formula art

D:\artstatements\formulaart.txt

2:20 AM 12/19/2007

formula art

I have been studying the paintings of Edward Lentsch of Minneapolis. He presents an image that seems fairly easy to make in large numbers. He also seems to work images out of a formula. I often ask the same question of artists and their work, especially after looking at an artists work over a period of years and the image seems close all the way through; how can an artist keep making the same image over and over and over and not turn the image into a mannered mess? How does an artist like Lentsch keep the image fresh over a long period of time? Small mind? Formula? Whenever i start to repeat myself I become bored with what is happening and the image and the painting dies. Maybe I have a short coming in that I can’t sustain a similar image over a period of time. But then again, maybe I do and don’t know it???? My repertoire seems to be made up of 4 or 5 reoccurring image themes that come and go with time. Since you can’t step into the same river twice, when an image structure reappears, it is a little different than before. Over time it has picked up some new add ons, revisions, and other stuff. My life (as is everyone’s) is like that river; we can’t step into the same experience twice. We are not the same from one minute to the next or from one year to the next. Easier to understand a change or series of changes that take place within us over a time frame of one year than it is over a time frame of one minute. Here we are dealing with time and its relentless grip on us and everything around us; or at least how our mind perceives/processes the data around us. In this sense the present doesn’t exist. Only the past and the future, the present becomes the past immediately. what is the accepted time length for the present. The future is always coming at us at the same speed, then suddenly it becomes the past too. Yikes! I can’t get my mind around this dialog tonight. Later. dpn

2:39 AM 12/19/2007

past

A painting created now, becomes a member of the past and our memory once it is made. Or does it? I make the painting now. Before I made it it was part of my (our) future. I made it. When/what was it’s present. Now after I made it it becomes part of my past. But when I come into the studio tomorrow (future) and open the studio door (now) (the present), turn on the lights, there is the painting existing in my present (again) becoming part of my past as I stand there looking at it. The event can never be fixed so we (I) can study int. As I study a painting (this newly created entity) I am awarre that it is constantly being viewed as a past event. This is the worse thing about the nature of time. It can’t be stopped so we can really analyze an event. An event never exists in a present but only in a future (as we wait for the event to start) and then it immediately exists in our past as memory that is constantly fading. I now ask, where is the clarity? Where is the reality? When I touch a painting, does the touch become an immediate member of my past. How long is the present?

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