July 29, 2009
Henry's in the House
Henry Taylor has just arrived from LA to spend the month with me here in Tossa. He's got a suitcase full of art materials, ready to rock.
More to come...
July 25, 2009
Painting
(Image slightly cropped, full image after the jump...)
July 24, 2009
July 22, 2009
July 19, 2009
July 14, 2009
Guide Los Angeles
Fil R?ting has both videos inter-interviews between Bart Exposito and myself up in his site, Guide.
It's also down-loadable via iTunes, recommended. Look inside Fil's site for the link.
July 12, 2009
Ahora
UPDATE:
A few notes on recent history follows at the jump...
The structure of this summer's calendar was such that I had short windows to take this painting on. At 108 x 320 centimeters, it wasn't the biggest painting I've ever done, but it;s a big one for Tossa. The first window of time opened and closed in the week before my wife Stephanie arrived. I went in with an idea, a scheme in mind and perhaps my problems started when I decided to sketch it out in watercolors.
After the little sketch, the big painting became a routinized exercise. All the spirit seemed drained, no surprises or unexpected turns. So as my clock ran out, I decided to scrape it off.
A week or two into Stephanie's stay, I had a few days to take the painting on. It was a tight time frame to be sure, but sometimes the best stuff comes that way. I had a pile of paint from the scrape off, and I thought I would knock the mud in and color fill... roll the dice. Try to feel the grace. Come on baby baby baby...
Nothing.
A screed of something lighter, white... nothing.
The whole effort was again scraped off.
I wasn't feeling the mojo.
I was feeling pretty shitty.
The third go: half of the scraped off paint was salvaged, the rest to the trash. A strange yellow-white served to lay a base and then cadmium red in sheets from the bottom to the top. This is a shot along the way, I started to realize that I liked to see that yellow the higher I went up the canvas. I let my knife skip the top as I went.
Options once open, began to close. Keep the field from edge to edge and draw into it light and dark? No. Come down in black/umber and cleave the composition. I have the Robert Hughes' superb biography Goya here with me, such a good book. I was thinking of Goya's skies from a vacant blue to creamy dirtied ochre to pitch black.
Jumping from this post into the near future... I had initially intended to stop with the painting at the state as recorded in the image on the face of this post. Two days elapsed and I wasn't comfortable about the decision. An artist is only as happy as the most recent successful work... and ultimately I wasn't happy... and therefore the work wasn't successful.
I was miserable, trying not to let my friends know.
Thinking about a recent intervention, I took a knife and sliced out the weakest part of the painting. I had to come in with something to lighten up the gravitas of all that red/black, something where in the end I didn't screw it up or look like a schmuck.
Clouds.
Clouds and a face in the clouds. Like Goya's heads with beards and wild manes. But how? I tried to sculpt one in as I smeared pain on with gloved hands. No go. Maybe I could go Guston and whip whap a stubbled cigarette smoking bloodshot eyed head with fat brushstrokes? Nope. I knifed in sky-blue and stood back. And lo, there was something like eyes staring back at me. A head tilted forward, cropped at the nostrils. Three strokes of the knife and that's it. A few swipes of white to relieve and model form.
Done.
But...
...what have I done?
July 7, 2009
Michael Jackson Directo Los Angeles
A brief example of local media coverage of the Michael Jackson funeral in Los Angeles, July 7, 2009.
Front Page, Yesterday's El Periodico
Jos? Thom?s, bad ass.
Jos? Tom?s Rom?n Mart?n ? fans call him by his double-barreled first name, Jos? Tom?s, or just Tom?s ? is a mystical figure in Spain. Quixotic, prone to public squabbling with bullfighting?s notoriously sleazy promoters and rarely given to speaking to the media, he keeps largely apart from his fellow matadors and fights much more infrequently than they do. His remoteness, in one respect, speaks to bullfighting?s disengagement with a growing segment of Spain, though his artistry and grace, along with his fearlessness (it shocks other matadors), make him a figure of widespread fascination. The contradiction seems to encapsulate something deep in the Spanish psyche.
July 5, 2009
Bart and Dennis, Dennis and Bart.
About the blogpost Something's Happening:
Fil R?ting, artist and creator of Guide DVD, has been generous to film, edit and host a couple of interviews between Bart Exposito and yours truly. He told me that he will have the interviews on the Guide DVD site forthwith.
Here are the links for you early viewing pleasure:
UPDATE:
Whoops, it seems I jumped the gun:
(fil wrote in)hey dennis,
just saw you posted those links on your block.
those were the unfinished files that i deleted a couple of days ago... so those links wont work to the temp files.
i am releasing the interview at barts studio now then the one at your studio in a week or so.
Costa Brava Centennial
It's natural for yanquis like us to watch this celebration with a fond birthday wish for our country. It's nice to be able to celebrate both events nearly simultaneously. Happy birthday America and Catalunya's Costa Brava!
