The one thing that is important to me is drawing and sketching. I do not really devote my time to drawing from life. There are times when I do. But I like the notion of sketching what ever comes into my head, doodling something that turns into something, and just doing something that is weird, strange, surreal using references to help. The last several months I have been in a bit of a stalled zone when it comes to this. The heat of Phoenix during the summer is tough, triple digits, and I find that its not a condition that I work well under. Also other things have been sapping my energy and concentration too. I miss the careful doodles, the tightly drawn figure or weird creature and the big, epic figure drawings that do take effort and time. Painting is sort of like writing a novel. E.L. Doctorow said that writing a novel is like driving across the country at night, and you can only see what the head lights illuminate in front of you. Drawing is something different. For another artist drawing has primacy. For me it is complimentary to the paintings but also its where things begin, Where I get ideas, where I develop ideas, or where I put them down on paper. The simplicity of it, a surface to make marks and something that is the mark maker, seems so eloquent. My great medium is graphite. This attachment is due to me using pencils at many times sketching in classes, alone at home, where ever. The ease of use. You can carry a pencil and a sketchbook anywhere. If I see painting (at least the larger works) as novel writing what do I consider drawing? Good question. Short story writing? improvisations? I am not sure of what sort of analogy to give it. In the last several months have been doing sketching and drawing but feeling too tired or sort of frustrated. The results are generally bland or just me'h with a shoulder shrug. I want to get back into drawing again with some energy. This may be in due course with the ever slowly declining heat in Phoenix, when I say slow I mean as this writing it will take another six weeks for the feverish heat to break. Back to business. Drawing. 

There is another Star Wars movie that is coming out. This one is set before A New Hope. What I can gather from the trailer its the events of stealing the plans of the Death Star. It looks like its a action packed movie, impressive CGI, and adventure. Something missing from the prequels (sorry, gotta dig a bit on those.) But what I am getting at is that the need for narratives, for stories about hope and adventure, good vs. evil. Characters that people hold close to there hearts. It is very interesting that people will get so angry and passionate about the movies. You cannot really find that in the Art World, Art Museums. Generally Art Speak and the environment is didactic, lecturing, wanting to inform about relevance to historical developments and a little boring. When will you ever see people lining up outside a museum for hours to see something? Van Gogh, Da Vinci, yes, but few and far between. I predict that this new film, Rogue One will be successful and make serious money. Which leads me to this painting. Again, like the earlier Darth Babe pic its my twisting the iconic image into something strange or new. This time mixing a Disneyesque Snow White dress with the head mask of Vader. Disney owns the Star Wars world. The movies will be rolling out like clock work. Back stories of Boba Fett, Hans Solo, you name it. All sorts of stories will be coming out. Is this good or bad. I would say both. What made the first three movies so special was the reality that there were only those three films. They were like the standard text of that universe. To everyone it was those three points that directed debate, cultural references, and discussions. It was also limited to only that. Now with multiple stories, new characters, expanded plots of the same events, it allows for greater details and information for the fan. The expansive approach to the narratives opens it up to more people who may have not had much interest in the world of Star Wars. It also opens up narratives that were limited in the originals (meaning mainly white males, a few white females), now you can have different cultural and ethnic characters both male and female. Its opening up to the larger world we live in. Strange how something that could be called a big dumb movie with space wizards is more of a touch stone to deep psychological needs. Indeed, Jung's observation that under our supposed rational and mechanized (computerized) world there is the need for the mystical, magical, non-mechanistic. Why do people wait in line for hours to see a movie? Why do people do the same for music concerts? It touches on something that is vital. I hope that I can make art work that can share a little of that power.

TAKING A SECOND LOOK!!!

I recently discovered a blog by Arthur Trombatta. He was a student at the college in Great Britain where I gave a lecture in 2014. He wrote about my presentation and my work. He said that my work had no reflection in it, that he had no emotional connection with it. Fair enough. I was not angry, well a little bit. This set me thinking about my work. What I wished he would have wrote that my work is superficial. This is not to be taken as a bitter attitude on my part. There was a teacher in grad school who said that my work was superficial. During grad school a visiting artist, who I will not name, said that my work was nothing, I would be nothing like Henry Darger. After reading Arthur's blog about my work it got me to thinking about my work.  I took a longer look at what I was doing. So, is my work superficial? I have no idea. Is it devoid of emotional content? Maybe. Is it too much of mental self-indulgence? Perhaps. I am thankful for Arthur's comments. The work I do is what it is. If its deemed surface and no depth by some, I accept that and embrace it. I will find an audience who will like and love my work, I will find people who will want to own my work. It may change over time, and who knows what the future will look like.

