so, as my mother reads books with
(not to) my unsleeping 21 month old
she-warrior, i ponder on authenticity.
the notion of experience,
reality-- cooking the food you eat--
perhaps growing it. or, indeed, killing it...

there is little within the muscular practice
of parenthood that lacks the authentic.
clearly, the tales of nannies and day care
do not quite play into this equation--
though (to be fair) there are exceptions.
however, when my child wakes-
my wife or i (or in this instance, my mother)
are there to care for her needs.
when the diapers are to be changed,
that rigorous endeavor is carried out
as a very personal experience
for all involved-- including, of course,
the violent prototype that is my child.

so, yes, authenticity... you make a painting.
say, spend 6 or 7 years
putting the paint on and taking it off;
figuring it out and fucking it up.
the compositions may come and go,
but the painting remains--
reflecting it's authenticity--

this object, large or small,
there before you under the work lights...

back to the present:

my daughter teases me with a smile,
lurching towards me only to turn
with a squeal back to her grandmother.
she holds cards she may never know she controls
(i can only hope she understands her power in later years.)...
sharing her monosyllabic poetry
she hustles between us,
as my mother numbers the diaper
changes of the day.

and we all smile...

we're just back from 2 weeks in LA.
the weather was what you would expect and need
(beautiful) and life was strong and heart-felt.
several large paintings that have been worked
and re-worked these last 6 years or so
are nearing a strange finality.
late nights of tequila and revery
under the orange tree
led to decisions based less on need than fancy--

color, why not??

and what of color?
is it the trial of material itself,
or the romance of metaphor--
the color perhaps felt,
but never seen?
the color seen but never named?

i wrote in an LA notebook last year
(as an admonishment to myself,
perhaps a command,
perhaps a request to revisit a notion
of what i felt could be lacking
in my art, in my way with color), 
that yellow could be as declarative
a statement as black--
the actuality of the yellow itself
becoming the subject matter of a work--
as the black of a work
could be said to do the same.

going out on a limb,
i'd say you can't say that of blue.
blue, by it's mythic nature
becomes the ocean,
the sky, the lost poem you never wrote
but kept saying you would,
once you had a chance...

and authenticity?

who knows?

at times (perhaps now)
i've been sidelined
by the adorable toddler
storming my home.
i type as one burdened
by a most beautiful truth.

what could be more authentic?

I hope,' he said, 'that 
when I grow old and the chisel drops,
I may crawl out on a ledge of the rock and die like a wolf.'

an excerpt from,  "An Artist"
by
Robinson Jeffers 

the Los Angelenos are bitching about the "cold" under blue skies and waving palm trees.

i'm killing time until my baby wakes,
sipping wine and satisfied with the painting of the last week--
out there under the orange tree,
the big-ass racoons walking along the top
of the wooden fence along the bamboo.

it would seem that a years end would be pause for reflection.

indeed...

last september i ended my last few weeks of a month in LA with 3 days in a burn unit--
3rd degree burns over 20% of my body.
so be it-- i was lucky. you learn a lot about yourself in a burn unit.
you learn quite a bit about what you can take
and what it is that others may or may not be able to take.

and i was one of the lucky ones...

period.

and being one of the lucky ones
heavily sedated in bed for 3 days
gave me a shot at dealing with
and thinking about the realities of paint handling
and getting along in this world.
steel sharpens steel and extreme pain is the most discerning of alloys.

as artists its important to question yourself from time to time.
what the fuck is it that we are doing?

more importantly, why are we doing it?

there should be the dance of the song of the lyric in our art.
maybe not at face value (we can have our hard logic and geometries),
but it should be there.
somewhere in the vapor of our output,
our creation, our love,
there is a place for the cold formalities and obfuscations-
but the lust and flesh must (somehow) hold...
the old, old passion, fire and brimstone--
the likes of which drove any number of French poets
and Russian novelists to a bottle,
a bad woman,
or God...

sadly, i'll admit that i've caught myself
making art as if clocking in for a shift-
deliberate and taped off; stoic
with an eye to the product i'd already received 50% of--
or the gallery voice, "...can you do another this size?"
and i've made art in drunken reverie
singing as poorly as loudly with a madly loaded brush.

i much prefer the latter.

reflection.

reflection and gratitude...

with reflection on my work comes a sense of gratitude
for the good fortune i've had and the beauty i've known.
the grace of family works it's way in there, as it should.
the softening of calloused edges and the opening of eyes
that have seen far far too much.
i can thank my wife for her love
and she will see me as the sentimental lout i am.
i can never thank my daughter
for what she has given me,
as i can't understand much of her native tongue
and at some point she may, as a young adult, find me mad...
or, perhaps an ally.

you can fill a thousand notebooks
and never realize that a page means nothing.

you can paint over a canvas for decades before there is art.

i strive to work simply for the work.
my labors in the studio are simply that-- labors in the studio.
as a Zen dilettante, i'm far too familiar with the notion that the goal is the path.
but i have wavered-- there have, through the errors of good fortune,
been those moments of commercial demand.
the fun diminishes as does the payment.
for every painting sold there is another bill paid
and another wine--
another cut of meat you can't afford, but pay for.

and that painting is gone forever.

it means more to paint for no reason at all
than to paint for any number of projects or dollars.
i have made paintings with money in my pocket
and i was not as happy as i was
with the best paintings realized while poor...

