Mythic Figures 1993 (2 of 2)

“Cubism, Rothko and My Own Brand of Symbolism”
Oil/cardboard
48” x 40”
1993

By the time I painted this I had already started painting the nude figures in a realistic mode. Within a year that would take over almost all of my creative energy for years. But here I am at my peak of combining all the things I thought were useful to express the way I conceived the world. The layers and ordering of Rothko’s color field painting elides with the planes of varying degrees of spatial depth that was cubism to me and then there is the symbolism of a single boxed drop hanging over a seated figure full of suggestive meaning. Is it a tear? Is the figure mourning? Is it a last drop of water? Does it represent nourishment? Why is it boxed? Why is it yellow? Is it falling? Is it going to crush the figure? Is the figure melting and is that a male or female figure?

All these opened ended questions are exactly the point. The spatial descriptions are as vague yet solid as the depicted content. It’s a strange piece and one of the last that were done serially from drawings. From then on I would do a piece like this once in awhile but as paintings they would not spring from their successor the way this one does and much of my work during these few years before I turned my attention to figurative realism.

“Double Portrait”
Oil/Panel
20 x 18”
1993

It’s called a double portrait because it’s meant to be seen as 2 overlapping portraits. There is a the silhouette in the back. And on top of that a gruesome horrifying face somewhere between rage and rot.

This piece is unfortunately a “one off.” It’s not even a mini series. As I look back on it from the perspective of 30 years I wish I had done more. There is even a pang of hope that I will revisit this. There seems to be a lot of possibility here.

“Couple with Grave”
Oil/Canvas
“8 x 8”
1992

This painting doesn’t exist anymore. I painted over it. I have included a photo of the painting that now exists on this canvas. It is a stronger more complete painting.

No regrets. But only because I have a picture of it.

This is not a good painting. But is an excellent image of everything that was about to change for me.

This piece was an attempt to sum up everything I had been assimilating from a number of chosen artists and periods of painting. But ultimately it became more of a struggle for where I was going next: reintroducing realistic figural nudes into a “field” that was both abstract and illusory. Symbolic yet informal. Modern in the sense of referring to the art movement from roughly 1870 to 1960. But new. A new kind of figure.

I remember how intensely happy I was with the woman. Her position, her gesture. Her line. Her volumes. Her integration into the field in which she existed. All of it.

And I remember how frustrated I was with the man. He kept looking like a boy no matter how many times I repainted him. I couldn’t get his feet on the ground. His hand on his hip looked forced and unnatural further conveying the figure’s weakness. Furthermore and making matters worse, the more I re-worked the male figure the more he looked like me.

And that was the truth that was being revealed. Here I was, capable of so much and yet even at 31 or so I had still not really embraced my manhood. Somehow I kept portraying myself as an adolescent … a Peter Pan … who just wouldn’t, couldn’t grow up. Or ground myself.

And then it happened. Around that time I challenged my Father to help me come to terms with the physical and mental abuse I endured from him when I was a kid. And in that confrontation I unexpectedly forgave him. And that changed everything.

Within a year I began painting the figure in the bold straightforward way I had wanted but until then could not find the courage to do it. I also took the decisive step of painting over this painting with my new figurative style… a painting of two powerful men in a different kind of struggle.
This time, one of the figures is emphatically me and the man I am struggling with looks conspicuously like my father.

“Sisyphus”
Oil/Paper
36 x 24”
1993

I decided to portray Sisyphus as a cock and balls character. The myth is about a man who must push a stone to the top of a mountain each day at which point it rolls back down. This could be a story about the futility of work or the boring nature of much of life’s labors. But to me it is a story about the laborious aspect of sexual desire. Each day one must struggle with the urge and if disciplined will use some of that energy to achieve something. There may even be a moment of joy at the summit. Perhaps even an orgasm. But then, each new day brings the burden of desire once again. And the labor starts all over again.

But what about that empty cart?

“Couple with Dead Child”
Oil on board
40″ x 38”
1993
 

“Beach Couple”
Oil on panel
48″ x 34”
1993

This is a painting of my lover at the time and me jutting my head in from the outside of the painting. This is as much about the deteriorating relationship as it is about my interest in Picasso’s cubist/surrealist crossover works. Tamaki has become a self contained freak chicken monster. And I am barely even in her universe. It looks like I’ve positioned myself safely outside her zone and am peering in for one last look. Seeming to be beaming with glee for having extricated myself.

Not long after i painted this I pulled myself out of the relationship altogether and then the shit eating grin became rage and regret. You can see that in subsequent work on this website. It’s always exciting to think about ending a suffocating relationship until the moment one cuts the cord. Then one must deal with the loss of whatever was good in the connection which is often invisible until it’s gone.
 

“The End”
Oil/panel
24” x24”
1993

Breaking up with Tamaki was one of the most painful acts of my life. This piece conveys the grief and guilt I experienced at that time. Our demise was Shakespearean. We loved each other but the terms and trajectory of our lives meant being together was damaging to her. She was an International student in graduate school. Her visa status meant she could not earn money. She was a graduate student in art history.

