painting is hard. sometimes physically,
but its really not the physical thats a problem
with the making of art.
lets be honest, painting a picture
is not a 30 minute kettlebell session.
and its certainly not training with a badass stud
whose main goal is to choke you unconscious...

nonetheless, it can be a hard grind--
this practice of paint handling.

i'm not complaining.
we ask for so much of our suffering
that further comment is beyond redundant
and in the end, who cares?

a productive day of experimenting
and honing the craft.
fair enough.
and then, somehow,
the doubt creeps in.
the sulphorous odor
of ambition not met and $$$ not there.

and? well, i painted my way out of it...

for better or worse.
and lived to tell the tale.

life is good--
i'm a blessed man living and working
in a great city with a great family
pursuing my dreams.

but there are times of hardship--
not the hardship of a lack of coin in pocket,
or sleeping on cardboard
in the German countryside to be sure--
but there is hardship.
life-- the gods,
have a need to keep a man honest
or perhaps humble.

or if not humble,
at least on his game...

there are moments of loss--
bereft of a compass for such latitudes.
the brush, burdened as it is with paint
cannot make a mark.
the canvas slack--
impotent against the labors of sanding...

the idea that brought solidity to a composition
is now a lumpen impediment to progress
or, indeed, finality...

upon returning home,
my amazing wife surprised me
with a pair of grass-fed sirloins...

the evening was set:
a fine dinner from the grill
a finer Cabernet (Keenan '09)
and a bottle and bed
for baby Deegan...

it was not to be...
as i laid my daughter down for the night
she twisted into a baroque posture
that i could not accept.
in adjusting her,
i brought fourth a wrath
far greater
than any god
or woman
i've come across...

hours later, mother and daughter sleep
soundly...
and i type these words.

things can go wrong-
for any number of reasons
at any time--
many of which are inconvenient...
our duty is to stagger
through the drama--
willful and somewhat intact...

it was a great day in the studio
but there were thorns
along the path...

and with the thorns
came wounds.

but the wounds healed
as quickly as the paint dried...

guns...

somewhat ironic that the senate struts into the news
in the drag of whores
painted for the pleasures of artillery mavens
and rednecks
a day after the bombs of boston.

for a sad nation, a nation in mourning,
this is a sad wake up call for how fucked we are.

there is little shame in the reality
of how ugly an ignorant coalition of foolishness can be.

guns? what of them?
by the time i was 9 i'd fired more heavy firepower
than many of the losers screaming for more.
an army brat-- much time was spent on the range
with my father and his troops
and his friends and their beer
and the sounds of those fabulous engines of destruction.

my first gun was a gift for my 9th birthday...

where am i going with this?

good question...

sanity is something that can easily be questioned by the mad.
reality is but a dream to the lost...

more importantly,

those bringing up the 2nd amendment
don't understand the language
or, indeed, the intent...

i enjoy knives. sharpening them, honing the blade;
flipping them open childishly at inappropriate times...
i don't need a broadsword to bring home
the point of my enthusiasm or my skill.

a man needs a rifle to hunt. or, if not a rifle, a good bow;
an ability to trap, or amazing speed and strong teeth...
no person on earth
(outside of professional grade killers and soldiers)
needs the ability to fire more
than a few rounds in as many seconds.

but they argue FREEDOM...

what horrible nonsense...

what a disgrace to language and sacrifice--
the sacrifice of thousands before us.

there are "men" who don't know how to love
or how to cry
or how to cook a meal with passion...
there are "men" whose lives
revolve with the channels
on the television of their dreams.
these are the men
who cry for the steel
of firepower
to swell their sagging manhood
and bolster their shelter
against a world
too strong
and growing
far too intelligent...

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.