on sight

Recently, we went to a park and made paintings. This is something that used to be at the center of my artistic process, but over the last five years, has totally disappeared from said process. What happened? The short answer is academia. But, who cares about short answers.

For me academia was a good thing. I am eternally grateful that I went back to school. It forever changed my life for the better. I had to rethink the ways I was used to working and question what mattered to me. This led to new and interesting challenges, which led to changes, which made more people interested in what I'm doing. Communication being the end goal. This being said, there are certain things that are frowned upon in a contempory, academic setting. One of them is making paintings that looked cutting edge fifty years ago. Which mine did. My process used to be, go out and make drawings and paintings of an area. Collect items from that area (mostly rocks and bits of things). Go back into the studio and make finished paintings by combining all these things. Sometimes I would flip the sketches over and tear them up and then reassemble them into collages that I would paint from. Sometimes I would superimpose the rocks and detritus over the landscape. I would be as complicated or as simplified with this process as I felt the piece required. Sometimes I would throw all the stuff on the ground, mix it up and make a painting. I sort of left it up to intuition. Looking back, this turned out to be the real lesson. I learned to hone and trust my intuition, which is invaluable to me now.

But sitting in a place, taking it in, really taking it in, was at one time, the center of joy in my life. I doubt my paintings from this time communicate this. Although I do think they communicated my loneliness and detachment from the world, which people only want to look at, if it mirrors theirs. Mine didn't. I was definitely more interested in staring at the world, than participating in it. Although I now know that this is unhealthy, a very small part of me still remembers the pleasure and freedom of checking out. I guess the reason I equate on site painting with detachment, is because I was a concentrating, solitary figure in a moving world. A part, yet apart. What happened is that there wasn't an exchange beyond my pure reaction to the world. Now that sounds great. Pure is good. Pure is pure. Pure sounds like something good, nay, great art strives for. But ultimately it is a closed system. The dialogue ends where it starts. Never reaching into our shared world. At least for me it didn't. And I stuck with that shit for about eight years, so you can't say I didn't put the time in.

I guess the major change was more me than academia. I grew up, got in touch with my shit etc... Academia helped me through it though. It holds you accountable or more accurately, it makes you hold yourself accountable. Especially, if you pay for it yourself.

I think we are going to make this a regular thing. The "we" componant also being the major difference. No more solitary figure in the landscape. Now there are two figures hunched over concentrating. And better snacks.

So we went and made paintings in the park. I had no ambition, except to savor the moment. We found a great spot. On the lip of a canyon, looking directly at the other lip, with the city peeking out from behind a spikey bush to our right. A red tailed hawk circled above us. A sunny day. I chose to paint nature instead of the city. All those plants, bushes, and grasses merging together. It was formless and uncomplicated in its spirit.