I was watching the documentary "The People vs. George Lucas". An interesting film, sort of a sociological document or even an anthropological one. I am not sure. But I would say that it illuminates something that I find about the those that are deeply engaged with the whole series. The thing that I saw first was that most, if not all the people being interviewed were white men. This is not a bad thing, only that I have to say that the original three movies appealed to a predominately white, suburban, and young male audience. I could be wrong about that but I was one of those who liked it very much in my youth. Second it came about in a time when there was an "Evil Empire", borrowing from Ronald Reagans' observation of the former Soviet Union. This is past, and what is past is prologue. There was this sense for a hopeful and purer notion of morality. This movie had never been seen before. A simple morality tale with space wizards and space ships. The American public, in particular, the white American public seemed to need a story with a clearly defined idea of morality, who is good and who is bad. If you think about it, in 1977, there had been gas shortages, the disaster of the Vietnam war, Watergate and Nixon resigning, and the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. The nation had changed, had lost face, had seemed to be stagnant, and in with drawl. Then this movie made an impact that had changed the way movies were made. I will not get into what happened from then to know. I will jump to now. Year after year are movies, TV shows, video games, you name it that come out that grab attention, that do something that has not been done before. Or shall I say that the way movies are made stem from that movie from 1977. The big grab at the box office, subject matter that once was either not possible or deemed childish. Marvel and DC superhero movies, Sci-fi stories, Lord of the Rings (Game of Thrones), Pixar, Dreamworks, horror movies even became more sophisticated. Okay, got it, changed it all. But what I felt rather sad was that people were talking about films, "the movie going experience" as if this was a really meaningful event in ones life. I can see that in 1977, 1979, 1980 when movies were busting out in stories and characters and worlds that were never before seen on the big screen. Today its part of big business, corporate profit models and merchandising marketing. Looking back at the late 70's and early 80's those times seem quaint, a kind of simpler time, charming you could say. But now its all entertainment, all the time. Its about watching TV, its about Netflix, its about toys, games, playing, consuming. There is nothing wrong with any of this. Yet, and yet, the passions of people for the movies seemed a little pathetic. I am sorry to use that word but I think I want to try to make a point. Passionate debate about how Lucas changed the original movies, how the prequels are not so great. HAN SHOT FIRST!!  Yet, you are buying corporate products, mass produced, think of the carbon footprint of all this plastic crap that will be left behind. The idea of the Force, the notion of the inner choices dealing with actions, behaviors, thoughts in their direct relationship with an unseen power (the light side or dark) sounds great. That has a reflection of Eastern religious and philosophical ideas, Buddhism and Taoism in particular. It has a sense of play about it, and entertaining adventures, characters you root for to do right, to deal with conflict and all the stuff that stories do. This is all being sold to you. Buddhism is a way of life, doing and thinking that I have been engaged in for last few years. Its hard, I often times feel like saying F**K it. Yet, I find that it has changed my view of my life and the nation I live in. What am I getting at? I am getting at the notion that its still a bill of goods being sold to you, Jedi's protecting good and justice, the Evil Empire doing what it does, it is a series of stories of feel good numbo jumbo in a land of continuous, mindless, empty consumption, if you need this to have meaning in your life. By all means please do. The question is that I fault about this is all of this is a friggin global corporation getting you to spend money on this. And the fact that these people can quote me chapter and verse of Star Wars this and Star Wars that is basically useless nerd knowledge. Oh, god did I just say that!? Yes, there is more to the world than this, I can quote from the movies, but I have also moved on to other things, painting, literature, poetry, theater and science. The world moved from one set of ideas to another after 9/11. The world changed from set of realities that we embrace to another after the economic crash of 2008. I have to say that I have not had a television for many years. I hardly see movies anymore. This decoupling myself from the infotainment complex, 24 hours a day "news" cycle, the "Celebrity Culture" magazine rags, the whole lot. A person may say that they needed something to have hope, to believe in, they felt that they were alone in this world. I can understand that being a loner when I was young. In the late 70's it was new and original, we needed it perhaps. BUT now everything is for sale, even your dreams. Feeling lonely, here we have something for you (for a price), feeling like you don't fit in, here you go (the cashier will be waiting at the door), need hope for the future, well you have come to the right place (step right up and get your ticket). I may be too harsh. I will pull back a say that its all in good fun. What is wrong with just having a good time? Being silly? Dressing up and being someone else for a short time? Nothing. I think that its great to do that. People should do more of doing something that takes them out of what they know, what they are comfortable in doing. I will say that if your need for expression is to dress up like a storm trooper, Darth Vader, etc. and play out scenes of adventure and drama then what is the harm. None, and that is a good thing. We all need a fantasy life, to act out fictions, playing out scenes of in which good and evil are battling for control. That is something that must be expressed. I am thinking that one thing that might let this be a greater cathartic experience is that a day is made into a holiday, Star Wars day (Yes, May the Forth). People spend the day being there favorite character from the movies. People abandon for a day their daily lives and act out battles between Jedi and Sith, Rebels versus Empire, use the language and dress of the films. A festival of breaking out of the routine of daily life with its responsibilities and obligations to the practical matters of living. That actually might make people less tense, less angry, less isolated. Role playing, really playing the parts, make the day a time of letting loose. Being Jedi fighting for justice and the Republic or being a Sith and playing with the darker aspects of human thought and behavior. It is happening everywhere, people are in clubs or groups where they dress up and do battle. playing out scenarios of adventure. The "Nerd" culture is opening up to more people than just suburban white boys. It has more women getting into comic books and cosplay, African-American, Latino, Asian. Its getting broader in scope and more inclusive. I can see why the new Star Wars film, and those to follow, have touched more people. The older movies were, lets face it, a lot of wonderbread on screen. The new films will have a mixture of various people of background and ethnicity. That is what I think is hopeful about it. That even if this is a corporate vacuum to suck your money from you pocket, there is a greater group of people all enjoying the stories and characters who reflect more of the world we live in. Woman who do cosplay are playing out their fantasies of being strong women. They can play a role of the superhero who saves the day, who can go on adventures, do what is right, wrestle with moral questions, and be the part of something larger. It lets women act out in ways that would be deemed inappropriate or not supported by parents, or society. I went to the Comic Con in Phoenix this year. there were many young women dressed as Harley Quinn. I do not know anything about this character but I can assume from the dress that they all were feeling empowered, taking a chance at playing a crazy character, letting themselves think differently than they would otherwise do. I got bored with the products being sold there, it just became the same thing over and over again, But the people, manly young people were having fun. They were playing around, comparing, it was a grand scene of meeting and seeing. Fearless and showing off what they could do (if they made the costumes) or showing off how well they pulled off a character. That was what I enjoyed being there. That does take a great deal of courage to do something like that. As you can tell I have first complained then turned to try and see the best qualities of all of this. Its important to work out what ever thoughts you have about anything. It is not for me to simply dismiss all of this, it is important to many. And for that I must respect their passions and their interests. If they go to comic cons or the opening of the next Star Wars movie, its both about courage and fun. Its a full fantasy life to contrast this mundane that is important. I am an artist, different than those who make films or those who make their own costumes based on characters in films, TV or comic books, but an artist just of a different type. I guess the documentary touched on something that I have not really thought about for a long time. I too was moved and embraced Star Wars, a young boy who dreamed of adventures, battling the bad guys, saving the galaxy. What young boy could deny such fantasies. I have since moved on to other things, as is what happens in life. I dismissed all of it too quickly, then came to realize that who am I to just simply say its nothing. What is needed and what people do is play, but it is serious play. Important to have a sense of wonder, and to act out something. This blog entry seems to have been rather cathartic. All art is about seeing things in a different way, even movies made by a giant corporation like Disney. May the force be with you. Party on Wayne, party on Garth.

