gave me!

    Another band that got me through the day was Young Fathers, a band out of Scotland that I found out about sometime last year. YF is another band that's unique in their approach to musicianship, blending aspects of hip hop, rock, afrobeat and more. To a certain extent, they remind me of TV On The Radio. Check out the concert video here: Young Fathers live at Best Kept Secret 2023. Lastly, again going down another rabbit hole, I found Son Lux, a new-to-me band that caught my attention after listening to the former couple of concerts. Son Lux, not sure how to position their sound, but watch them here and see for yourself: Son Lux live at AB-Acienne Belgique. 

    Watching and listening to these concert videos definitely raised the energy in the studio around the rather mundane task of painting the edges of five newly stretched canvases, waiting for them to dry and working on other pieces in between. Working on the other pieces wasn't mundane, but you get the point. It would be great to hear what you think about any of these videos or better yet, what gets you through some of the routine things that have to be done in the studio (organizing, preparing surfaces, etc...). Let me know in the comments below!

TM 

 

New wanderings (isn't this a given, now?)

Two new works on paper, 38" x 50" each

    I finished these two new works on paper a couple of days ago. They're an effort at seeing how some of my newish ideas might work out on a larger scale as paintings. I'm feeling confident about how some of this is turning out. If these were already paintings, I would have made them denser with imagery and pushed some of the formal relationships further. There would be more layers, for sure. As they stand, I'm feeling good about the way things seem to be developing. I particularly like how the one with the overlapping blue fields turned out. I won't be able to reproduce it as a painting, but I'm hoping to retain some aspect of the warm colors filtering through the cooler colors on top, if I choose to make a painting out of this idea. I feel like I'm getting closer to a name for these hard-edged, yet flexible forms I'm using. I'm also doing some related research that I hope will help my tie together some conceptual ideas running around in my head. I'm heading towards a need to revamp my general artist statement and am trying to get enough information to formulate a more solid basis for this new direction. 

    Today started off with an early (for me) morning with jury duty. Of course I had too little sleep last night and have been a walking cloud of drowsiness all day. Anyway, I got to City Hall, went through the jury panel selection part, made it to a court room and was dismissed, thankfully. My jury summons had me reporting to City Hall instead of the Criminal Justice Building which almost always means that you're going to sit on a civil case, if chosen. I got lucky and had a high juror number, so the judge and lawyers in the case found their jurors well before my number would have been called. 

    So, I have my jury duty work "excuse" sheet. Since I work for myself, to whom do yell at for missing work time, even though I have a valid excuse? ;)

    Afterwards, I stopped by Artist & Craftsman Supply to pick up some canvas, gesso and a pack of six 9" x 12 panels. I'm in the middle of working on several small paintings begun earlier this week, but I'm thinking that this afternoon and evening will be a good time to stretch at least a couple of new larger canvases. 

TM

 

Vacation sketchbook

New sketches and other things seen while away recently

    Been back from a great ten day away from the everyday for a couple of days now. We returned to Holbox, Mexico for a second go-round. The ten day mark seems to be a good enough time to release the stress and pressures of everyday life and not feel like you still need more time. At least that's how it worked for me. Holbox is a barrier island on the Yucatán peninsula about 2 hours away from Cancún. No resorts, but small hotels, good food and lots of water to cool off in. Ten days of doing next to nothing but napping, reading, haivng a drink, swimming and doing more nothing is a great refresher. 

    Since I've noticed that I don't really do much in the way of art while away on vacation, I limited the amount of art materials to some colored pencils, graphite pencils and a sketchbook. No need to add unnecessary weight to my luggage with stuff I won't use. I let a couple of days go by before I felt like doing anything artistic, but once I started, it continued for a few days. My routine was to do some drawing before or after breakfast. That seemed to be the best time for me to get something done since the rest of the time I was in the water, napping, eating or reading. 

    I've been working on some new ideas for paintings for a few months now and that proved to be great fodder for continued low risk exploration in terms of materials and time. I took these mornings to think more deeply about what I wanted to do and how I might want to pursue this work. Just having the time to think without daily distractions was almost enough for me. The cell phone service was minimal on Holbox, so that automatically took away wasted time. I also made it a point to not be online as much as possible, which turned out pretty well. Anyway, the ability to just think and let my thoughts wander was a blessing. I've returned with a much more clear idea of what I'm attempting to bring into being now. There's considerable more work to do before I'll feel comfortable with what's to come, but there's so much room to just play with the ideas now having had this free time away from the regular routines. 

