studio walls

more tao from the studio

as i was clicking shots of current work, realized i'd never documented some of these others.
curiously, the "tao" label came through unintentionally. (these were indeed the first three letters of a title on some magazine caption).

Midterm Paintings

Here are a couple of midterm paintings.
The topic is "On the Road."

inquisitive adventure '07

reality?

it's been a while since i've shared some philosophical meanderings, so i felt due...

does something become a reality because we believe it to be so?
does a dream continue to be (by definition) a dream-- even when it comes true?

these are the swimming pool topics of the week.

by virtue, dreams fuel our hopes and our fantasies.
when we stop dreaming, we often stop hoping; thereby grounding us in our own realities.

how, why, when, where
can we
bridge that gap?


(*paintings compliments of linda lieberman)

lunchtable

richard goldman portrait

the practice continues

Fire and earth... 2007

2007

'007...already quite the year. lots going on.
and in spite of it all, it took the loss of a dear friend and a great man to stop me in my tracks and slow down a bit.
john w. flynn.
i'll write a separate post as a tribute. (to follow in the next week).

for now, some friends asked me to post some new paintings to my website and i'm a little too entrenched to create new "pages." the easier way was to post them here.

'tis the season

(photo above is of the famous author mike moran and the fearless kevmo, aka kev reid)

for those who love the holidays, the season passes too quickly.
for those who'd rather it pass quickly, the season becomes a time of difficulty and stress.
for those who are indifferent, well, i guess those people are just indifferent types.

it's in those stressful moments, that we forget about peace, with a capital letter "P." It then becomes those little things that annoy us. Let us not let things annoy us. let us not forget those other little things -- you know, the ones that bring us comfort.

may you all have those other little things, those that we call comfort & joy...



happy holidays!

Tiny Show @ StudioGallerySF

Hi Everyone,

Will be showing two little 2"x 2" paintings
Tiny Show at the StudioGallerySF, 1718A Polk Street
SF, 94109 (Am honored and a little, ahem, nervous to be showing in the presence of some very cool artists.)

particulars: tiny, small pieces under $200,
Wednesday, 11/15/06 - Sunday, 12/24/06

reception:
Saturday, November 18th, 4-8 pm
3rd Anniversary Party:
Saturday, December 9th, 4-8 pm

the link:
http://studiogallerysf.com/wst_page12.html

the brief:
"...tiny is a show of all small work, perfect for gift-giving or treating yourself. All the wall pieces are all under 7" x 7", the tabletop pieces are all small, and everything is under $200. We'll have over 200 pieces on display, and we'll bring out new pieces every day. Work from over 80 local artists will be shown, and many of our favorite artists have made pieces just for the show. A great way to get unique, handmade gifts for the holidays or find that perfect piece for yourself, and support the local arts community at the same time."

hope to see you there!

on closure

is closure like happiness? -- you know it when you feel it?
do we need some event or someone or something to help up know when something's done?

is it the same for:
friendships?
love relationships?
paintings?

how do we know when to stop. when it *feels* done?
or when you're tired and can't work any more.

like paintings, we don't want to overwork relationships. especially ones that make us more tired.
but sometimes we fall in love with the experience, the image, the euphoria and (selfishly?) don't want it to end,
even though we know it's best left pristine and untouched for what it is?

there are some paintings that aren't the best, but fine for what they are.
we learn from them and leave them as snapshots to our learning.

yet, there are some, we know are wonderful and fresh and want to keep working, but know we don't quite yet have
skills or ability to finish.

the best thing might be to "walk away from the canvas" until we can see the image more clearly.
the best thing is not to try to make fixes on others' advice, no matter now experienced or skilled that advice may be.

for life is what we make of it.
it is our experiences that help guide our next ventures.
the painting might call us back or stand fine on its own right.
it is for us to decide to and viewer to judge.
for this is the only way we can ever find peace of mind.

To Sell or Not to Sell, that is the question

Is there ever a point where you feel you are "selling out?"

When do you let something go?
When do you allow someone to put a price on your soul?
When do YOU put a price on your worth?

Are there some things that cannot be renumerated?

