Commitment: Fuel for the Marathon

 

Not too long ago n the studio...

I was recently a guest on an as-yet-to-be-launched art themed podcast. Early on in the conversation, the host asked me how early did I make the commitment to become an artist. Commitment. Words have impact and this one hit me like a ton of bricks...in a good way. Let me explain: One of the most common questions creative people of any stripe get asked is "When did you know that you wanted to do this?". My answer has usually been something along the lines of, "Well, I've always considered myself a full-time artist in my mind, even though I've held day jobs since the age of 13...." For some reason, I could never think of another way to answer that question, until now. 

Commitment is the word that I've been searching for all of these years! It seems silly for this to be a thing after so long, but that's how things work sometimes. I mean, saying that I've always thought of myself as a full-time artist wasn't wrong, it's just that commitment gets to the core of my being an artist and how I've sustained myself mentally and emotionally all these years. Through all of the ups and downs, setbacks and triumphs, my commitment to making art is one of the main things that fuels my creative drive. 

I think that my drive to make art has been so intrinsic to my character over time, that I never consciously thought about what word or phrase best fits All I knew as a high school student was that art was the one thing that I felt I could make a life for myself with; it was one of the few interests that I truly loved and wanted to become better at. There was nothing else that held the same grip on me. I liked my english and science classes, but nothing gripped my imagination and fueled my curiosity like art.  It boiled down to the alchemy-like usage of the raw materials of paint and mediums to translate what I saw in the world around me to paper, canvas or other surfaces. That was and still is magic to me.

I understood at an early age some of what I was getting myself into as an artist. I'd read a lot about artists from the past and what they often had to endure to continue making their work. I also made it a point to educate myself as much as possible about what it may take to be an artist in the present day. I understood that, in no uncertain terms, I would be in it for life, full stop. I didn't know what that would really mean until later, as I began navigating my art life after college. The demands of adult life- bills, loan payments, jobs and relationships, in addition to art has proven challenging and the path stressful, at times. However, none of that has dimmed my continued passion and love for what I do. 

Being committed to art means continuing to do the work when no one is looking nor necessarily caring about what it is that you're doing. When I was a younger artist, I had ambitions of having my work "set the world on fire", of gaining wide recognition for what I did early on. I look back now and feel relieved that I didn't gain early fame because a lot of that work was bad. Bad, but very necessary for me to make. I still make bad work, but it's those unsuccessful ones that make the better ones that much sweeter to claim. I've made the choice to put my work out into the world through a variety of means. That's only the smallest part of my activity. What matters most is what happens in the studio, which almost no one ever sees (unless posted on social media). Even then, no one really knows what I do in there and that's where the commitment  and drive comes in. I don't need anyone to know exactly what i'm doing in the long run, as long as I get to do it and share some of the results. Everything else is icing on the cake. 

Black and Abstract

Shapeshifter (Sm. II), 2020, acrylic on panel, 11" x 14"

Last year, during the social upheaval and protests after the extra-judicial killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black and Brown people by police, I questioned whether my work could be relevant for the moment. Being a Black artist working with abstraction, I felt like what I do wouldn’t mean much to people, and other Black people, in particular.  Art made by Black artists has almost always been expected to reflect the Black community; its struggles against white supremacy, strength in community and various aspects of Black life. Realism being the preferred avenue of messaging. In this context, abstraction by Black artists, until relatively recently, has been, at times, disdained by Blacks and willfully ignored by the greater art world. This is the lens through which I understood things as a young artist in my late teens and early twenties, even though it took me a bit longer to fully understand and fully embrace my own need and reasons to make non-objective art. 

My last years of high school on through to my sophomore year of college saw a big shift in the type of work that I wanted to pursue as an artist. I had learned and practiced the basics of color, drawing, line, form, composition, etc… through realism. Going into my last couple of years in college, I had begun to discover that realism had limitations for me that I couldn’t ignore. By this time, in the late 1980s, I’d begun paying more attention to contemporary art through regular trips to galleries and museums in Philadelphia and New York. A whole other world opened up for me. At the same time, I was finding out more about how Black artists were highly underrepresented in the wider mainstream art world and when they were accepted, there seemed to be a very narrow view of the type of artwork made by Black artists that was acceptable. Basically, almost anything that centered around Black figuration and themes of struggle and community were “acceptable”, a trope that seemed to be the consensus of the Black community and the white-dominated mainstream art world. This is how I understood it at the time. There were very few Black artists, male or female, that were being recognized with shows in New York and other big art cities around the U.S. The biggest exception that I knew of at the time, was Jean-Michel Basquiat. It wasn’t until much later that I would become aware of Black abstract artists like Sam Gilliam, Howardena Pindell, Norman Lewis and Ed Clark, to name a few.

