i went into the cobalt blue and tossed in some flake white and mixed it up a bit. i can't avoid this combination out here-- how could i?? to deny these would be as phony as a murakami piece of crap tossed into the lobby of some skyscraper. i drive with my mom to get groceries and am blown away by the horizon line before me on sherman way, giant palms lining the street, the mountains ahead of me, the sky above and the sheer lines of white cloud. driving to bergamot station, in santa monica, was a bit of poetry in and of itself. no traffic, clear skies, green hills and a morning of painting behind me. yeah... of particular note was the work of audra weaser at ruth bachofner gallery. truely, some of the best painting of the year, to end the year. roughly sanded, vigorous work. very, very impressive...

now, at this late hour, i'm figuring out some paintings. theres some new directions here, the LA trip always offering it's own take on what it is that i do. how to tie it together?? do i need to even bother with such a question?? out here i'm seeing and coming to terms with the relationships between the recent drawings and my paintings, completed and in progress, of the last few years. i really think that the distance, the time away from the work, totally away and apart from the work has a great deal to do with this... in NYC i work. i see and touch paintings day in and day out, they evolve day to day and are with me, in my minds eye before i sleep and as i drive home. in LA, i walk out to the studio in the morning and the dew is on the grass and the work comes to me and i understand it with a passionate (or perhaps dispassionate) resolve. i know that i have these few days, or even, sometimes, weeks to make them come alive and sing their song. and sing they do, or perhaps not....

a cold day in LA... spent some time out in the studio and did some good work on small drawings, started on the last trip and work on the new large piece. but it was just too cold to be out there, drinking beer and listening to the bamboo, coming off of the gluttony of christmas dinner (dozens of oysters, foie gras, prime rib, an '83 chateau le tour and a '77 grahams port, etc...). tuesday evening before the flight i went uptown to the bjorn ressle gallery. bjorn was there with the artist marjorie welish, the artist mark wiener and a curator from the morgan library, who was intently checking out the work. it was really nice to be able to actually look at the work in relative peace. bjorn cracked open a bottle of white wine and mark and i moved about the walls taking it in. wiener is a sensitive and physical artist. we discussed the ephemera of mark-making and various notions of intent, admiring the wide range of expressions installed in the gallery. once again, the 2 drawings by the composer, john cage really hit me- this stuttering line, moving about the toothy paper in non-committal arabesques... i also spent a lot of time with three drawings by ron gorchov-- as with the cage drawings, these are tough, hermetic efforts, on tough, heavy paper. there is a lack of control that engenders it's own signature of beauty when working with the graphite line on such meaty, heavyweight papers. the line quivers and blurs, coasting along the curvature of surface. regardless of the artist's hand, the line takes off on it's own. and you deal with it or don't... i've found, that with my own drawing, i'm becoming more comfortable working with a lighter, smoother paper. the drawings bjorn exhibited (and the accompanying 9 in a portfolio) are all notebook drawings, autonomous works, but in their roughly handled immediacy, notebook drawings all the same. for my purposes, the acrylic (and/or oil) staining and re-workings of graphite (and/or india ink) come across truer on the smoother surface, the physicality of my efforts taking center stage, as opposed to a physicality imposed on the work by the support itself.

later i went for drinks with bjorn and mark, taking the downtown bus to the legendary, gino's, across from bloomingdales. not my usual stomping grounds, to be sure, but a fine establishment. bjorn and i ordered martinis and then we were joined by the beautiful rocio.... she was impressed when mark said he always painted while wearing a tie.

i can't blame her...

the sausage, garlic and red onion is simmering in the wine and san marzano tomatoes... this morning as i left for the dojo, it was 14 degrees. no shit. 14 degrees... but thats winter and we deal with it. in any event, after hard training and harder xmas shopping, i needed the comfort of pasta, the aforementioned sausage and broccoli rabe. and there is a bottle of chianti waiting as well. and i'm wearing a stocking cap indoors as i type this. winter...

speaking of winter, to revisit the winter salon at bjorn ressle gallery, i must say again it was quite a trip. an opening of your own work is always a beautiful time, but to see your work alongside the works of legendary greats is a totally new and humbling experience. it also (obviously) makes you feel pretty damn good. it makes you feel like you're an artist-- an artist involved in the continuum of this path that we follow. i leave for LA on wed. it'll be a good time with family and food and wine and my new niece and hopefully friends i haven't seen in a while. and the art i left behind from the last trip. LA in december can be gray or it can be brilliant blues and greens and intense sunsets. either way will work for me....

been a while... the reception for the winter salon at bjorn ressle gallery was pretty intense. the crowds were huge and there was coffee instead of booze, so i was on edge. having said that, it was a beautiful time-- great art, good crowd, friends, etc... of special note were the 2 drawings by the composer, john cage, that hung right below my work. they were free moving, circular works that one might actually expect from cage. a 1958 drawing by robert ryman was also very very special, to say the very least. tuesday i'm going to check out the show myself-- the crowds precluded any real viewing of the art.

