My life with abstract expressionism

10:21 AM 7/10/2009 (date written)

My life with abstract expressionism

What does this sentence really mean? It means this! From my start in 1960, when I first took making art as a serious part of my life, I was very impressed with the work of many of the more famous abstract expressionist painters at that time. The most influential painters, for me, were: W. deKooning, H. Hofmann, Philip Guston, R. Motherwell, James Brooks, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Nicholas de Still, Afro and Tapies. Lesser painters that interested me at that time: Miro, Matisse, Giocometti, Francis Bacon — some others that I can’t remember at this time. I didn’t respond very well to the work of Picasso or Jackson Pollack. I don’t have a very good reason why I didn’t respond to them, I just didn’t. Remember! At that time I was very new to the world of art and painting and was very ignorant to what was going on at the time. Before I forget it, I did not respond to the new painting thinking at the time reflected in the works of Rauschenberg, Warhol, any of the geo painters (old or new).

I responded to realist painters old and new because I respected the technical issues required to paint realistically; especially the patience required to do it. I was too impatient to struggle through the learning how to paint 3-d forms. Eventually I settled down and learned all of this; especially by the end of my graduate school daze in 1967; working full time with this aspect of painting from 1969-1973. At the end of 1973 I realized that I wasn’t a good story teller and stopped painting realism. And I never found a way to use realism (the human figure mainly) in a non-narrative or literary way. I couldn’t wrap my brain around not connecting realism to stories. Go figure?

Back to my roots in Ab Ex. Retrospection and reflecting on what and how I felt about painting 1960, and to this day 2009, I never really operated with Ab Ex from a true emotional center. I used Ab Ex from a perceptual position much like the Appropriationist artists of the 1980’s used the visual ideas of other artists in their work. As I remember talking to myself in the years 1960-64 (undergrad years at Iowa) and 1964-1967 (graduate years at Iowa) — I used visual snips from Motherwell, from Guston (main man during graduate years), from deKooning, etc. I liked certain elements of all these painters and used from them what I needed to build my paintings. I still do this today 2009.

IN this light, my paintings are intellectual constructions of visual ideas made up of [from] a history of seeing paintings by other artists (all historical years and models) coupled to my own history of painting stuff (some mine and most borrowed [appropriated]). In this sense, my paintings are not abstract expressionist works at all. Somewhere in all this structuring, my personality enters; my use of design, color, line, shape, size, texture is all me; all my personality; all my unique signature in the same way as my handwriting is all me even though I use the same methods to formulate the letters when I write (we have to leave out the computer or typewriter here, although the sentence structure and the way I use the word and sentence structures is also the real me).

From about 1986 onward, I began to use the computer to aid me in my painting by creating works unique to the computer and works that combined my painting structure with the digital structure. Today I use the computer as an aid to 1) start paintings, 2) solve painting problems by using a digital picture of a painting in process, make changes on the digital image before making actual changes to the painting itself; this is especially useful when working on large paintings – it removes the time required to make a change – do it digitally first (often several times to find a likeable solution), then making the change. I have used the computer to create an image, then enlarged this image and painted it. Throughout this phase of computer related painting (1995-2006) the question of “why copy? Why enlarge through paint itself? Why do it again?” was always in my mind. I wanted to simply print these images on canvas and let it go at that but never had the funding required to do this. So large format prints on canvas were never made. It would have been fun to enlarge the digital images, print to canvas, then either leave alone or work back into these images; to see where this could have gone. Oh well! Never happened; probably never will. No longer interested.

In final analysis (at this time – the beat goes on) I am not a true Abstract Expressionist. I am an appropriationist. I appropriate snips from other painters and recombine them with my own snips and make a painting or set of paintings. My painting sets rarely repeat themselves totally. In my most inner sanctum I never want to repeat myself. Robert Rauschenberg speaks to this thinking and expresses my sentiments on the topic/subject of repeating oneself or copying what another painter does; I paraphrase: “If it has been done already by someone else, I don’t want to do it because the problems or issue specific to the image/painting has been solved. If i solved a problem in a painting or set of paintings, the thrill is gone when repeating the solution for the sake of making a painting.”

How this works: I have an idea. This idea is usually rather foggy in its mental configuration. I start a painting by using an element that pops into my conscious mind; the first solution idea. I make this move. I study the painting. I have another “first solution idea” and make the corresponding move. I have another “first solution idea” and make this move. This continues indefinitely as, for me, a painting is never completed. I just stop getting the first solution ideas and resulting moves. All of this painting experience is very much like what happens to Bill Murray in Ground Hog day. The life of a painting is a continual set of building upon a new awakening.

2:50 AM 7/13/2009: My painting life, thus, is a journey where through my painting I am forever arriving at something. I spend my time in the studio traveling and searching for clues, ideas, methods, materials. The vehicle for this travel is my painting.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOH! The medium is very much an actor in this formula. The medium is the message? Maybe???!!!! The medium carries the message? What is the difference? Or. The medium is just the medium and I enjoy using it because of my interest in how it feels or doesn’t feel. The medium is the subject? Yes? NO? So it becomes a play where the medium, the snip, the color, the line, the shape, the texture, the size, are all actors responsible for revealing the plot of the piece. This plot can be nothing more, or nothing less than a display of these actors themselves.

Now we get away from painting and move into the realm of literature, philosophy, religion. None of this is what my paining is about. From this position – call it interpretation, “what it means”, etc – I have tried over the years to explain what my painting means, or is. Specifics change over time. At times I question this myself. As I write this 11:09 AM 7/10/2009 my best effort states this: my paintings are abstractions, mostly non-objective [no relationship to the visual world as we know it] and express a meaning (if there is one) through color, shape, size, yada ; creating, for some individuals, an emotional response [which is acceptable to me] and in some individuals a verbal response [most of the time a verbal response means HUH?] and is not acceptable to me 100% of the time unless the verbal response reflects the individual’s personal connection. My paintings are best understood as mirrors; reflection the individual’s zeit geist. Also, I would be very happy if my paintings were accepted and experienced as if they were visual music.

Enuff said at this time in a flash moment of clarity that just went away 11:15 AM 7/10/2009.

dpn

2:37 AM 7/13/2009: When an artist works primarily with abstracted forms (from nature or not), or non-objective (no objects intended; no photography), he/she cannot be specific trying to attach a meaning to these paintings. My definition for abstraction is that it is a process of leaving out details. Expounding further, in a non-objective sense, all physical, photographic-like detail has been removed from a painting. All that remains on the 2-d surface is paint, color, shapes, lines, and texture. In a psychological sense, an abstract painting morphs into a Rorschach identity. Thus, the artist/maker may have inserted his/her meaning but by the nature of the non-objective identity of the painting, a viewer will never really know what the painter’s intentions are/were. So, the perceiver must then apply his/her own meaning factors to or from the painting; let the painting speak to them from an autobiographical position. This is where my “mirror” concept comes from. Going to an extreme with the mirror analogy, all of us perceive 100% of our inner and outer universe entirely alone; up close and personal to ourselves; responsible to ourselves only in the end [what end?]. We cannot get into another’s skin at all; period!

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