Today’s time spent in the studio was both productive and exciting. I finished a piece that I had begun the night before which marks the culmination of about one week's worth of experiments with Sakura and oil paint on paper. I will continue to push this combination further and in different directions however today’s piece really felt like a conclusive thought.
The conceptual underpinning of this work and the works that will precede it is the idea of visions of paradise that are no longer accessible to us. By blocking out a substantial portion of the composition and using a variety of simple shapes and representational colors I believe the present work is successful in creating the illusion of paradise while alienating the viewer from entering the space.
This work is very much the result of studying Matisse and the Fauves in recent weeks and months. I like to think of this work as a neo-Matisse. Matisse painted the Mediterranean coast in an idealized manner as it once existed to him - as Robert Hughes in Shock of the New remarks, these worlds no longer exist to us. Reporting from the 80’s Hughes’ reasoning was that they are now ruined by tourism, which probably was and is true. To reinforce the point 30 or 40 years later because of geopolitical tensions as well as the asymmetrical distribution of wealth and resources these paradises are even further from our access than they once might have been.
Paradise can take on many forms, it does not need to be represented in this Mediterranean coast form. Paradise may take on the form of a house or a dinner table with food on it. These are some of the lines I am thinking along. The composition comes first however and if I’m being completely honest this present composition is going to be a hard act to follow. It feels megalithic while simultaneously having a feeling of antiquity as well as a general timelessness to it. It will be hard to compose within this theme in a way that competes with this current composition.
I will likely vary this composition and see if I cannot at the very least make a small series of these paintings, if anything just to enjoy their power and see if the next revelation will come through repetition. How many variations on a theme is acceptable until this is your thing that you're stuck with? It doesn't matter because for better or for worse I never stay in the same stylistic pocket for very long. This means that I am not identifiable as a “brand” but at the same time I am never bored nor am I static in any sort of way. I have always trusted that in time I will put all the stylistic pieces together and that will be my way of facilitating a new type of vision.
I was watching a short Tate documentary on Philip Guston and as far as painters of the last century are concerned very few spanned as many styles and movements as this man did. I always love to see that. He constructed wildly inventive figurative compositions and scenes situated halfway between a realism and an imagination that could easily mark the capstone of a painting career in 2025. He then went on to paint murals and then radically deconstruct everything to become an abstract expressionist. His full abstractions are actually quite magnificent. There is currently one up at the MFAH and its a bit understated sitting next to a De Kooning but it’s great - I will have to go look at it again soon.
From those abstract works he discovered the palette that would characterize his later works that we know him best for - the cartoon-ish paintings (feels patronizing to characterize them like that) of the clan members and those types of paintings. He almost did the full 20th century painting trend in the span of a career instead of a century - going from representation to abstraction then back to a sort of expressive representation. Anyway it always pleases me immensely to learn about the breadth of another artist's evolution - household names like Picasso and Matisse also have plenty of academic style works that we wouldn't know to attribute to them either.
I am still yet to make a truly abstract work with the Sakura marker oil paint combo, I sense the time before going to Virginia running out. I really feel I must be in a very particular state of mind in order to embark on this project. When I am in Virginia for two weeks I will paint and draw like a banshee but they will be more along the lines of observational plein air sketches of interiors and objects. I will make many sketches of my brothers that will make for larger paintings when I get back to Houston.
I will also paint that mural I am yet to paint when I get back to Houston too. I will keep July’s big paint momentum rolling heavy into August before needing to confront reality so to speak. I am currently applying for some art related jobs that would be extremely aligned with my current passions and ambitions as a painter. It is really imperative I land somewhere inline with the art world.
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