    We returned Thursday evening and yesterday, I spent some time in the afternoon at the studio working on a couple of 50" x 38" works on paper; one vertical, one horizontal. I'm trying to get a feel for how each of these configurations might work once I get to larger canvases and panels. There are going to have to be a bunch of adjustments because of the differences in supports and materials; colored pencil to paint, paper to canvas and wood. 

TM

    

     

Piles

 

Pile I, 2023, colored pencil on paper, 22" x 30"

Pile II, 2023, colored pencil on paper, 22" x 30"

    Summer's here and Philly's been a humid swamp this week. Thankfully, I have A/C in the studio and don't have to sweat it out. I've paid my dues over the years and am going to enjoy having air for as long as I can. 

    There are a bunch of works in progress in the studio, as always. In between working on some smaller paintings, I also made these two drawings that are part of a new series I'm calling 'Pile'. This idea literally just came to me one day this week as I was working on a painting that has an element of these interlocking triangles within a square of translucent red, seemingly hovering above and partially obscuring a layer of glyphs. My thought was, what would happen if I made a drawing of a bunch of these that filled a page? My only "rule" for these was that I wasn't going to start at any of the edges. Instead, I started with a singular form, within the page, just off center and built the rest of the composition around it. I wanted each form to be a different color as well. 

    So far, so good. The drawings are a nice change from the paintings in that they are pretty void of any considerations other than what color the next form will be and where to start drawing it. The act of drawing these is pretty relaxing, but also interesting in how the piece begins to take shape within the picture plane. That's the other "rule"; that the forms are to inhabit the boundaries of the paper and not seem to extend beyond it. 

    Within each of these drawings, there is an uncomfortable tension between the forms  because they feel like they don't appear to inhabit these spaces with any comfort; they seem to teeter on the edge of falling over. They also don't fit together comfortably. These would make near impossible puzzles. I'd like to make a bunch more piles and have some ideas for future drawings and maybe paintings.The work is changing in another big way and I hope that I can continue to explore this avenue into painting.

TM

Looking, thinking, digging deep...

Contemplating a new painting

      I like to say that at a certain point in the painting process, watching me work is like watching paint dry. At first, there's usually a lot quickish choices being made about color, form and placement. Then, once I've gotten over the usually annoying mid point of making the painting, there's a slowing of mark making and much more contemplation of what's in front of me. I have a habit of looking at my paintings from all sorts of odd angles at times. One of the most unconscious positions is turning my head sideways instead of the painting. I was taught long ago that you should rotate your paintings to see how they are working from different directions. The classic move is to turn it upside down. This is used as one way to determine how the painting is holding together compositionally. The point is that there is a lot of thinking going on when we're sitting or standing in front of a work. Even when I'm not in front of it, like at home or some place other than the studio, the work is on my mind. I'm mulling over possibilities of changes or placement of forms as I'm walking down the street. I'm trying out all sorts of compositional possibilities when I'm in the shower. I'm considering which new materials I could use as I'm washing dishes. The work is never ending, but I also love it this way. 

•

   Last week,  I found a couple of chairs in the hallway of the floor I'm on in the Crane Arts Building that someone didn't want any more. I took them in because they're softer and generally more comfortable than the hard molded plastic chairs I already have. They both have old thin leather covering the back and seat. The frames are made out of silver metal of some sort. I brought them into the studio, wiped them down and am enjoying having them. I still need to get a couch in there. Studio naps are essential not only to my well-being, but the well-being of the work. 

    Trying to push through sleepiness in the middle of the day or late afternoon is tough without a proper place to take a nap. I feel like a good hour to hour-and-a-half is a good period of time for a nap. They are so necessary for helping to keep my mind clear during the day. Taking time to nap is so beneficial for thinking. Art is really taxing mentally and physically sometimes. It's best to try and keep your mind sharp so that you don't go about making bad choices in the work. Well, bad choices happen regardless of napping or not, but the likelihood of them increasing is greater without resting a little during the day. 