As artists, we create concepts to share with the world. In many ways, these cannot be assigned monetary value.Yet, we live in a society that likes to price and rank and subdivide and categorize.
In light of this, we struggle with when to give over our "intellectual property."
We must then ask ourselves: Will these purchasing folk nurture our intent?

Can worth be measured by sales?
Do we sell our paintings or our ideas for the opportunity to make more paintings and share more ideas?
I think this can be falsely self-fulfilling.

As someone who likes to share and engage in ideas, I find it tremendously difficult to "sell my work." (Or, is the question really that I find it tremendously difficult to let someone own my work?)
As a producer, who has worked by helping others manage their idea$, I also realize that commerce is the way we negotiate a treacherous territory of barter. Folks, this is what I'd classify as a "double bind."

I guess for me, it all comes down to the fact, that my ideas are for sale, my soul is not.
My time can be bought, but my person cannot be sold.

If money were no object, could we live our lives without such a system?
One hopes this is the case. For now, let us return to a system of worth and value rather than the barter of want and need.
One also hopes that this could save many a lot of grief.

floaters not sinkers

are you a floater or a sinker?
do you consider yourself a floater?
i do -- consider myself a floater --in the water, except then maybe, i'm not as solid as i'd hoped.
we have, here, yet another existential oxymoron.

this transitions, ackwardly so, to the issue of dense expection.
when someone is denser than i'd hoped, i wonder: what is this source of visceral aversion?
both in mass and in thought, dense is not all that appealing to me.
light and airy are things that make me feel, well, more alive.

the topic, then becomes an issue of density.

we live in a dense society -- where the "per capita" far exceeds the reasonable need for personal space.
the morning commute on the N-Judah train is a perfect sample of said "case-in-point."
it's the density (pun intended) that makes me uneasy. it is the lack of consideration which also makes me -- uneasy.
still, i refuse to believe that 3 strong guys are so impolite that they to continue to sit while their pregnant co-riders remain standing: could they possibly BE that dense?!? one hopes they are simply oblivious...would this somehow make their "dense-ness," in our already overcrowded density, more tolerable?!?

from there, from that much too cramped sardine-line sample of humanity, i get off the train -- in a tunnel. as the escalator climbs to the surface, i experience a those few blocks of city air on the way to my office. there, i sit, in a scattering of cubes whose walls are much too close and not quite high enough. it is there that i lived for the better part of my past year -- amongst a density of schedules, tensions, and nervous energy.

by the noon-hour, i'm re-"fresh"-ed (if you can call it that) by the secondary 2 blocks of downtown SF city air. (while the weather is nice out, it is on those days that i am wishing the distance from my work to my pool were just a few more blocks. but, then i remember that i'm relieved because it is i, who has created a dense efficiency in my overcrowded schedule by working-out so close to work. (whew! these words are crowding my brain.)

it is at this point in my day, i climb into a cleverly groomed underground pool whose walls have no windows for natural light nor any views to the outside. once again, on this typical day, i'm confronted by a false dense pool population. i call it " false," because it's not dense at all: three swimmers per lane does not a crowded pool make, however, because of imploding sense of overwhelm, i feel crowded.

we contrast this with a mere 1.5 years ago, when i happily tolerated 15 in my public pool just for the freedom of a swim.

here, ladies and gentleman, we have a case of relativity.
the spoils compared to the other spoils.

but the issue of feeling overcrowding does not go away. i change lanes 3 times and still find that everyone wants to share MY lane. have i become a "crowd me" magnet?
perhaps this is somehow related to the fact that i'm physically a small-er person. could it be that because i take less physical space than others on this planet that i seem to feel that i "suffer" personal overcrowding -- on the bus, in the pool, in my life. we digress...

so after all this density, namely:
the pushing-and-shoving, the mental overcrowding, the self-imposed agenda crowding,
i find a desire to remain a floater.
one tangible theory could be that there's less tangible mass in doing so.
still, i prefer to think of it as a new campaign for "less density" -- in whatever we do.

big little questions

Can someone know so little about you and know you so well?

Do you believe in genetic predisposition?
Or more apropos --- genetic projection??
Or,can we all just chalk it all up to chemistry?

Lots of questions for something that should seem to have obvious answers.

