Feeling Inspired. Actually spent all morning, and then some, painting in the dining room. Chris sat across from me and read a magazine for awhile, the girls sat across and painted in tempera for awhile, and I handled all the stresses while maintaining inspiration and motivation. doesn't hurt that I have a painting due in less than a week. Almost done with one, hoping to finish 3.

Influences:

Hans Hofmann


Richard Diebenkorn

William Kentridge



Cy Twombly



Jean Michel Basquiat



Alice Neel

Keith Tyson



Joan Mitchell



Really liked Melissa Herrington at Art Chicago this year - uses resin.



Hung Liu



Squeak Carnwath - can't see the translucent alkyds on screen



Franz Kline



Agnes Martin



Helen Frankenthaller



Robert Motherwell



Robert Rauschenberg



Jasper Johns


What do these pieces have in common? Most of them have a balance of bold and subtle color, a play on texture, and are abstracted. I don't usually care for realism. Its the play of translucent layers of paint that really makes my heart pound. Its more universal if its non-objective. I like that; it lasts longer for me because I can continue to read it differently over time. Some are about line, some have text, some are cathartic. I relate to most of these pieces on an emotional-visual level that is above just seeing and beyond the appreciation I can conjure up for representational work. Some paintings give me a feeling that I have to swallow them whole, that I'm desperate to crawl inside them, to never look away. They induce a panic for their beauty. I don't know if I can ever make such a thing for another person to feel, but its important not to get caught up in realism and to continue to paint from this non-verbal, emotional-visual, panic, even cathartic state. To feel the painting, never to over-think it. (I'm guilty of some of that right now.)

The other day I saw a cut corn field FULL of geese and I imagined they were the crop and you could just pick one by it's long neck.