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    I watched a "behind the scenes" video with Tom Cruise that's the beginning of the hype machine for the next installment of the "Mission Impossible" franchise. This one was interesting to see because it shows how much of a committed actor TC is. He is known for doing a lot of his own stunts and this video showed just how deep that commitment is. One of the big stunts is him riding a motocross bike off of a huge ramp, off the side of a cliff and then parachuting down into a ravine that's closed in on three sides with rock face. He trained on riding the motocross bike, practicing the jump, learning to parachute from a helicopter and even more than that. He did all of that and did those actions over and over and over again to get everything as right as possible to make an action sequence as believable as possible. Seeing that kind of dedication to honing just one part of his craft made me think about how much we as artists need to make sure that we're doing all that we can to keep ourselves educated, doing research and pouring as much as we can into the work that we do. Being persistent, consistent and risk-taking with your work habits in the studio and digging deep within to make the best work possible will pay off. Show up for yourself!

TM

 

Paintings being free

 (Detail :: work in progress)

    Online recently, I made a post that mentioned a shift that I feel is happening in the work. Yesterday, that feeling became even more clear to me. What's happening is that I need to take a break from making the dense, glyph-filled work that I've been doing for the past few years. The glyphs will still be in the work, but I'm kind of done with the denseness of mark making that's been going on for a while. Two recent paintings that I've worked on sealed that feeling for me. I was having a real struggle to complete them and couldn't figure out why until just this past weekend; I'm just tired of what I've been doing. These paintings feel heavy in a way that bugs me. Everything about the work feels heavy; the surfaces, the compositions even the colors, many of which are repeated in similar ways throughout recent paintings. The paintings are breathing laboriously at this point, wheezing even. It's funny how palpable the feeling of discomfort around this work has been for me lately. It literally weighs on me, almost oppressive to a certain degree. I feel the need to think about why this is a little deeper.

    Even as that revelation has become more clear to me, I've already begun making some paintings that are moving down a separate, but parallel track. I've been making some works on paper centered on these forms that are basically interconnected triangles. It's been something that I've played with off and on over time, but now I'm feeling more comfortable with how I might be able to put them to use. I'm hoping to create some different color and spatial relationships within the work where they behave somewhat similarly to the glyph paintings, but are completely different in execution and how they behave on the canvas or panel supports. 

    I can trace these new works back to some things I've done since 2013, but I haven't been able to figure out what they mean for me, yet. That's probably a good thing because they will define themselves over time. Compared to the various connected influences of the glyph paintings, these new works are very much their own thing. They exist outside of everything that I've been focusing on over the past seven or eight years. They are as alien to me as anything that we may call biological that might exist somewhere else out in space. They have a history for me, but I haven't been able to identify them, yet. They are resisting categorization, which is somewhat frustrating, but also very freeing. They aren't tethered to any kind of ready-made philosophies or uses. They insist on being what they are without outside intrusions of meanings. 

I'm perfectly fine with that. 

TM

"Evidence" install at The Shipley School

Above: Images of the works in Evidence and Tumbler being installed in the Speer Gallery last week

    

 It's been a week! I spent last Saturday installing nine paintings for my solo show, Evidence, at The Shipley School located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Months ago, I was contacted by Meredith Turner, Co-Chair of the Art Department/Speer Gallery at Shipley about the possibility of showing work there. We exchanged emails, but it took some time for her to get back to me due to a death in her family. Anyway, when we picked up the conversation again later in the summer, I was definitely ready to see what was on the table. I went for a visit between trips abroad, enjoyed meeting Meredith (meeting her again, I should say because we were students in the Department of Art and Art Education at Temple back in the 90's at the same time). 

    She showed me around and explained that her and another teacher there, Carol Royer, were co-chairs in the Art Department and for the gallery. Carol and I once shared a studio space back in the early 2000s in Old City, at 16-A North 3rd Street. Meredith explained that they had just taken over the running of the gallery and were looking to do some new things with it, liked my work and asked if I'd be willing to have a show there. She also mentioned that she was open to different ideas about how to use the gallery space, so I accepted right away. I had an inkling of what I wanted to do, but not a clear picture at that time. It became more fully formed as time passed after that initial meeting. 