Around the late 80s to early 90s, I took an interest in the work of American Abstract Expressionists and later abstract artists, which provided the aesthetic kick that I needed to move into the beginnings of discovering and molding my own non-objective voice. Just prior to this, I had begun to lean into a kind of rejection that would fuel my practice for a long time. The rejection I focused on was what I perceived at the pigeon-holing  of Black artists and art by both Black and white establishments. Both Black communities and the mainstream art establishment only seemed to champion a type of social realism that felt overused and limited in its scope, in my view. An only child, I had developed an independent streak pretty early on, so it’s no surprise to me that I took the route that I did in my work. Later, after high school, one of the things that spurred me on as a young artist, was wanting to prove, mainly to myself, that I could make non-objective work that was just as good as any of the white abstract artists that I had knowledge of at the time. 

Flash forward to now and with almost 40 years of art making behind me, I still have moments of wondering if what I’m doing matters in certain ways. The truth is, what I do as a Black artist working with abstraction isn’t going to resonate with everyone and it definitely isn’t going to directly solve any of the social ills that continue to plague the Black community or other communities. What it can do is provide another way of seeing, another way of helping people to see, to question their world and themselves, perhaps. Also, to show a way forward, to be a testament to hope and a future. The one certainty about making art is that it is an act of faith. It’s an act of faith that assumes a future simply because of its existence. The will to make a painting, sculpture, film or other creative endeavor means that there is some amount of faith in the maker that a future is possible. 

The events of 2020, now bleeding into 2021 are way beyond the scale of what my painting can do. However, the smaller scale individual value that I and my work bring to the table is that of questioning, standing in one’s own truth, through confidence and perseverance. I don’t know what people look for or see in my work. My only hope is that it can provoke a feeling of some kind, good or bad. That is communication, that is making a connection. Whatever connections viewers make with the work is out of my hands, on the other hand, having had the faith to make the work and put it out into the world for people to witness and experience is all I need. I have other goals, like having my work represented in major art institutions and collections worldwide. However, those ambitions have been a secondary concern for me. At this point, I have good  gallery representation, my work is included in many private and university collections and I continue to have work shown, something that I didn't imagine would happen as a teenager, so I now know that it's possible and I welcome bigger things. However, continuing to paint and make the non-objective work that I want, being in dialogue with other artists across time, regardless of who may or may not see it, like it or not, or whatever else is going on in the world is the ultimate success for me. 

It's all new again

Details of two works in progress (11.25.20)

It's a great feeling to follow through on giving old ideas new life. In this case, I'm referring to works from 2013, like A Hazy Reverie and Channel (the former (the former is in a private collection, while the latter is in a corporate collection. I mention those paintings because at that time, the overlapping hard-edged forms felt like something I could explore, but at the same time, I felt like there was something limiting about that work. The problem is that in the making of that particular body of paintings, I'd already started to move on to newer ideas in my head. So, I did just that.

The thing is, there was something about that series that stayed with me: a vertical diptych titled, Everything Happens At Once (seen above, currently in a private collection). It's a black and white piece, composed of two 36" x 48" panels. It was the most successful of the group,  I think, because of the sense of movement and I kept it relatively simple compared to other works in the group. It also felt the most accomplished, the one that was the most daring of my 2013 works, aside from We Dance to Pray, the 13 foot wide piece that I painted on the wall during my show, Presence. 

Flash forward to now and I've once again found a space and time to consider some of those older ideas in a new light. I stopped making those paintings because I'd done about 14-15 in 2012-13 that were of the same concept and I wasn't sure that I wanted to continue with those ideas just then. Once the show happened, I no longer felt that I wanted to continue along that same road and, as is my habit, I started anew. Recently, I had an opportunity to have my work presented for consideration for a commission. The work that had a good response was a piece from 2013 that had sold already. To remedy that, I made a new, smaller painting that had some of the same attributes. I don't usually like attempting to make something that was of an older concept, but for some reason, I jumped at the chance to do this painting. Thinking about it, I realized that I'd still held onto some of those ideas, hoping to explore them again, which is what I'm doing now. 

Since 2013, my work has changed and gone off on some interesting routes, but now I'm happy to have two distinct bodies of work to pursue that offer different challenges and interest for me. The glyph works of the past three years has been great in terms of moving my work into uncharted territory, where every step is a journey unto itself. This work is very experimental. The new iterations of concepts from  2012-13 are very different in terms of how they are approached and executed. There's already a conceptual template with this work that doesn't exist with the glyph pieces. However, that template doesn't make the new work any less challenging. There's just differences in thought and process between the two ideas. 