Some call it religion, others call it serendipity...
Sometimes, there are events, happenings, or people that come into our lives for no other reason than to make us question and realize that we can do nothing but know -- deep in our hearts, that they will be significant.

There are times in our lives that are so wrought with pain and then suddenly balanced with inconceivable joy that we then realize this is the reason we persist, subsist, and exist.

It is during these times when we can imagine that Fate has taken some big bucket of water, or even more specifically a cattle prod and has poked us right into the side, over and over, until we feel either the wave wash over us or some big sharp pain that makes us sit up and pay attention.

There are, indeed, times for the individual (and for the masses) that we wonder -- why events or people or things in our lives are so clearly meant to be, (clearly necessary,) and yet so
very unexplainable. These are things that come into our our lives which can be explained only *outside* of reasonable doubt. There are people whom we meet -- that we feel as if we've known sometime in our pasts or that we feel we are destined to know, for some unforeseable reason to hopefully be explained in our futures.

This is where we must once again return to our beliefs, our need to trust, or our simple instincts.
You can't force a poke, or make a wave wash over you; you can sit back and recognize the joy in doing so when it does.

Simply knowing that it's the excitement of the unknown that helps us persist.
No matter how grim, it's the potential of hope that must reside at the core of our beliefs - whatever those might be.

trusts, absolutes and greys

When does a person succumb and start to trust?
Is trust something that's a given?
Innocent until proven guilty?
Or, is trust something earned?

I think one begins to trust others when they truly begin to trust themselves.
Or, when life hands them a situation that is so clear, so bold, so obvious,
that there's nothing else to do than to come to a conclusion.

We might not know the source of the message or its meaning, but we know.

There ARE times in life when we know.
There are times when there's nothing else to do than to believe:
It is at those moments (call them epiphanies, if you will) that
one knows a piece of art is right, that a situation is right (or wrong), that one can no longer doubt.

Don't you think?

Angelou wisdom: Living Well is an Art

(a friend forwarded me the following piece from Angelou.
many who know me, will find this blog addresses many of the same issues...albeit not as eloquently.
so, i thought i'd share the real STUFF below...{this painting, entitled "favorite things," is a couple years old, from one of my first classes. the selection was made for this post because angelou addresses some of my favorite things and because sometimes it's good to return to earlier work.})





"...LIVING WELL IS AN ART which can be developed. Of course, you will
needthe basic talents to build upon: They are a love of life and ability to
take great pleasure from small offerings, an assurance that the world owes
you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift. That people who
may differ from you in political stance, sexual persuasion, and racial
inheritance can be founts of fun, and if you are lucky, they can become
even convivial comrades.

BECAUSE OF THE ROUTINES we follow, we often forget that life is an
ongoing adventure. We leave our homes for work, acting and even believing that
we will reach our destinations with no unusual event startling us out of
our set expectations. The truth is we know nothing, not where our cars will
fail or when our buses will stall, whether our places of employment will be
there when we arrive, or whether, in fact, we ourselves will arrive whole and
alive at the end of our journeys. Life is pure adventure and the sooner
we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to
bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and
admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to
remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently
as they are needed."

Maya Angelou, from "Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now"

sneaky happiness

just when you think you can't have great days anymore,
one that is idyllic kinda sneaks up on you.
there are days, that just seem to go so smoothly and make you quite happy, that you wonder why we'd go through life otherwise.

i've been lucky to have a string of those days.
i think it comes with knowing some really great people and having their company fill the spaces between the muscles in your heart. i'm enriched by wonderful sights, experiences and new friends. it's always a surprise to me, how making time to be with others returns tenfold in the process of discovery.

like a good meal, or a starfilled sky, i think the best kind of happiness is the kind that sneaks up on you, and shakes your senses alive.

happy Independence day!

in celebration of our independence (personal or otherwise), happy July 4!

the photo to the left is a sculpture of my friend john cooper; he's a wonderful artist and great friend.
this piece was being shown at the marin fair 2006.
to the right of the sculpture, is a work created by cornelia nevitt who won "artist of the year!"
could not have happened to a nice person.

we had a great day at the fair with erick, marty, katrina, aaron, jay and eduardo.
this was erick's first juried show ever, and he sold a sculpture! does a friend proud.