...that notion of projects
and dollars.

there is, we will be reminded,
in the harshest of tones,
an industry,
greasing it's way under our romantic pursuits.

exploit it when you can.
enjoy it.
never trust it.

if you are lied to twice
by a man in the art world
you know he is not a man.

if you are lied to twice
by a woman in the art world
you know she doesn't deserve to be a woman.

more importantly, there is life.

you can be a good painter,
but only a good parent can be a great artist...

i'm ashamed to be an american... that sums it up. this is a fucked up nation. a nation of rubes and functionaries and followers of baseball and christ. and i'm ashamed of it all. 2 people in love can't get married legally but a 20 year old can purchase side-arms at will...?? and there are those who will still preach that "guns don't kill people...". what the fuck killed them? a club?? no, guns. or a gun. or to paint a different picture a gun wielded by a maniac. either way, a gun was there-- it was the medium, perhaps the vehicle of the death of innocents... make no mistake, the gun was there.

we stand alone in the statistics of the world. more guns. more deaths. more tragedy...

can't we learn something from any of this?

for every redneck that touts freedom as an excuse for unchecked firepower,
there is a gross, tragic loss...
freedom has nothing to do with the reality
of the homicidal actions confronting us.

writing is a bitch... at least more often then not-- a sense of duty, or of a chore, not unlike doing dishes or mopping the floor.

i did it so much for so long that when i got away from it it seemed liked a state of grace. and then i find myself looking for it again. and what does that mean? probably nothing more than a painter's sense of urgency to express something outside of the visual world. a need of language-- a yearning for the crutch of the literal and pretentious word.

at this point in time and this point in my career, what need is there of language in the guise of vocabulary to discuss art and, indeed, paint? the paint is there on the support, mysterious in and of itself.

bereft of our day to day follies of politics, media and abundance, i have painted myself into many a corner and have come out all the better for it.

there are time considerations to consciousness and the most considered have been those with floral allies and in the studio. in these precious spaces i am whole. i am the searching, nomadic layman slowly and methodically making my way along the hieroglyphs...

consciousness... what an unusual concept to consider. how much time do we have here on this spinning  stone of water and jungle? how much indeed? time enough to consider the books we haven't read or the dishes yet to be cooked in our seasoned pots... all of us-- artist, woodsman, lifeguard, loser, fascist-- have the time allotted to us. what do we do with this time? merely exist?

is that enough?

no, it's not enough. not even close...

it's not enough to limp through all the wonder of this life of flesh and bone and the bacteria that tracks across our bodies of coiled viscera. it's not enough to ignore possibility, or it's insipid, pregnant cousin-- tragedy.

now what??

well, we can drink. thats a good start. a good start that may not work for everyone. but it's a start nonetheless. we can (and should) indulge our floral allies. and a certain judgement should be considered with either practice to be sure. i have spent nights in alleys and psychic turmoils and have since chosen the way of kettlebells, tequila and decent wine. this life we have should be physical-- outside of the studio we should train, we should fight, we should hunt and fish and surf and love.

we should look deeply into the eyes of our friends and call them out when they talk shit. and then embrace them and tell them how much we love them. in short we should live. we should paint and we should carve and we should write, or simply sit in quiet reflection if that is the calling-- or the necessity...

to dull that actuality to a point of noncompliance
would be to waste our years,
lying to our possibilities.

a good night of paint behind me... readying a few pieces for the show next week and made the first moves  on the diptych (48x77"). quite a few moves, as a matter of fact. god bless acrylics.

indeed... so, i've made this decision (again) to go with the size, scale and volume that most interests me-- i'm going big. why not? not to wax too completely old school NYC AB-EX, but why not? for me, now, this seems the logical step. coming off a year of strong sales and some great shows-- why not? in spite of, or, indeed, because of, fatherhood, the past few months have been hugely and profoundly creative (i say that beneath the irony of suffering my first ever "writers block".)... my time in the studio is solid, consistent in intensity and, at the very least, productive. the gesture is continuing to drive the work and my energy and that gesture, i find, needs space. and my arm needs space and my eye needs that same space... and?? well, yeah, this diptych started tonight and brought to a fucking beautiful place in development. there are moments when the brush moves and the paint is going on and on and it all works. all of it. and you rub some out and wipe out a bit and lay more paint on or maybe not and just look at the bloody thing and gasp at the wonder of it all-- this time of putting shit on canvas (or paper) and getting off so heavy- so heavy... and it works. the parts of the whole slide together and mesh and you have the basis for a serious, integrated painting.

a work of art...

my god, how wonderful.

the late night... night and the baby is asleep
after kicking my ass for a day and into the night--
this night, this late night. so much magic in the company
of 10 month old child. a 10 month old human being.
the delight is in the newly discovered child within--
sharing her wonder her glee her questions...

i've written that becoming a parent creates
the means towards becoming a more evolved person,
a more evolved whole. so true (to my experience...).
fatherhood has softened a lot of sharp corners
and dulled the edge of a blade best kept sheathed.
no wasted time...

no wasted time.

not sure what to write and sitting looking at old paintings of mine that hang above this table. a still-life in front of me of apples, pears and 2 bananas and a few limes... organic "puffs" for the baby and a sippy cup next to my camouflage cap; and an empty glass that should have vodka in it and might very soon.

there are periods of life that go so fast and so full that you can't catch a moment to figure out yesterday from today. it's been like that of late-- going and moving and making art and not sleeping and taking care of the awesome baby and trying to keep healthy and maybe sane...fun times. no doubt.

* 10 days or so on the west coast was beautiful and necessary-- grandparents, sun (and rain), the pool the grill and the little studio under the orange tree. working hours in the morning and then back at it after dinner, late into the night or early morning. tones of gray, or grey... somber, maybe sad. buoyant, but some sense of shadow and a tragic lost dream... maybe not-- who knows? 3 pieces (60x48) that have been worked and re-worked for close to 6 years. and now? well, they look good to me. is that enough? yeah, i'd say it is...