TM

 

A look back: Roam (Blue), 1999

Roam (Blue), 1999, mixed media, 33" x 48"

I've been thinking about some older work for a while now and this piece in particular, over the past week. I don't know why, but I've felt the urge to unwrap some older work and post them up on IG for "Throwback Thursdays". More importantly, I just haven't just looked at a lot of older work in a while. I need to document a ton of work, but haven't figured out how that will work with Covid, especially with the sickness and death counts getting worse all over the country again. I need to order a light kit soon, right after my next payment comes through. In the meantime, I'll just pull out works unwrap/rewrap them and at least take some studio shots of them, until I feel safe having someone come over to shoot a bunch of work. 

This piece (above), is one of my favorite older works. I made it out of wood scraps, plexiglas and hardware. At the time, I was heavily interested in expanding my idea of what painting could be and wound up suspending a sheet of painted plexiglas above the wood surface and adding another piece of plexiglas to the bottom. Movement, color and materials were the things that drove the making of this work. One of the challenges of Roam was how to integrate the hardware into the work.This was the first time that I was attempting to have a "floating" surface, so I spent a little time figuring out how to make that part work, in addition to choosing what the image was going to be. To keep things simple, I chose one color and that was black.There were a couple of darker elements already and I felt that the black floating above the main piece would create just the right amount of counterpoint to the other colors. An unexpected treat were the shadows created when the piece is lit from the ceiling when installed, creating another layer of visual interest. 

I also liked working with the plexiglas because it was just thick enough to create a layer of distance between the viewer and the painted surface (the plexiglas was painted on the back). I painted the main body with three divisions which enhanced the feeling of movement with the floating plexiglas, which also echoed the bottom panel that was also divided into sections and had a small area of "cells" emerging from the bottom. 

I made a few pieces similar to this around the same time period ('98-'99) that incorporated a mix of materials with varying levels of success. With the other pieces, aluminium, enamel paint and shellac were major components. This approach ran its course and I returned to a more traditional way of making paintings on single surfaces around 2000. 

TM

...for what I want to see

New painting in progress

Last night, I had a bit of a revelation about where I am right now with my work. There is now an overwhelming need for less density in the paintings, or perhaps a different type of density. I'm not sure what that will look like, but it will be different from what I've been making lately. I came to this realization after making connections between my recent work with the densely layered compositions of glyphs and my current emotional state.

The past few days have been rough, emotionally. The death of Walter Wallace at the hands of Philadelphia Police is the latest in a too-long line of similar events that did not need to escalate to an extra-judicial execution in the street. He was having a mental health crisis, had a knife and approached the police, who fatally shot him ten times from at least ten feet away. 

This didn't have to happen. Wallace didn't have to be killed in front of his mother, family and neighbors like that. I keep asking myself, "Why couldn't they at least shoot him in the leg, incapacitate him and de-escalate the situation and get things under control?" The outcome is always the same with Black lives when it comes to policing; shoot to kill, maybe ask questions later. 

Standing in front of a newly repainted work last night, I realized that I really needed to step back and re-evaluate things. I took some white paint and covered up all but one pink, blob-like form. When the white dried, I made a loose grid of lines with an acrylic marker, over which I brushed some matte medium, smearing and blurring the grid. I looked up an album of the Daily Observation photos in my photo stream and sought out something that I could use from one or more of those shots. I found a couple of curvilinear forms that loosely replicated and over those, placed a reddish blob form in the lower left corner. 

I felt such a relief looking at this relatively pared down image! All of the denseness underneath showed through in the textures, but other than that, this painting now breathed like it hadn't before. The heaviness was gone. I realized in that moment that I wanted and needed to move to a different phase of this project with the glyphs; that I needed to focus on some of the other surfaces and instances of marks that I see every day in the streets. So far, I've been concentrating on the 'communication' aspect of this work, which has a very graphic feeling to it. The painted, multi-layered systems I make are full of a type of tension that I like, but that same density now feels overwhelming to me. 

I'm sure that my emotional state has finally caught up to what I've been doing in the paintings and it's just too much. Between the ongoing problems associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, the continuing social strife brought about by the killings of Black men, women and children by police authorities and the current toxic political climate, I'm just feeling overwhelmed. I've been fairly successful at keeping myself focusing energy on painting, but now, I need to change the energy of my paintings to reflect the breathing room I need, instead of the suffocating mournful feelings that keep coming back because of everything going on. 

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