    What I came up with was showing a number of recent paintings from 2020-2022 that hadn't been shown,yet, and making another site-specific wall installation. All of this I did last weekend and on Thursday and Friday of last week. The wall piece, like the past ones, is made up of drawings on paper, frosted mylar, silver mylar and clear acetate. The drawings are creased, folded, returned to their original shapes and then installed on the wall with no prior plan as to what will go where. All of that is figured out as I go along. The main part of this one, Tumbler, wound up being circular in form. I added two other parts on opposite walls and connected all three with colored rope extending from various points on the three walls. The gallery space is very vertical, so I wanted to take advantage of the ceiling height to make something that would cause the students and staff who traverse that area to experience that space in a radically different way than they usually do. 

    Like with other pieces like this, I was surprised that I was able to bring it all together over two days. The small amount of planning that went into this went a long way. As I mentioned above, none of how it turned out was planned; I only knew what materials I wanted to use and I wanted to place the various elements of the work. The reaction to it from staff and students has been very positive and I'm looking forward to talking about it more on the 17th, when I'm scheduled to give an artist talk. The reception is on the 18th. I sent out a studio newsletter announcing the show with details that I haven't posted on social media yet. I'm trying to get more subscribers because I'm attempting to give people more value with the newsletter and not post certain things online, or not posting online until much later. We'll see what happens. I don't  blame people for not wanting to sign up for another newsletter because I know we all have overflowing inboxes, but I'm still going to keep trying to expand this aspect of my marketing. It's been slow going in gaining new subscribers and I think I may have to add more incentives in the future, like giveaways of small drawings or something like that. 

TM

Slight Detour

Large drawing, Mon. 10.31.22

    Made three new large drawings yesterday, including the one above. I'm going to use them for the installation for my show at the Shipley School. I installed the paintings this past Saturday and will start work on the drawing installation Thursday. I already cut this one in half in anticipation of using the two parts in different places on the main wall. The ceiling is pretty high in the gallery space at Shipley, so I'm going to take advantage of that height and extend the wall installation to a couple of other spaces high up: one above the doors leading to the library and another one above paintings on the opposite wall from the main installation wall. I'm also planning on using some colorful rope that I bought the other day to visually connect the three areas. I'm really excited about this and can't wait to get started on Thursday. 

    For a while now, I've had this itch to experiment again with this geometric iconography in my work. It's origins go back to a 2013 painting titled, Everything Happens at Once, a black and white diptych that I showed at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in my show Presence in 2013. In that work, the surface was covered with the same triangular forms abutting each other but in a more compact configuration across two panels. In 2020, I returned to this idea in a few small, 11" x 14" panels I titled Shapeshifter. Those paintings had between two and three of these forms layered on top of one another, with different colors. Here, I'm attempting to keep it at one form over a background. I'll also probably make some with at least two forms above or next to each other, but not layered in my usual way. 

    It's kind of hard leaving just the one form on the page because my tendency is to create very dense compositions these days. I feel like scale is going to be really important for this work in order for it to have the impact it needs. Additionally, I feel that brushwork, different types of surface textures and color tension are going to be the things that will make this work at a larger scale since the plan is to let the forms live on one layer. I made a few drawings tonight and I'm letting those settle a bit before making the commitment to larger works. 

TM

It's complicated

Afternoon sun gliding over works in progress

Because I approach most of my paintings without much of a predetermined path, there can be a tendency to over complicate things. This situation is made worse when it feels like almost nothing is working within a painting; not the color, not the forms, not the composition, and on and on. That's where I was yesterday with one piece that I've been wrestling with for a while now. The colors, in particular, felt really off. Too much white mixed in, everything felt too pastel-like. I'd also covered most of a background color combo that I liked a lot. That part was made with spray paint, as well, so it set itself apart from my other marks, which I also liked. 

