Wrestling with a new piece, "The Secret Life of Wind", another 48"x64" graphite on gesso panel. In diptych format. Its been a classic roller-coaster ride emotionally: elation and misery in equal parts.
Still a little taken aback sometime, even after so many years of this, at the angst and self-loathing that can ride up along side you like highwaymen in the night and steal the joy right out of your heart.
In pieces like this I usually lay-in a framework early...bones...upon which I will then flesh out the raw schema of an image. Recently this has come to include using sprayed graphite to create the ghostly silhouettes of saw blade shapes. (The blade is from a large, old two-man saw...ironic, I suppose.) These initial strokes can have all manner of implications for how the work will unfold, and frequently constitute an interesting and appealing image in and of themselves. Like making art in general, this chapter can be as wildly variable emotionally and aesthetically as the larger context in which it is embedded. And all the crazy vicissitudes of my mental state can manifest just as forcefully during this phase; so much so that at times I find it way too easy to get over-invested in how cool it looks, or in some fun constellation of marks and shapes in one corner or another...and can become disconnected from the larger imperative inherent in the quest for resolution and gestalt in the final work. In plain english: I just start getting more and more uptight about fucking it up! A classic conundrum woven through so many aspects of life besides art. You know instinctively that there is someplace that you must go...and that getting there is going to involve letting go of an awful lot of old forms and attachments...chaos and destruction will likely ensue...pain will be felt...
And so wild marathon days lately, and cold sleepless nights pacing the studio, knowing I've made a bloody mess of things at this point...and just taking comfort in the one thing I know is true: as long as there is breath and movement...if I can just keep putting one foot in front of another...and endure...then time will be my friend in the end.
He's an artist whose work and life has inspired and informed almost everything I've done for the past 30 years...like no other. The galleries website had a quote from him that is timely and apt:
Sometimes when I start a sculpture, I begin with only a realized part, the rest is travel to be unfolded much in the order of a dream. The conflict for realization is what makes art not its certainty, nor its technique or material.
--David Smith
* The phrase "savage uncertainties" was planted in my mind recently by @MatthewBattles , who used it in the context of this intelligent and moving post:
