Me And The Monkey

Solar Disc, detail

Solar Disc, cWm Cook 2012 

One of the main things about my work it seems is the complex textures.  The surfaces I make have to withstand a lot of abuse.  The neat thing about these internet presentations is that you can blow up the images and really see these surfaces.  I began this piece 12 years ago [or so], and stuck it in a drawer unfinished.  Posted it last week originally with that diatribe (now gone).  

After a week of observation I decided to deepen and even the background tones so that all the stylus work showed up better.  Now you can see it.  Before any of the tonal layers, a pointed stylus was used to impress texture into the thick paper.  Finally the addition of my beloved spots took over--in many different colors.  OK maybe there are too many, but I love the process of splattering up a perfectly good drawing.  

This is actually a detail also.  The original is 20X26.  About half the real estate was cropped out.  More of the same--you get the idea.  As for the mood of the piece, I wanted it to have more pizzazz, but I don't think a meditation piece needs to be flamboyant--if meditation is meant to quiet the monkey so to speak.  For now I'll let this stand.  Try staring at it for a couple minutes and let me know what happens.  

Devotee:  Master you left your key inside, 
but you're looking for it out here.  Why is that?

Master:  Better light.  

Kyudo telling a Sufi story

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Something Different--The Basics

A Santa Monica Hill,  5X7",  Ink, Prismacolor

Long Shadows, 5X7",  Prismacolor 

Roadside, 5X7", Prismacolor

Something a little different.  Maybe a bit rusty, but I do love drawing with indigo pencils.  My first love is drawing.  Everything else derives from it.  OK maybe not cement.  These remind me a little of Maggie [Latham] who disappeared from blogging last week to sort out the next phase of  her career.  Maggie you are missed.   All the best to you.

These are sketches from the computer screen-- a few of the snapshots I took while in California last month.  I love drawing outside from life, but this is the next best thing, and one can rip through a lot of trial compositions in short order.  I'm looking for natural compositions--the kind you can't make up--not necessarily trying to display any great drawing skill, just interesting composition--sort of an exercise of the eye and a training of the hand.

What happens to these I don't know.  Perhaps they will suggest an abstract approach,  maybe they will become nice sloppy luscious oil paintings--or mudpies, or nothing further.  For now they're just fun to play with in a sort of rapid-fire no mind way.

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Enso Rising In Cyberfunk

Enso Rising With Sidebar And Scroll, 12X16", mxed media on panel, 4/22/11

Yesterday I was showing this piece for the first time to my son, and having quite a fun time enumerating all the stuff in it.  Meanwhile my new follower, mixed media artist Sharmon Davidson, has the most brilliant idea of listing "ingredients"right in the blog.  Perfect!

Ingredients:  red part of a chocolate bar wrapper,  black lace, nylon window screen, white wedding frufru (four layers), Rich Art 'poster' paint, Crayola Washable, acrylic craft paint, un-tinted tint base No. 3, Elmer's glueall, spackling powder, sanded grout, tile mortar, sheer toilet paper (the cheap kind from hell).

Again, you cannot see the really cool thing going on here--some of the areas of glaze are so thick (visually) that you see all the way down to the bottom layers, past the splatter, and the cement, and color strokes, the embedded piece of window screen--and so forth.  Maybe if I showed a detail you could get some sense of it.

Enso Rising With Sidebar And Scroll, detail.

The enso is serious business.  It's part of Japanese calligraphy, and is thought to reflect the complete state of the maker's character.  If so I'm probably sunk for a start.  It carries a lot of mystic Zen vibe, and often is accompanied by that crazy Japanese script and red stamps that are just cool and no one knows why.  I mean people get this stuff tatooed on their necks.  I mean, huh?  I don't know what that's all about.  Anyway, I like ensos, serious or not.  They're like mandalas.  Very mysterious.   In a former life I was a sign painter, made ensos in my sleep.

Never done with enso.  

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Give Em Trees--They Love Trees--I Love Trees

Meditation With Cryptomeria Trees, 13X17", Mixed media on Panel, 4/11 

It occurred to me last night that I should be making more recognizable images. from the observed world, not because I need to from some psychological depth, but because it's polite.  What I mean is that, gee, why would anyone want to look at some psycho knot going on in some artist's head.  Give them something they can use.  So, here are some trees to deal with.  Without them there would only be thirty layers of translucent stuff with all sorts of craziness going on such that you could get lost like you went swimming just past the sort of surface tension that keeps it all nicely isolated.  Can't have that at all.  If that's not enough, a couple layers of concrete ought to solid it up.   Thanks for looking.