None of this is uncommon for me to think about considering some of my painting habits. Most of the time, I'm able to shrug it off, but once in a while things get too messy and out of control. The over complication of ideas and, really, the proliferation of ideas that I have can serve to derail any painting I make. I was in bed thinking about this last night and the only thing that kept coming up was "simplify". I often step away from what feels "simple" because in my mind a lot of the times, "simple" is equated to "too easily figured out". That's not the reality, but rather the story I've concocted in my head about my work. As soon as I acknowledged those thoughts, an image came to me of how I could possibly move forward with this painting. I'll find out today if I'm on the right track.

TM

Still going...

    Even though I haven't been posting here, things are happening. The last time I wrote, I was still on vacation, I think, ruminating about not having posted online in a bit. Since we've been back from Sardinia and Barcelona, I've resumed posting on IG, FB, LI and the bird app. Not in quite the same way as previously, but I'm definitely back on there more, something that I'm trying to balance a little more. I don't feel the way I did before the social media break, a good thing, I'd say. It's kind of funny, but I've embraced the making of reels and posting on Tik Tok. My feelings about reels before the break was that they really got in the way of how I make art, but thinking about it a little more and having made a few shorts, I'm a bit less high-minded about them and have been able to find my own way of dealing with them. 

    The I take a low effort approach to making reels, which isn't hard to do since the apps have everything you need, like music, effects, and all sorts of editing tools. I just make sure that I'm not doing anything to disrupt my studio flow. I already document my studio practice and other aspects of my life, so adopting to them hasn't been that hard. I'm not that interested in making a lot of "how-to" vids with voice-overs, but I will do a time-lapse that shows me making part of a drawing or painting, then switch to a view of the finished or near finished piece. I'm also just into making experimental shorts with whatever platform tools there are. 

    Painting has been going fairly well. I'm just a little annoyed with a couple of things that I've been doing, but I'm trying to gain an understanding of some of my habits, as well as take time to think through my frustrations. It's important to be as open and present as possible so that I allow for opportunities for solutions to come forth and I can accept them. 

TM

Housekeeping

I was supposed to be painting all day, but I finally reached the end of my rope with how the studio had been arranged for the past couple of years. There was also the annoyance of the cats using some paintings as a way to get up to the table on the far side. To finally thwart them and maintain my sanity, I took the room apart mentally and started figuring out the best new situation to go for. 

The main thing was to move the table from the middle of the room to closer to the far wall, as seen above. I took the paintings that had been against the wall and moved them into the closet area, giving me a little more floor space. A win/win. It's funny that doing this is coinciding with the coming of the new year tomorrow. Cleaning is a ritual for many at this time of the year, ushering in the new with a clean slate, of sorts. Doing this rearranging today made a big difference in my mood regarding the space. Even though I don't have more square footage, it feels renewed. 

I did get to paint this evening, after fixing something to eat for dinner. I have a 40" x 40" painting that's been on the wall for almost a week without me working on it. I slowed down a bit because of the holiday, but now I'm gearing back up for January. I spent Monday documenting some small works from this year that I'm sharing between Bridgette and Paris Texas LA. Yesterday, I sent a batch of images to both places to get things moving for the new year. I have a few larger pieces that I need to have photographed by someone else. I can handle smaller works, but my studio setup and equipment isn't favorable to taking photos of works above 16" x 20". 

Another change I made today has to do with the title of this blog. I was thinking about the former title, "Practice", while walking home and listening to an art-centered podcast, The Conversation Art Podcast. The particular pod I was listening to featured a conversation with a director at Lehman-Maupin Gallery in New York. The conversation included thoughts about the language of art, specifically, the language of art as filtered through academia. I thought about the use of the word 'practice', as it relates to studio work and realized that I had been uncertain about renaming my blog 'PRACTICE' for a while now. 

The main misgiving that I had about it revolved around the idea of practice when it comes to studio work. It doesn't feel right to equate what I do in the studio with "practice"; I'm doing the work, not practicing. I may be getting hung up on semantics, but in my head, there is a difference. Practice infers that an activity is being done in preparation for a bigger, more involved activity, not practicing. Doing the work is what happens in the studio. I mean, it's possible that this is just splitting hairs; that "Practice" and "Doing The Work" are the same thing. Perhaps, but I feel much more drawn to describing my time in (and out of) the studio as "Doing The Work". 

