2:55pm: i just completed the drawing for #8 in the best left unsaid series, which you see below taped to the blank canvas, ready to be transferred. it's based on the photo, which you can see in yesterday's post, based on one of a series a photos shot from above, which i took at moma in 2008. i can't wait to start this one tomorrow morning!
in a while mikela will come over & help me unstretch some canvases to make way for new ones, using the same stretcher bars.
this morning on my way to the studio, a 500 ft. walk from our house, i photographed the characteristic high desert cactus you see on the left, and some ripe pinions on a tree just outside my studio. we're surrounded by pinion and juniper trees on our property, which is roughly 40 acres if you include the surrounding green belt.. every 5 or 6 years the pinions produce a bumper crop of nuts, and this is one of those years. in the 20+ years we've lived here, we've never collected these nuts! are we nuts?? they are challenging to remove from their shells, but mighty tasty when you do. so this year we've decided to bite the bullet. more on that in the coming weeks.
as i was leaving the house, i noticed an interesting relationship between a plein air painting i did in early june and the collage i made yesterday. more on that, with photos, after i meditate....
update: just as i was about to start my meditation, it grew very dark and i heard the familiar sound of hail hitting the metal roof of my studio. this is the third day a tropical disturbance which moved up into the southwest from mexico has been affecting our weather. snow is falling on the peaks, above 11,000 ft. just a few miles east of the studio. it's 12:48pm and the current temperature here at 8,000 ft. is 42F. we'll be back up to normal temps in the low '60's in a few days.
so as i was saying earlier, there's an interesting relationship between the plein air on the left, below and yesterday's collage, hijab, on the right. by looking at the two side by side, it's easier to see what i mean when i say that my recent collage series is informed by the discoveries i make when i'm out at the creek making the plein air paintings. they are cross pollinating in a way that seems quite natural and obvious after the fact. it would be interesting to have a show where, say, a dozen of each were hung side by side, along with the plein air inspired drawings that are later cut up & included in the collages.
something to think about:
Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that preclude the emergence of any single meaning and view. gerhard richter, 1964-5