On the other hand just what does a Yogi see when he first closes his eyes?

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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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One On Each Side: The Day Art Was King





Lighthouse On Truck With Inscription



Slice Of Pizza On Metal Panel With Inscription

Bum Rogers Insisted On A Female Sook Even Though I Tried To Talk Him Out Of It
  

OK, it's not exactly fine art.  But I'm showing these in response to Katharine Cartwright's recent post on starving artists.  That and the most impressive response by Linda Roth, who essentially spelled out the story of my life.  What a fantastic forum.   This is one of my career iterations that I did to keep from having to starve, while protecting my fine art from compromise.  One gravitates to where one is appreciated in the money for art game.   Besides as a process artist, what difference does it make what the product is as long as the process is being experienced?  Same materials.  Same thoughts.  You know, lighthouse with crashing waves, gestural scribbles, portraits, pizza, crabs, whats the big deal?  

That pizza was for Larry Farrago, a former creative director at one of the big ad agencies.  Quit all the stress and started a pizza business.  How he found me I'll never know, although I was not unknown in transportation graphics.  Anyway, the piece was done in a Truck equipment firm--about a dozen mechanics, sales staff and office people.  As the painting reached it's final stages people started moaning in hunger.  Then around lunchtime Larry showed up with a few cartons of pizza and a portable oven, and treated the whole company to all the pizza they could eat, being so happy with the looks of his truck.    Art was king that day.

The illustrations were done in OneShot lettering enamel with Naz Dar Screen Printing Varnish as a glaze medium base,  drying times being manipulated with other types of varnish.   Hand lettering is done with Langnickel quills and OneShot Lettering Enamel.   Scale drawings of each truck were approved in advance, with the full sized patterns prepared in this studio. 

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PS  I don't know what the puffy art colleges teach now, but in my day they didn't teach any of this.   I agree with Linda, and add they need to be ashamed of themselves for extracting all that money and not teaching people how to get by.   That said, my AA laid a firm groundwork in commercial art for which I have always been greatful.   Then there's the BS I've discussed in other posts.  My Freudian slip is showing.  Sorry.

There He Goes Again

The Rebetsky Horizontal, 1987, 16 X 21, mixed media. 



Rebetsky detail A



Rebetsky detail B

Rebetsky detail C

This mixed media extravaganza started with a stylus impressing textures into the paper (thick bristol is the only paper I had found to withstand the abuse of one of these), followed by a tripple tone pen and ink stage  (.03 Rapidograph, black, blue and brown ), a series of rubbed pastel dust and tempura powder layers,  prismacolor toning, graphite lining and toning, and splatter layers in several colors.  These details seem fairly close to original size, but you can still click on them for even more of a blow-up. 

I think of this as pure art--playful, meditative, vigorous, silly, serious, intense, escapist--where the purpose of the paper is only to contain all that.   I have no idea what purpose it all serves, or how it fits in to anything in the art world, and I don't really care.   OK maybe I care a little.  I just like to do them again and again. 

Enough said.

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PS   I've added a detail to the previous post, the Arc Ascendant--way better.

Short Circuiting: The Intentional Mudpie



Landscape In Green, Oil, 6" X 9", inquire here for print.




Memories Of Oregon Ridge, Oil, 6" X 8", inquire here for print.



Shorting out monolinear thinking is a favorite pastime of mine.  Scribbling is one method.  Blessed mindlessness.  Let the materials do what they do.  Expect nothing.  One can observe the materials dancing in a sort of motion picture--highly entertaining--and get quite an art lesson as media capability gets stretched to the limit.  Or one can observe just who is the one doing the art.  This sequence is also instructive, ranging from mild curiosity to boredom to a kind of creative auto-pilot where there is no mind, only pure creative mode in perfect operation.  The results are always surprising, and once in a while, kind of nice. 

These are two examples of this involving the bypassing of any prep--no stretching, coat-out, drawing, underwork--just right to the paint.  The only parameter was to follow the simple visual rhythms as they presented themselves in composition and color, without all the academics.  I had an exhibit catalogue featuring antique photos of coal mine life in the late 1800's.  I tore the binding off and used each sheet as an instant composition (natural rhythm).  All detail was avoided and the paint itself became the subject.

As far as any finished painting is concerned, there are a lot of mudpies due to the intentional short circuiting stages, and not paying attention.  But when the auto pilot kicks in the results can be quite interesting--and the whole experience, liberating.  I was reminded of all this by the work of my new friend, Laura Tedeschi, although I can't speak to her motivations.  The approaches looked similar, though.

Wm