Two New In-Progess Paintings

Both paintings are oil on panel. Both are giving me a ton of ideas for the next two paintings. Very exciting!

Dan Attoe

Dan Attoe makes another great painting! I am psyched to post a new Dan Attoe painting here.

Have you ever seen the totem poles in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? I am not well versed in their art historical signifigance, but I know they freak me out.

Everyone feels the need to connect to something greater than themselves.

Dan Attoe, New Painting

Dan Attoe sent this new painting along of an Astronaut on a Lunar surface discovering the limits of our knowledge.




Side note: I will be away for the weekend on the last National Guard drill in my contract. 6 years. I have met a lot of great people in the guard, but I am glad to be finished. I feel like a weight is going to be lifted from my chest when I am done. I know that stress from being in the Army and being in Afghanistan has compromised my ability to enjoy life for 6 years.

I am not saying there were not some good times, there were. Or that I did not learn about the world, and human nature, I did. It was like living a little of Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness.

I have a lot of empathy for people in the military, and contrary to what many people think there are a lot of smart, curious, interesting, and articulate people in the army. I met several lifelong friends while serving in Afghanistan. If you are out there reading this I wish you all the best.

Sculptures for Teaching

I made 2 sculptures from painted foamcore. I am using them to teach color, light, and form.

I am going to make more complex ones, these are the first two.

Working on this one

Thinking about Figure Painting

I have been thinking about figure painting, and representational painting in general.

I think the key to making good painting does not have that much to do with producing a likeness, facile likenesses are the straightest route to boring painting.

I think that the point when representational painting becomes interesting is when the image is a reconstruction of the parts that make up the image, with signs of intelligence running along within the decisions of how the parts are represented. For instance when someone who has been drawing for 5 years learns to draw a very good likeness it is really exciting to them, but in 5 more years it has become tedious and a new solution is necessary. That is when things tend to get really engaging, the pulling apart and putting back together, and being able to "say something" with an image. The evidence of thoughtfulness, and the wizardry behind making an image force things on someone else's perception becomes exciting again.

I have been drawing a lot, and have found interesting things to read lately. The Believer has a phenomenally good article about Aby Warburg that really got my mind working overtime. I am also reading a few other books.

Working in Brooklyn is very interesting and I like going into the corner stores, last Friday I found one where I can get a buttered roll and a tea with sugar for $1.50, that's my kind of price - I can carry that in quarters, and my pocket won't even be heavy.

Dan Attoe emailed me a painting of bikers around a campfire that is completely amazing. Here it is:

Greta Songe, New (drawing) Painting

Greta Songe sent me this drawing, and it is pretty endearing. Cute little mauve fish, and the background is well done too.

Greta wrote that she used walnut ink to make part of this, and I have always been curious about walnut ink. It must be the warm brown wash used for the background/wallpaper.

Thanks Greta!

Finished with this Painting

Painting in Progress

Painting

I have been painting a lot lately.

I think I have figured something out about being an artist. Making art is thinking about art.

You do not need seperate thinking time. Painting time is thinking time, they are the same time.

Thinking about painting when I am not painting is really just thinking about starting a painting. The process of making a painting includes making a lot of decisions that would be very hard to predict before you start.

Here is a new drawing.

New Work

Concordia, 10 x 8in, mixed media on blue rag paper

detail: the astronaut delivers the message

What do you think?

-Bill

Peter Schjeldahl: Transcribed Talk on Education, Neo Rauch

Joe Patrick mentioned an article to me about Neo Rauch, written by Peter Schjeldahl, and while looking for it I found this GREAT transcribed talk regarding the education of artists, and the distinction between what makes someone a successful student and someone else a successful artist, and why there may be no happy synthesis of the good student and the good artist. (I have included the Neo Rauch article at the end of the post.)

As an aside, William Butler Yeats has a couple of melodramatic but interesting quotes that are applicable to this conversation:

"Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire."

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”

I have been thinking about this specific topic regarding education. Why students who excel at specific assignments are often poor innovators, and why excellent students shrug off the responsibility of creating something unique and prefer to be told what exactly they are supposed to be doing.

It is very hard for me to understand not wanting more freedom when making art in school.

When someone opens their mouth and dictates the terms of my creative activity they transform the environment into one laden with tension, it becomes a primed, pregnant, slow-motion movie where their words lose there meaning and metamorphose into the words of an adult in the world of Charlie Brown, wah wah waaa waaaa wonk, and that voice is practically begging to have its authority stripped and its positions subverted. Like a kleptomaniac who has to take the little glass bottles of chalky blush from her best friends medicine cabinet I can not help myself once someone crosses the line into impinging on the quality of my daydreaming.

(When I was growing up one of my Dad's favorite things to say when something bad happened to someone we knew was: It is all over but the crying.)

During the process of creating drawing assignments I wonder about the level of freedom to include, my disposition usually leads me to giving out assignments with a lot of freedom. An assignment with a lot of freedom is hard to control, but I don't want to control the students, I want them to experience what they need to do to be creative. I do have to guard against sloth, it is doing my due diligence, and not let the individual down in the context of the class.

This is a good topic, because I see a lot of room for increased understanding on my part, and writing about it has made me realise more about the nature of the conversation that happens in art school between teachers and students.

Here is the Neo Rauch article Joe Patrick told me about. (It is worth reading, and the article feels finished at the end of the first page, but there is a second page too.)

Earlier posts on Ink Stained Hands about Neo Rauch
Neo Rauch at The Met
Great Art Book


Thanks Joe!!

Greta Songe, New Painting, Says Florida is Great!

Greta is one of my best friends from Iowa, a member of Paintallica, and a sweet painter. She sent this image of one of her new paintings. Awesome Greta, thanks!