TM

Clap 'Cause It Feels Good

 

New work :: Clap ‘Cause It Feels Good, 2020, acrylic on panel, 14” x 11”

There’s no denying that the energy around us has been visceral this year. I can’t think of another word that fits so well. Sometimes, it felt as though our nerves were being stretched to their snapping point with stress, anger, anxiety and grief.

But then, we also found moments of hope, life and laughter amid the madness. Finding space to revel in the simplest of uplift; a dance, humor, making eye contact with strangers over masks hiding our smiles, but not the humanity in our eyes.

Clap ‘cause it feels good, that’s the only justification you need.

Stretched thin, holding too much

A new untitled work in the studio: 12" x 12", acrylic on panel

I've been making some new, small, non-objective paintings over the past week, of which the above is one. I'm returning to these connected, elongated forms that I started working with back in 2013 with paintings like Channel, which I showed in my solo show, Presence, at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery. I felt something about the forms and constructed spaces I used then, but, as has happened in the past, I felt that I couldn't really continue making paintings in the same way, even as I thought then that there was more to investigate. Instead, as how it happens often, I went down another road and set about exploring the glyph forms that I experimented with years ago (late '90s). So, here we are seven years down the line and I'm once again digging into the past and bringing something forward (art as time travel). 

The paintings I did in 2013 weren't about the body, but they spoke to the conditions of the body as being acted upon by external and internal forces. The main paintings I'm referring to measured 72" x 24", dimensions that a human form could fit into. I looked at these canvases more as mirrors reflecting a myriad of possibilities or incarnations for the human body. It's the human body being acted upon that's spearheading my latest investigations. The social upheavals of the past few years in the U.S. over the relentless and senseless killings of black and brown men, women and children by law enforcement and especially this year with the backdrop of the pandemic, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and white supremacy being enabled by the president (and followers) has been almost too much to bear. Combine that with the absolute criminal anti-Black and, frankly, anti-human policies of the president and the Republicans making each day a stressful unknown and you have a recipe for mental and physical breakdown. 

The trauma and stress that I have because of all of this is both physical and mental, internal and external. There are days when I feel like my mind is being stretched so thin that it might snap from attempting to comprehend all of the anger, hatred and outright criminal behavior coming from the GOP, the president and their followers, not to mention having to adapt to how rapidly things went bad. The new paintings are shaping up to be avatars for a lot of what I feel is going on within and around me. The forms within the paintings seem to contract and stretch against the boundaries of the panels at the same time, reflecting the conflicts I feel internally. 

So far, I've only been working on small paintings (12" x 12", 14" x 11"), getting a feel for how I may approach the subject matter on a larger scale. I feel like I'm in a good place with how things are progressing. I keep finding novel ways of dealing with a limited set of forms, and a limitless amount of potential colors to use. It's a good place to be. I'm pretty sure that I'll start working on the third five foot canvas I have here this week. I'm feeling pretty confident about handling the work on a larger scale, so I may as well get going on it. I have three, almost four, small panels completed and will have more done by the end of the week. 

I'm not abandoning the glyph work, but I am reassessing how I want to work with those forms and reconsidering the proper formats for them. I'm currently feeling like they work better on a smaller scale than, say the 60" square canvas I just finished today. I also think that they work better on panels or heavier paper instead of canvas. I'm looking into making some collages with paper and cardboard glued together instead of adhering the paper, etc... to another surface. There's a lot of work to get to this week. 

TM

The same and yet, different

In my studio: It's Not The Same You, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 60" s 60"

I've been letting this one sit for a while, although I mentioned it in my last post. It's a new 60" x 60" painting on canvas titled, "It's Not The Same You" (the title comes from a line in The Cure song, Labyrinth, that I happen to like a lot). This is the first large painting on canvas that I've attempted at my home studio in a while because, until a few weeks ago, I didn't have room to even think about making something of this size there. Most of my work in this space has been smaller and was being made in a former smallish bedroom that lacked adequate wall space for something this large. Most of the work that I've been making in-studio has been up to about 30-36" on the longer side. 

