Waking from the dead or an intellectual revival
Sometimes you can be dead for a long time but not know it. Despite working in an academic environment and despite consistently working in the studio, I’d say I’ve been brain-dead about art for about 20 years. There have been a few exceptions, such as when I got into a reading jag of art history books put out by the Oxford History of Art. So what’s the problem and how did this come about? Well work for one-work, meaning work that is like in a job, my day job, which I don’t knock, as it pays some of the bills, keeps me healthy and provides a structure, but intellectually challenging it is not.
Most of my time spent not at work or teaching is spent in constructing my days so I get to the studio and do as much work as I can and then at night trying to figure out which shows I should enter and how to market my art as a so called “Abstract Landscape Painter” which is one of the buzz words that I came up with Ken Klages, my web designer and web optimizer. Sounds like atomizer. In any case, this along with making sure that I do some kind of physical activity, pay my bills, keep my house somewhat tidy, maintain relationships has seemed to tax me so much that I wound up giving up reading almost all fiction, (unless you consider the NYTimes fiction) and have allowed my grey matter to be filled up with re-runs of Law and Order or Mystery or even Hoarders! The one positive thing about Hoarders is that I do always clean out my refrigerator or closet after a show. But I digress-
So I thought that I would as a Nature oriented painter (there are those buzz words again) be content to just paint away looking at, appreciating and reinterpreting the landscape, my landscape, here, right here in Marin County, CA, but I’m not completely content doing so-as I’m not sure that those dark and sometimes humorous things that I reflect on in a daily way make their way to the surface. The intellectual kick in the pants came from reading “The $7 million stuffed shark,” and now my current reading “Seven days in the Art World.” Now this is not to say that I haven’t been an avid reader of politics and world, national and local news-as I have been, but short of working directly for a particular organization that actually has a track record of making a dent in things, how to feel effectual has been daunting. And my job has always been that of an artist, which to my mind traverses the mixed waters of beauty, irony, observation, rumination, contemplation and commentary. In any case, I’m glad to have my brain back.