early morning thinking about de kooning's "montauk highway..." i've no idea how many times i've stood in front of this piece over the years. to my eye, this is de koonings nadir, this where it all came together-- the surest of brushstrokes, the visceral labors to define a landscape... this body of work has been called "imperial". yeah. that pretty much sums it up.

so what is it about paint?? this act we are so involved in... there are numerous considerations, not the least of which is that of the cultural. we are bound to this practice by the hours of those who came so long before us and those that continue on. for better or worse, when we are long long gone, our work remains to mark our trail along the continuum. there are moments of sheer creation and moments of meditation, where we sit and look and look deeper and try to make a sense of it all...

sometimes, out here in the valley, the birds singing and the sound of bamboo in the wind, i have sessions of painting that are so perfect as to perhaps be far too good to be true. indeed, the amount of work painted over would seem to be proof to that. but those times are and have been very very real. the other day, as i was working on a painting on the floor of the studio, i heard a sharp rapping above me. looking up i saw the silouette of a huge crow exploring the leaves on the studio roof for bugs. i just stood there and watched until he grew frustrated with his labors and took off.

that wouldn't happen in brooklyn...

california always gives me ideas and/or evaluations or affirmations. i will be going to black once again... perhaps my flirtations with color have been too much of a figurative journey. it's one thing to see and yet another to replicate. thats what my camera is for... by the same token, i was so taken by the blackened landscape of the north valley hillsides.

in the burnt branches of trees, clinging to a mountain, there is a black so dark that we can't even say it's name.

that might be what i'm looking for...

there are early mornings when i step out onto 7th avenue, about 7:20Am, on my way to the dojo. the sky is the most brilliant of light cobalt blues and i look up at it from the shadows of the buildings around me. it's a unique, incredibly alive moment. and there are the the encino sunsets i look at from my fathers garage as we drink beer, or what have you... there is the early morning fog out here in the valley, the fog that burns off to leave the sun and it's crisp, true light.

good work has been done in the few days i've been out here. pushing the drawings, trying to see where they're going. 3 are being framed for the show at bjorn ressle fine art, but i want to have as many as possible ready, should heavy action start up... i re-visited 2 paintings, one black and one red. red is unusual for me-- a bit too loud, perhaps, but it's working. the black one is a tough, solid work, could be done, whatever that means. and i've gone back into one of the 5-footers started on the last trip. i laid it out on the lawn and hit it with a dark gray liquid acrylic, then went to lunch at my sisters place and fed my new niece. and got to hold her for the first time. when you feed a woman, they usual end up digging you. this chick is no different... back to the painting, i went into it with the same dark gray and did some rubbing, etc. it's an aggressive surface right now, looking pretty good. we'll see... this is either a good thing or just "a thing", about having a studio on 2 coasts-- you make the moves and see what happens and it looks good and then you go away and come back to it and think, "what the fuck???". but thats ok... i try to use it to my advantage. in the end, it's beautiful to be able to paint and walk (or fly) away and forget it for a bit of time and come back and look on that surface anew. and then begin again or pick up again and figure out what it (the painting) is really supposed to be about. and thats how i'm approaching the sculptural projects i've got going... we'll see how they develop as the time comes that they need to develop.

art...

crissy and i spent the day at LACMA on saturday. first time i'd been there, since all the new renovations and construction. in the end, it was pretty glorious... the modern collection is beefed up and given ample room to flex it's muscle-- a truely great (and enormous) sam francis, a tough, tough diebenkorn and de kooning's "montauk highway", a great, massive motherwell "elegy", and one of the best clyfford stills i've seen... clyff is great-- if for no other reason than his ambition and need, but he was a most flawed critic of his own work. too much went out of the studio. period... but this piece at LACMA gives us what he meant for us to have-- the epic expanse, the physicality of color and pigment and awesome vision of 1 man against the hours of a day and the days of a week into a year or however long it took to realize the final work.

and then there is the broad collection. well, what can one say??? a fine, late twombly, any number of sad jasper johns, rusha (of course) and an entire 6 to 7,000 square foot gallery of fucking jeff koons... theres no point to discuss the koons nonsense, so i won't bother... having said that, however, i'll get up now and pour another scotch to ease my sensibilities.

ok, so if you make it past that bullshit, you are rewarded with serra's "band" and "sequence". these are 2 later works that offer a navagational tilt to the maestro's body of work. i've gone on at length about serra's importance to me, so i won't re-hash my admiration. suffice to say, it's a great experience to be able to engage with this artists work. and i consider myself very, very lucky to have done so as much as i have.

my parents took me for a driving tour of the burned out hillsides of the north valley. i took some cool photos climbing about the charred hills and my father and i returned with the pick-up to salvage a large stump/root, blackened and scarred and a 7 foot piece of PVC that had been partially melted and cooked to resemble the bone of some ancient beast. these will figure into sculptural projects sooner or later....