Same Clowns Different Circus

The Gotelli Dwarf Conifer Collection, US National Arboretum, Washington DC,
copr William Cook, 2008

OK, something a bit different.  Same media--pen and ink, colored pencil, graphite.  Only difference is that there is nothing random.  This is an architectural piece.  Each off those squiggly blobs actually looks like the plant that's there.  Some licence has been used to keep the pathways visually open.  After all, primary usage was as a wayfinding map.  Still, it's not that different than the work I've been showing--dots and dashes.
Go ahead and enlarge it.  There's a lot there.     

"Originally located on the property of William Gotelli in New Jersey, the core of the collection was donated to the Arboretum in 1962. It is now one of the most comprehensive collections of dwarf conifers in the world."  (USNA Website)



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Paper Process: Dots, Dashes and Mark Tobey

Composition With Confetti And Thread, c Wm Cook 2012, 12" X 18" 

Bits of thread, confetti and whatever else fell into the mix,
 sort of totaled itself up into this piece of paper.  The method of dots and dashes
to record field notes from life has been explored elsewhere on this sight.
Whole sheets of marks laid down at "random" have also been presented
here as visual meditations.  Those took many hours of repetitive
mark making to occupy the consciousness in an attempt to get at
subconsciousness levels while still awake.

So there is precedence in my work for this kind of composition.  What
sets this apart is that it happened quickly. I like the freshness of the presentation.
My usual patina--probably a function of the natural contamination
of the substrate that always fascinates me--is missing.

I actually paid no attention to the composition at all.  The paper was
freshly drawn from the water as an eighth in thick sop, still in the deckle/frame.
I was engaged in snipping off bits of thread and paper strips and letting
them flutter down into their own arrangement.  The final pressing and finishing
of the sheet is what sets the piece into its final state, and after two days of drying,
this is the result.

So, is it art or not.
You know, there's a way to create a beautiful garage floor that's similar.
On the other hand, Mark Tobey (1890-1976)  lives on.        
  

Mark Tobey, Universal City

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A Visual Vocabulary

Composition With Canton,  6X9", Mixed on panel, 4/11

Composition With Arch, 9X6", Mixed on Panel, 4/11

Composition With Tracks, Photograph, 4/11

This was my week last week.  I got all the stuff out--whatever was stowed away--water-based stuff, all compatible.  Put the Bartok on and went at it at long last. These two are a couple simple ones that I will probably not touch again.  In all there are  eighteen new pieces in various stages.

I'm using an untinted acrylic latex paint as a glaze medium, and building complex surfaces with combinations of acrylics, spackling powder, sanded grout, kids tempera paint, Derwent pencils, markers--lots of crazy stuff.  It's all going together and producing some very cool stuff, within thick layers of "glaze", so that some of these pieces are getting downright 3-D. You can see down through all these layers, past splatter, strokes and smears.  What a vocabulary. At some point there will be wax--but not yet.  

The tracks photo above and other snap-shots of really cool stuff just on the pavements around here has been the inspiration for all this.  I have no idea where it will lead, but at least there's new art thinking going on.  Feels healthy! 

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The Lightness Of Looking, The Elusive Form

Garden Notes, 9X12, Pencil

Hillside With Trees, 9X12, Pencil

Gunpowder Riverbed, 9X12, Pencil

Route 7 Bridge, 9X12, Pencil

There's something about just the right amount of information needed to convey a thought.  The mind does the rest.  I haven't figured out yet just what to do with this drawing approach, other than to just let them be what they are--quiet moments in meditative seclusion.  And I've tried making paintings out of them. They just laugh back at me reminding me that gilding the lilly  becomes King Arthur's pet mule all too quick.

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Relax, Pull Up A Rock, Fall Apart

Underpainting For Along The Gunpowder, 26X36

Along The Gunpowder, 26X36, Oil on Canvas, G print.

The other day I was looking through some old shots and I found this shot of the underpainting of the Gunpowder scene (reposted from my very first blog post).  Now that I've gotten around a bit in the blogosphere, I thought this glimpse into the process might be interesting. 

This is the first serious oil painting that I did since 1983.  I began it in 2005 and finished it in 2009.  I actually picked up where I left off in 1983 with this underpainting technique that I developed for its rapid mono-chromatic result. 

The canvas is coated with a couple layers of white acrylic latex, and then coated with brown tinted gum arabic, and a simple drawing (one of my dots and dashes drawings like in my blog header) was done for placement.  The neat thing about gum arabic is that water instantly dissolves it but oil won't touch it.  So.  If one was to make any kind of mark with just water (a thin elegant line from a sable pointer, splatter from a tooth brush, spit), and then quickly wipe a rag over it, a beautiful gleaming white mark would result.  All kinds of wonderful craziness happens as one works over the whole composition in reverse.