I waited over a year to kiss her until her divorce to her Japanese husband was complete. My soul ached for her. We spend 3 years together as I sank deeper into poverty and was unable to support her. She, in turn, as an art history student knew what my commitment to art meant and could not bring herself to pressure me to work. We were in our young 30’s. As the clock ticked the pressure ratcheted up. She was a long way from home and a family that did not condone divorce much less partnering with a white man. My art took me into painting the nude and that challenge was the straw that broke the back of our relationship. It split us up. And I have never been more uncertain of anything in my life.

“Boy Riding Bull”
Oil on 3 door panels
80” x 60”
1993

What the fuck? As in, “what the fuck is this?”

This piece is so bad and yet I can’t get rid of it. I could have not put it on my website. But I think it’s part of the story. Here it is. This big awkward painting. It’s on 3 separate hollow form doors. But it’s not a triptych. It just needed to be wider so I added two sides.

I painted it because I wanted to see one of my drawings blown up into a colorful painting. I can’t find the drawing but when I do I will add it here. I remember how powerful the little line drawing is. And I also remember how disappointed I was with the painting. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to paint over it.

I even sold it once. The buyer bought it for $200. But perhaps it’s telling that he never picked it up. That was 15 years ago so I consider the deal absolved. Never heard from him since and don’t know how to contact him. Weird.

Perhaps I hang on to it because someday I will challenge myself to make something more authentic and interesting. My problem with it in its present condition is that it is neither authentic nor interesting. It’s pretty. But that’s not enough.

“The Large Juggler”
Oil/Canvas
6’ x 4’
1993
 
By the time I did this painting, my work already appears to have had several distinct chapters. And that has become even more apparent at the time of this writing (2017). These “chapters” seem more chronologically distinct if one does not look at my drawings and graphic work. This piece was one of the main pieces from that chapter of my work that ran from about 1990-1994. However, I continue to draw and sketch in this manner even now. A better way to state my over all work would be that at almost all times I am sketching, drawing, painting and sculpting in a variety of styles and modalities. But for periods of time one style or modality will be the stuff of my more major works.
 
Before elucidating the particulars of this painting I want to discuss briefly the role that my sketches and the sketches of this kind of painting in particular have played in my life. The easiest aspect to describe is that these “funky figures” (as I have come to refer to them) have provided a kind of visual diary for me. The figures are easy to draw and so allow a free flowing stream of conscious. Often, I myself do not even know what the figures are about until months later. They are often closer to dream figures and dream stories than real life. But what is more compelling is the openness to form manipulations that happen in this type of drawing. There are visual puns, surrealistic distortions, thematic repetitions, and ways of shaping images that reflect the ever changing sense of how an image can be constructed.
 
At the same time, there has also been a development of vocabulary figure types and mark making as well as pictorial devices for resolving or confounding compositions. I have come to relay on all of these devices like the collective components of a language. In the early 1990’s, I was executing the stream of graphic images I was making into more fully developed paintings. This process of making paintings of these drawings stopped almost completely and almost overnight when I began painting figures in a more realistic manner in 1994. When I did paint one of these funky figures in subsequent years, the paintings seem disingenuous to me, as though they were people trying to be paintings from another era… or like people who have crashed a party. 

At one point in the early 2000’s I made a brief conscious effort to find a fresh way to translate these drawings into a painterly expression. The results were both fresh and very satisfying. I don’t know why I did not continue. When I begin painting again I hope to have a small room devoted to this kind of experimental work.

As for this particular painting, I did hundreds of drawings on the theme of acrobats performing for each other, crowds or children. Here, there is a father type performing for his own child. The theme is a strange projection of my own future fatherhood that was to come 8 years later. At the time I did this painting I had no idea if I would ever have children. When I did eventually have kids I became that acrobat… entertaining and teaching my observant child. Since then this painting has always seemed like a talisman of the interconnectedness of time and its ability to collapse into a single all inclusive point. The very stuff of painting. The impact, pleasure and power of that experience is why I am a painter… not a novelist.

“Rape”
Oil/cardboard
20” x 12”
1993

“Man with Bird”
Oil/cardboard
48” x 40” – 2 Versions
1993

This figure emerged out of a style of drawings I developed around this time. Eventually this figure made his way into my realistic paintings that came on strong about 1995. And then eventually in my performance art in the late 1990’s and 2000’s. I referred to the character as “mud man” at first and then eventually “Eden Mensch” in honor of my German heritage.

This character is already acting as my altar ego. Here, in these 2 paintings he is holding a bird. Is he capturing the bird to kill and eat it? Or is he rescuing it? Trying to protect it? Is the bird a symbolic representation of the man’s creative spirit or his inner female nature? Is he a monster or a gentle giant? Is he Hercules or Shrek?

