Art & Perception

My studio feels like a meat locker today. Working on a nice warm laptop seems like a good idea.

For a long time this image has sat on the bubble – that is to say, it has occupied a corner of the studio and my mind. It has been either on its way to the scrap heap or onward to further attention.  A brief description: this is of medium density particle board, incised with a router and depicting a portion of Akron, Ohio in the form of a map. It has been around for a few years and has undergone a number of changes in response to a variety of notions on my part. Prior to this iteration it had been painted red with mica glitter occupying the grooves. Pointless.

more… »

It was ten below when I got up this morning – definitely to be an indoor day.

I recently came upon one of those recession – related phenomena: an entire display of expensive and unsold ornaments, going for pennies on the dollar. The quality of the ornaments was unbelievable and I entered into a feeding frenzy.

This afternoon I began to disassemble the tree and had the new ornaments carefully grouped and ready for packing. There was something about the ornaments as they were caught in the winter sun that had me reaching for the camera.

more… »

Alcmaeon of Croton, a natural philosopher in 450 BC, concluded, based on his animal dissections, that the brain, not the heart, is the central organ of sensation and thought. However, a couple of centuries later, someone then articulated the idea that the seat of mental function resides in the ventricles of the brain – cavities filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Galen, the famous physician at the Roman Imperial Court in 170 BC, popularized this idea further in his extensive writings that were eagerly read throughout the dark Middle Ages.

The great Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci still held on to this ancient belief that the senso commune (sense of community), phantasy and imagination originated in the anterior ventricle; that the middle ventricle served cognition; and that memory was contained in the posterior ventricle.
more… »

Pine Creek Gorge, photo from Wikipedia Commons,  Commons licensing

I have been violating one of my basic principles. I have, gasp, been painting from photographs.

Pine Creek Gorge 2, 12 x 16″ Oil on board, 2008

more… »

I’ve been photographing horses for well over a year now, and I’m feeling it’s time to put together a show, or at least a portfolio. I would be happy just continuing to make photographs indefinitely, but I’d be happier grappling with the work in another way as well, reviewing it and thinking about it and looking for themes or ideas. A few thoughts have been mentioned in previous posts, but none has risen to the level of forming the backbone of a potential statement. Perhaps the most striking thing to emerge from my photographs is a lack of interest in anything resembling a classic, noble, iconic western horse. In fact, I notice that none of the images selected for this post even depicts an entire animal (though I have some that do).

One thing I realized in the course of the recent Morandi discussions is that the edges of the bodies are often blurred, or more generally obscured, either through intervening snow or grass…

more… »

Two points of interest are

(A) Art inspired by Barack Obama.

(B) Will the 2009 Economic Stimulus Package address unemployment among artists in analogy to the Federal Art Project, part of the Work Project Administration (WPA) created by Roosevelt?

(A) Quoting Rob Walker, New York Times:

Whether or not Barack Obama would make a good president, it’s clear that he makes an excellent muse. It’s hard to think of a political candidate in recent memory who has, in real time, inspired so much creativity, exercised free of charge and for the campaign’s benefit. Perhaps this suggests something about Obama — or maybe it suggests something about his supporters.

Shepard Fairey created this limited edition print of Barack Obama in an effort to fund a larger street poster campaign, January 2008. Fairey is one of today’s best known and most influential street artists. He sits on the advisory board of Reaching to Embrace the Arts, a not-for-profit organization that provides art supplies to disadvantaged schools and students. more… »

In a site called “Hold this Thought” Tom Livingston (Between Silence and Light) quotes architect Louis Kahn:

Architect Louis Kahn’s writings about daylight resonate with me. Here he talks about the nature of a room and its natural light:

“The room is not only the beginning of architecture: it is an extension of self. If you think about it, you realize that you don’t say the same thing in a small room that you say in a large room. If I were to speak in a great hall, I would have to pick one person who smiles at me in order to be able to speak at all.
…
Also marvelous in a room is the light that comes through the windows of that room and that belongs to the room. The sun does not realize how wonderful it is until after a room is made. A man’s creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of a miracle. Just think, that a man can claim a slice of the sun.”

http://www.holdthisthought.org/blog/index.cfm/2008/12/23/Between-Silence-and-Light-Tom-Livingston

I’m rather addicted to painting plein air, but the weather in western Oregon is more like eastern Kansas (ie snow, ice, slush, ugh!) right now. So I’ve been painting from my windows, which frame various neighborhood views and foliage. But the Kahn quote also gets me to thinking about the nature of rooms, which I haven’t painted.

This is the unprepossessing set-up in my kitchen. The reason for painting in the kitchen, in spite of the traffic and the high window, is that the best tree in the vicinity faces the sink. It is a continual source of happiness to me — to be cleansing the cutlery while gazing at the ancient face of the huge cherry, with all its anciliary objects — squirrels, hanging plants, pots on the fence that leans against it.

more… »