I realized a few months ago, that I was going to need more work space, but was stumped on how to make that happen. I don't have money to pay for an outside space, so I chose to convert the front room of the apartment into a work space in addition to the bedroom. I got rid of a couple of dressers and a bookcase, put plastic on the walls and floors, plus and additional layer of drop cloth on the floor. Now, I have a version of a studio that I've envisioned for a long time. I can make larger paintings like this and be able to step back at a decent distance to evaluate them. However, the only way that this is possible is because I've moved a good amount of my personal belongings into my girlfriend's home. Without that support, I would still be trying to figure out how to make this work. 

Over the past couple of years, I've been able to make large temporary murals and installation pieces, but they were either made on-site or in another space that could accommodate the scale of those pieces. Being able to return to stand-alone paintings on canvas of this scale has felt great and has also brought some of the usual challenges. From the start, this painting has felt like one that I had to get out of my system; it's a large scale amalgam of ideas that I've been working on in smaller contexts over the past four years or so. In the past, I've been fond of working on similar paintings at the same time, forming a series of sorts. My present feeling has me looking to break with the past by having more visible distance between some of the paintings. The glyph forms are the only thing that will carry over from one painting to the next. Some will have more of those forms and others will have fewer. For example, I've already begun painting a second 60" x 60" painting that will probably have little in common with this one, compositionally and colorwise, in the end; it has a shimmering black/purple background with a layer of gridded glyphs, so far. I've gathered a lot of new visual ideas these past few years and now I'm feeling comfortable exploring them more deeply on a one-on-one basis, and not rushing to make too similar paintings so much. 

TM

 

Thorough considerations

 Detail of a work in progress, September 2020

A few weeks ago, I purchased three 60" x 60" pre-stretched canvases made by *Fredrix. In the past, I would not have dared buy a pre-stretched canvas, preferring to stretch my own instead. Back then, and I'm talking about 15-20 years ago, store bought canvases were simply not well made at all. They were usually prone to warping and the quality of canvas, in addition to overall workmanship, was pretty bad. However, having worked at Artist & Craftsman for just over four years, I got to see and experience first hand the different kinds of quality of art materials that are out there. Seeing how well the Fredrix canvases were put together was great to see. The solidity and strength of the wood stretchers themselves won me over. That, and the fact that a very well-respected painter colleague of mine uses them for her work prompted me to try them out. 

Aside from the occasional temporary mural-sized pieces I've made over the past couple of years, I had not been making larger paintings of 60 inches plus for at least 6 years. All that changed this year  because of two things: needing larger sized works for some of Bridgette's clients and starting to work with a new gallery in Los Angeles called ParisTexas LA. Before this year, going back to 2013, I hadn't worked on canvas much at all, preferring birch panels, instead. For a lot of my work, I prefer the hardness of panels over canvas because the panels can take a lot of abuse from sanding and scraping. The flexibility of canvas is nice in it's own way, but I still prefer panels, overall. The only thing about panels that I don't like is the propensity to warp above a certain size and they tend to become too heavy and cost a lot to transport. 

So, a couple of weeks ago, I began painting on one of the three canvases I have and I love how the first one has turned out. With canvas, my painting habit is one that's additive, as opposed to the panel works where I can employ both additive and subtractive methods of image-building. What I love about the Fredrix canvases is that they are really tight. I've been able to stretch larger canvases pretty tight, but these are drum-tight for well into the painting process. 

The one new larger canvas I've completed is titled, "It's Not The Same You" and employs a lot of image-making practices I've introduced over the past three years of so on smaller surfaces. I feel like it's one of those stand alone paintings that I absolutely had to make in order to fulfill the promise of so many recent small works and ideas pulled from the temporary mural pieces  and wall- based installations I've been making as of late. The second of these canvases has already started out being something entirely different in how I'm envisioning it and I'm loving the potential in it. 

One thing about being able to focus on my painting full time is having the time and head-space to more thoroughly consider what I'm doing with my paintings. Being able to have the time to really let a painting sit for a couple of days and to be able to look at it any time of the day is still somewhat foreign to me. I'm excited at being able to engage with the work on a day-to-day basis and not have my energies redirected to day-job tasks. Having had all of those years of making the most of a few hours a week dedicated to my painting has helped a lot in terms of realizing how much I can get done now.

*Note: this is not a paid endorsement for Fredrix products, I'm just voicing my own opinions about their canvases*