In The Frame

Deep in Blindness

Deep in blindness

The details drifted away

routine formless lost luminosity.

Then, before the grey fog completely

engulfed me

A slow simmer of attention,

a nano-second of steamy sparkle,

a flickering dance in my shadowy cave

And everything erupted.

After all these years fighting the dark side

the world was bathed in a special light,

and like a swimmer who oddly wishes to drown,

I dove inside the throbbing colors,

sucking in the full spectrum of life's moods, tensions, anxieties, and happiness.

A screen as big as it needs to be grew

and on it I set to work, panting, painting

the details transformed into pulses,

I felt it in a smile. I heard the tingling rhythm of skin. 

And into the pure liquid radiance I descended

a vivid living world made into scintillating

mind space and mystic crevices of meaning,
uncommon sense,

like dancing wolves devouring the moon light

Defiance howled wildly from the start,

imagination unrestrained,

fresh associations freed and

in the intimate embrace of my found world

emerged the entrance to submersion.

A happy life.

O'Hara

    How many trees and frying pans
I loved and lost! Guernica hollered look
     out!
but we were all busy hoping our eyes were talking
to Paul Klee. My mother and father asked me and
I told them from my tight blue pants we should
love only the stones, the sea, and heroic figures.
Wasted child! I'll club you on the shins!

Pride and Punishment in the Painter

 I am a fan of  Neo Rauch, the wawaweewah German painter who has landed in the center of the art scene. I stumbled upon his work at The Metropolitan a year or so ago when I saw a solo show he had emerging artist. I love the way he's dealing with the mash up of time on his canvas as if it were a mind running through the tangled loops of our lives.

 For Rauch, the creative process can be plagued with expectations, restrictions, and limitations – practical and theoretical, external and self-imposed – provoking a tension that pervades every aspect of the works. This tension is epitomized by the gripping Parabel, 2008. Amidst a discordant industrial landscape, an artist falls before his blank canvas, his neck tethered by a noose. The feelings of paralyzation, depression, fear, and vulnerability that characterize the creative process, and ultimately human existence, are presented honestly, dramatically, and poetically.

I tell myself the key for that paralyzing parable moment is to breathe, breathe, breathe....but I guess when it's a noose around the neck, what's the answer? When you see Rauch's large paintings with their swirls of rich colors and colliding forms, and implosion of time and events and action...they give you a full suck in breath of life and a flash of brilliance in your mind. a frontal aha moment that implores you to get moving,  keep the flow going, let the color douse the dark side, and good things will result.

I expect a lot from this guy, because he's figured out a way to deal with all these peskey expectations, restrictions, and limitations...just paint like a romaniac.