Charcoal on Paper

12″ x 24″

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Oil on Canvas 18″ x 24″

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In this short time we have to make choices about how to use our time, spend out days.

Each choice carries consequences. And in these choices, we’d like to think, “Well, I’m willing to sacrifice this result for that result, so I’ll make this decision!”

But the truth is, we don’t know how things will turn out.

I recently saw a photo of a guy I worked with years ago. A guy much younger than me. He was at some sort of event. A wedding maybe. He was holding up a smiling one-year-old in a little suit. His son.

When I knew him, he was single and had no child. And there he was in a photo holding up a baby. He looked so happy. I’d never seen him so happy. It was strange, not knowing what had happened in the intervening years to get him to that point. But there he was.

I love kids. Everyone who knows me knows that. But I’m busy and I have no idea where kids fit in. My life is about a lot of risks. Some pay off, some don’t. I’d hate to bring a child into the world and have him depending on my crazy decisions.

And yet, where’s the stability. People are being laid off in great numbers right now. I wake up every morning amazed I’m doing things I always meant to be doing and on track to do even more I meant to do.

I don’t know. We have choices. But we think choices means knowing the result. And it doesn’t. The choice itself is all we have. The result is the thing that arrives later — often with no connection to our expectations. I’m guessing most lives have moments of exhilaration, despair, hope, fear, frustration, joy… no matter what choices were made.

Pencil on Paper 24″ x 36″

This was an early drawing of mine when I began studying art in earnest. The exercises I gave myself was to do as much work in contour alone. But then I started doing some shading anyway. But I used the shading, as much as possible, to help pop the contour shapes.

Hi. I do agree with what you had said about art. Art is great method to express our feeling, right?? By the way, your drawing is beautiful.

First, evacandra, thank you for the compliment.

Second, I guess what I’m trying to say is that art — or the making of art — certainly involves our emotions. But I’d say there’s more to it than that. What I was trying to say in one of the posts below is that art — the act of drawing or painting or writing or composing or dancing or whatever — requires effort. It is the effort of technical skills and focus and energy and time — and that it is this effort that produces good work.

We get confused, sometimes, when we look at a great painting, or watch a terrific movie, great acting, or watch dancers doing fantastic work, because part of this effort — usually — is making the effort look effortless. But it is effort.

This commitment to the effort is what I was talking about below when I said art is what we honor, and how well we honor it.

It takes time to figure out how to write sentences well: time spent over the long haul of years working with words, and over the short haul of writing and re-writing a specific sentence. When i do the work of writing I am honoring the act of communication, which I consider one of the most astounding acts of human behavior.

When I paint — when I take the time to study how shape and light and texture meet and interact within the boundary of a composition — I am honoring the substance of the world.

This honoring is an act of effort: The effort of study of the medium or the form of the art (such as color theory or use of brushstrokes); The effort of actual practice of the activity (such as specific painting); The effort of the thumbnail or rough sketch; The effort of judging the work in progress; the effort of re-working the painting, and so on…

Vincent van Gogh is often considered the “patron saint” of “art as feeling” kind of guy. But it’s important to remember that van Gogh put an immense amount of effort into his study of painting as well as each painting. He studied color theory, his notebooks are filled with comments about how colors work with each other. He experimented and made notes and came to UNDERSTAND how painting worked.

As Robert Hughes wrote:

It was van Gogh’s madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis.

Is there emotion in his work? I don’t know. I really don’t. In the same way I don’t know if there’s emotion in the work of Rembrandt or Velázquez or Cezanne.

And yet — I do see is love — love of the paint, love of the form, love of the subjects. I know the love is there because someone took the time to do the art and craft of painting well. So, in that regard, art is an expression of our feelings. But it is revealed through the craft and the discipline and the effort we bring to bear.

[If you want see examples of work by the painters I've referenced, make sure to check out Mark Harden's Artchive!]

I painted this while at a family gathering in Maine, at Sabbath Day Lake.

One great thing I’ve found is that when I pull out my art supplies my nieces and nephews immediately want to start drawing and painting, too. Everyone settles down — and the other grown up get a break for a while!

Dry Watercolor Paint on Cardstock 5″ x 3.5″

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We all honor many things. But I don’t think we’re always aware of what we’re honoring. And even when we do, we might not honor it that well — we might not really pay attention to it.

Drawing, painting, and writing stories are my attempt to pay attention to what I honor, to say, “This matters to me, and here’s how I’m giving thanks.”

So, am I really into fruit? Ha, ha…. no.

What I’m trying to honor — with anything I draw or paint — is the substance of life. Here we each are, born unexpectedly, in a world of color and form and mass. We are alive, given a chance to touch this world. I love that. That’s what it’s about to me: to remember to give thanks for having been born and having these years on this earth.

I just want to say that your writings are goddamned beautiful. And the drawings are wonderful, too.

Since I’m still just setting up shop, I want to say, “Thanks!” Those are some lovely words to get back!

Oil on Canvas Board 11″ x 14″

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I really never understood it before I stepped out my back door the other day. The sun was low here in Santa Monica, and it struck the walls of several buildings behind my building. Some of the walls were ochre brown, others were white. But the colors were alive in a way I’d never seen before because of the color of the late afternoon light, each of them new in a way that could never exist if the sunlight and the color of the paint were not meeting in that unique way at that unique moment.

I went for a walk, looking at the trees, the sky, the buildings up and down Ocean Park Blvd., all of them fresh in that moment.

It’s a lesson for me, I think. To stay alert to what something is at this moment. The color of a building is never the color of the building. It’s the color of the building meeting the color of the sunlight at that moment.