"The Portrait of Forrest Solis or the Mystery of the Feminine" The person who posed for it was Forrest Solis, my professor in graduate school. If you want the reasoning behind it; What is going on? What is this about? Working on it, from a small sketch of a figure with tongues sticking out with another head on that to the completed image, I cannot really give you a reason or reasons as to what is this! Let us take a trip in this image from rear to near. The landscape has a look of a surface of the human brain. Why did I paint it like that? It just happened that way. But as we get into the action, the forms that you can see, it shows my interest in numerology or the symbolism of numbers. Odd numbers. That happened when I painted the rainbow tree forms, there had to be seven of them. It was then that I was interested in symbolism of numbers. Three heads, one flower, then seven trees, and then in that was the use of five butterflies, and seven donuts. Why donuts? I cannot say exactly. Sexual? Yes. Empty calories? Yes. But also the circle is about both completeness and the number of them is nine. Nine has a interesting reality. The square root of 9 is 3. This reflects the three heads. The number 3, beginning, middle and end. That leads to the flower. The flower is the first number, 1. The singularity. What is this getting at? I have not idea really, I can talk about the Dhammapada, a collection of Buddhas saying. I could include Jungian ideas. Its an image that seemed to happen, and the real work was building it that made sense, that the elements worked together, and in the end the question I ask about anything that I do as an artwork, "Is this worth me doing?". I can try to write more about the internal workings of this work. The work is less about me thinking, reasoning, and illustrating some philosophical idea, and about letting something happen. I read a great deal. I have interests in Jungian ideas, mythology, etc. This is to let sink into the mind and let it arise out of making images. This is a good example. It works as an painting.