Later a similar procedure was executed with UM blue sparingly.  This completes the full spectrum in the underpainting given the composite color and value possibilities in the BU and UM layers.  The canvas is then 'closed' to water media with a layer of medium.  The paint is applied in daubs of very thin glazes, so that there appears to be practically no texture to the painting. 

I liked the underpainting so much that I had no desire to mess it up, and just observed it (planning) in the studio for a few years, until I got up the courage to set up a pallet.  I had been dreaming about this painting for twenty years, about approaching large works with these techniques, the daubed color "notes" leaving much of the underpainting showing, and ending up with practically nothing on the canvas, a characteristic I have come to admire in the venerable old pieces in the museums. 

In any event--just another approach, thought it would be of interest. 

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Is David Claton Thomas Still Singing Spinningwheel?

The Piracantha Bush, 30" X 38", oil, inquire here for print.

Another Plein Aire painting only this time I hauled the whole studio out into the back yard.  That's Dave MacLaughlin's appartment on the top floor next door.  He's a retired attorney, but he got the bum's rush last year for being a pack rat. 

Anyway, I know, what does this painting have to do with BS&T?  Nothing whatsoever--except it has been hanging in our dining room since I painted it.  It has become part of the family.  If I ever took it down my wife would have my head on a plate. 

But I have to grow, darlin--try new things--explore.  What if I wanted to hang a big scribbled scrolly canvas with thrown paint tapestry style?  How about a nice Dots and Dash piece scratched with a steel stylus into a tonally prepared substrate like drywall, and framed with snowfencing?

Nothin doin.  I'm starting to feel like that guy having to sing that song at each and every concert for the past forty years.  The poor guy!  My heart goes out to him.  Having to sing that and Lucretia McEvil--he's old enough to be Lucretia's great grandfather.  Either that or Lucretia's pushing 70.  Like, settle down, pop, take it easy!

I know how my wife feels, God love her, I'd be just as guilty at a Thomas concert booing him off the stage because he simply refused to sing Spinningwheel.  I love that song.  But forty years, the poor guy!  At least I can decorate the man cave down here any way I want.

Hang in there, Dave.

Wm

The Great Amen

Meditation Field 1, "17 X 23", 1998 (or so), inquire here for print.

 It is truly amazing to think that everything we see here in the macrocosm is the sum total of countless numbers of little events occurring in the microcosm.  Those aforementioned sounds coming out of the void in stunning order. 

Ah yes but is it intelligent? 

I don't know but it seems to me that the resulting universe has developed itself to the point where it can know itself. 

The word conscious comes from the Latin con, the ability to, and scius (scire—know), knowledge.  Consciousness—that' characterizes us—mankind.  The ability of the universe to perceive itself —human consciousness is the evolutoonary target.  The target is too tiny, yet it os so specific for it not to have been intended all along.  We're talking about all development through time—numberless sound-like events all thumping along in in perfect order in anticipation of eventually perceiving itself.   Of course it was all intentional from the start! 

So anywhere you look, what are you actually seeing, all that macrocosm, all that microcosm?  What might it really look like?  Talk about plein air, and painting what you see!

And who is it making the little sound? and doing all the intending? 

    "The Amen, the faithful Witness and true, the Source of God's creation..." 

     Revelations 3:14

That creative intentionality surrounds us like a dense infinite soup, endlessly breathing its ubiquitous word Amen (aum, om, amin, hummm), closer to us than air.  No wonder there are artists echoing the creative intentionality always, it's in our souls. 
Wm

You Are Here

The Meditation Device, 5" X 6", inquire here for print.

There you are before the polar bear in a snowstorm thinking haven't I got anything to say at all?  And then it hits you.  Just make a mark.  Then another.  And so on.  This is ridiculous.  Keep going. 

Enrique Montenegro my beloved teacher told me once, "A great artist can make a masterpiece out of a can of shoe polish and a stick."  I had been lamenting my sad lot in life over how all the art stars had the finest sable brushes, linen canvas, Windsor Newton paints, groovy studios, all the right friends and connections.   Mr. Montenegro was about as down to earth as one could get.  He always made me feel better somehow.  And you couldn't put anything over on him.  He had a reputation for being a particularly tough painting teacher.  Bring him on, I thought, as I had signed into the course.  He had studied at the Art Students League under Reginald Marsh.  But I was ready.  I painted with fervor. With quick dashing gusto I painted a giant sad bald head, and then a smaller semi angry bald head within it--a profound statement worthy of me the gifted art student.  He called the class around, said it reminded him of Francis Bacon (he was being very charitable).  But in my mind I was now a star.   My buddy Joe was sitting by a girl doing a painting of a bowl of grapes--hundreds of them.  Montenegro looked at it and said, "maybe one more grape", and walked away.   Joe and I burst into laughter.  "Maybe one more grape " became the standard critique for all art.  What a guy, Montenegro, incredible dry sense of humor.  Imagine such a renown artist having to deal with inane art students all day.   But it never seemed to get to him. 