I have been doing smaller paintings as of late. This is both to make more work and to have a greater opportunity to make money with more sales. No artist can really be oblivious to the nature of what they do. We make things that have no direct function to the world, or we are not bakers, carpenters or city planners. Enough of that. What is this? Its a series of small works in which I am using humor with an iconic character of popular culture, Darth Vader. One can make the case that there are no real original stories or characters just the constant flux, flow and transformation of previous ideas that stretch back to the beginning of civilization. All well and good. Right now I am using a Vader head mask and combining it, juxtaposing, contrasting, or using incongruous arrangements. This character is very well known to most people in the United States. I cannot say for the rest of the world. Its a figure of the Fallen Knight, or warrior, or soldier. A character that you can find in practically all cultures in the world. Samurai, Medieval knights, Cowboys culture, you name it. The basis is not the fall but the redemption of the person that matters. Vader shares that history. But today the character is also a property, a character that has been used to sell breakfast cereal, action figures, cookie jars, T-shirts, you name it. What I wanted to do is take this well known character, or to use the corporate entertainment industry description, this property, and spin it into another direction. The basis is that I like painting shiny surfaces and clothes. Its a great challenge and looks cool. The second part is that by putting this masculine figures head on a woman's body the character becomes something else. it becomes less about the reality of it symbolic meaning and more about its universal appeal AND the silly nature of our narratives, mythos. This character has embraced the darker aspects of the human heart and mind. Yet in the movies he really is not that brutal of a character. One can not really compare Vader to say the brutality of the Nazi's and the SS. (Yes, the Death Star destroyed a planet and killed billions but that was not Vader's order). Taking the head of Vader and placing it on a female figure pokes fun at the icon, saying that this is just a fiction created by a group of people for entertainment value in a space movie. It stretches the character into absurd, surreal or bizarre arrangements. Changing the arrangement makes one think differently of the symbolism of the character or with that new arrangement one can reaffirm the symbolic significance behind the artifice of Vader.

"The Cosmic Dharma Bears". This image comes from my interest in eastern religion and belief. Specifically Buddhism. Although Buddhism today is not one singular form it has a few characteristics that are of interest to me. This is not an image based upon any kind of vast knowledge of Buddhism. I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh, a very interesting man and insightful writer. He was talking about the "basics" of Buddhism. He was talking about the three great dharma seals. There is not ego or self, all of life is transitory (in flux and flow) and nirvana. This set my mind off into many directions. The idea of the ego, the self being an illusion, life being a constant state of movement and change, and the realizing of one understanding the world and themselves within that achieves nirvana, or enlightenment. This is a painting of course and not a dissertation of the nature of Buddhism. This lead me to make a few small oil sketches. There was a previous idea of bears in the woods, a family walking outside there house. The three bears of the Goldie Locks story. But as I let the idea develop it became this. The strange warm, orange/red world, the word seals became bears. And the bears have two eyes. One in the head and one in the stomach. The way one sees with the mind and the way one sees through the body. The ground under them seems to be atomizing, being reduced to the base elements, swirling and changing, the platform is like a volcanic strata, mineral hot springs. Both stable but seeming to be melting, turning soft, loosing its material cohesion. The reds, oranges, yellows correspond to the Buddha's understanding that all of life, we humans, and all living things are a house on fire. We are burning. In that fire we can achieve an understanding, a deep acceptance of the passing of time, our own changes that will be us and the nature of the world. And its a very cool painting in the bargain.