You're running out of room to put marks.  So put more marks in between the marks.  Yeah, but... 

"If you have something to say write a book", Montenegro would say.  "Just shut up and paint."  I loved the guy.  I was devastated to see him pick up and move to Albuquerque.   I found out yesterday that my beloved teacher passed away 9 years ago.  He was 86.   

Ok that's really it.  No more.  If you put any more marks down they'll start touching.  And you know from experience if the marks touch too much the piece is ruined.  Why?  Because then the eye goes right to that point in the matrix, like a "You Are Here" arrow.  Besides four hours have gone by, and you've said nothing. 

Oh--Hi Joe--where-ever you are. 

Wm

The Bum's Rush



Fountain, 12" X 18", Inquire here for print.



      Once I took some pieces to a gallery in Boston and the girl reviewing my stuff told me she absolutely loved my work all except for the spots.  I told her the spots were all the fun.  She was not amused and insisted she was right--the spots sucked and I ended up getting the bum's rush. After enough of that kind of nonsense, my work became very private, esoteric, experiential, and downright religious--you know northwesty.  OK I admit I've become a bit cloistered as an artist.  Haven’t shown anything in years.  I'm more like a monk.

 

          Today a great deal of my work reflects simple interior observations in a sort of time and space soup.  Modern physics tells us that the tiniest element of matter is a sound event which emanates from nowhere [allegedly] as a long thin structure not unlike the vibration of a guitar string.  It lasts a little while and then disappears.  The only thing is they appear in such perfect order that billions of them together become an atom.  That matrix is stunningly ornate and beautiful.  In the same way, the atoms organize themselves into matter and matter into a universe.  All going back to that little sound coming out of “nowhere”. 

     This is always what my art is about whether I’m reflecting treeforms, or just laying down systems of marks inbetween marks.  I start a piece, watch the matrix develop and mature.  I prefer to stop a little past the point where destruction begins—the paper starts to shred, or that last stroke is not quite right.  In this way the piece takes on a life of its own with me just the grateful mechanic holding the tools.  I say grateful because I’ve escaped the dread black hole of politics and religion for a while. Those discussions always go to arguing and silly turf wars.  No.  Art making is different.  One's attention becomes re-oriented.   One feels one is getting closer to why we're here.  Creation is a good thing.

The Fountain is a visual of what went on in an actual meditation.  There was a sensation of bliss getting ever bigger and better like a fountain of light.  God is like that--ever conscious, ever existant, ever new bliss.  This piece is just a mere metaphor for the soaring joy experienced that day.
 
Wm     

Dots and Dashes



Tree Meditation 2, 16" X 20", , inquire here for print
Clickable for a blow-up

   This is a current effort involving my continued revisiting of an earlier idea.  If one reduces what one sees to simple dots and dashes and just follows natural rhythms, the scene emerges by itself, without any stress.  They remain fresh as long as one is judicious in the amount of information recorded--these can turn into mud pies quick--less is more.  Even so they take forever, which is the whole point if one is to grow fins, and swim in the cosmic sea.  Alright I was judicious, and stopped at what I thought was the right spot--while there was still something worth sharing.   

For years these seemed to be incomplete to me.  I tried coloring them in many different ways.  Then they just become something else and dissappear.  I tried thicker marks--eh.  I think I'm ready to accept them as complete works even though they are just drawings.  The technique originated as a very quick way to block in a composition for a painting.  If the painting is done soon enough one is able to remember detail with fairly good accuracy for studio painting. 

Now I've come to using these as excuses to stare at something for hours on end--meditations.  It doesn't take long for thinking to be short circuited and for time to vanish--which feels healthy. Anyone can do it with a little practice.  I've found that it's not even necessarty to stick to external scenes or to feel constrained in any way.  Just fill up the surface with tiny marks, and off you go into the cosmos--very cool experience.  Like the old Zen guy might say, "Just float, no why".  I bet he didn't have an ipod.  I did this piece with Arturo Sandoval going.  Damn. 

Wm