Shrek is a good analogy. Here is another giant with distorted male features but with a complicated soul and a big heart. But Shrek is no Hercules. His realm is intensely personal and psychological. I’m not sure how, but my character here and even more so in later development, wonders into the realm of universal through ritual and symbolic reference.

Shrek is more Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtle and less Superman.

Still, it’s interesting to me that American late 20th century culture would develop multiple versions of the distorted almost monstrous male figure who nevertheless has good intentions and is even capable of self sacrifice and personal growth.

In these works I hoped to convey the character’s ambivalence. Now that it’s 2023 at the time of me writing this essay and 30 years since I painted these pieces I can’t help but see these works through the issue of climate change. Is the overblown monster male the protagonist in the destruction of our precious earth? And is the bird a stand in for nature itself? About to be inadvertently strangled by a humanity coming to realize it’s murderous actions just a tad too late?

Somehow all this time I stayed away from making art that was issue driven or as emphatically story telling like these cartoon references I made here. I wanted my works to move away from the particular and closer, hopefully, to the universal. In the process I hoped they would be less entertaining and more thought provoking or spark more creative thought and personal reflection. I’m not sure any of that has worked. But I’m absolutely certain that until now it has made them exponentially less seen and rendered them almost non existent. So far …

Photo references to some of my subsequent art:

“Underground”
Oil/Plywood
30″ x 30”
1993
 
These pieces are hard to define. Are they abstract pieces? Are they figure pieces? Are they landscapes? It’s hard to say. Whatever they are I had around this time came up with the idea of things that were underground. These objects are supposed to suggest items that are buried like sacred objects or planted like seeds.  

“ESL Couple”
Oil/Cardboard
48″ x 34″
1993

My last job was teaching English to International students at Seattle University. In order to keep things interesting and lively I devised some activities involving art…sort of. One such activity involved me calling out body parts. Head … neck … left arm … long nose … etc. After each body part was drawn I would instruct the students to pass their paper to the person on their left, or right or across from them. This tested their English and kept them from getting attached to their drawings. It was also endlessly entertaining.

At some point I asked the students to pick a couple of favorites that they would enjoy seeing me turn into paintings. Eventually I made 20 or so of these and displayed them in a cafe on campus. We had a big party and sold most of them for $20 a piece. I used the money for the party.

The random inventiveness of the forms really appealed to me. And I’m very glad I still have these two.

“Ghost Runner”
Acrylic on burlap coffee sack
24” x 36”
1993
 
Around this time I became interested in painting on found surfaces just to see what the various textures would yield. I was also painting at a furious pace and had very little money. I remember going to places like Costco and rounding up dozens of large pieces of cardboard to paint on. I would troll alleys for pieces of abandoned plywood and frame stores for scraps of matting that is used for picture framing. I needed tons of material to feed my painting frenzy.
 
I think what was driving this insatiable urge was a build up of a few years of not doing much art between about 1991 and 92. I was working at Seattle University and getting a masters degree in educational administration there at the same time. I did some art during those years, but not like what was to come from 1992 on.
 
I also had the misfortune of needing to move my art studio several times during this period. For a year or so in 1991 to 1992 I had a small but wonderful studio at 8th Avenue and Virginia Avenue right in downtown Seattle. It was in an old building that had several floors of clothing sweatshops. The businesses were all in decline and the building was slated to be torn down and the city courthouse was built in its place years later. It was in this little space that my true creative energies were born.
 
At that time I met Doug Newton. Doug was a poet, writer and musician. He would hang out in my studio for days writing poetry, stories and working on music. He also began writing poems in response to my paintings. And in turn, I started doing drawings in response to his poems. He was a keen observer of my work and a great source of encouragement and camaraderie. After a short stay at eighth Avenue and Virginia I moved to a space in Eastlake that would become my studio for the next 20 years. It was in this little space that my true creative energies were born. And the positive affect that the stability and affordability had on my ability to develop as an artist can not be over stated. 
 
It was early in this new space that I got the idea of painting on burlap sacks. Seattle had several coffee companies that we’re growing rapidly at that time, most notably Starbucks. I knew that their coffee came in big burlap sacks and heard from someone that they gave them away down at their factory. I went and indeed they did. I collected many bags on more than one occasion. Eventually they closed this charitable function of their business.
 
Around that same time I developed this reductive figure style which I called “funky figures“ and which  Doug called “gigantism.“
 
In any case, these figures became staples of my drawing vocabulary. They were also like characters in a novel. They began to have a life of their own inside my head. I would also draw them over and over again, anxious to see how dozens of variations both big and small would affect their expressions and their stories. 
 
These figures also became the subjects of many paintings at this time.   
 
Eventually I developed a style of painting figures that was more realistic, but these “mythic” or “funky figures” continue to play out in my drawing and doodles now almost 30 years later.  

“Abundance”
Oil/canvas
30″ x 24”
1993
 
Around this time I designed this figure who appears frequently dancing and holding a bowl full of fruit over his head. I did these to both celebrate the moments of prosperity I enjoyed and to invoke more prosperity. It was my feeling that by drawing and painting this image I could invoke more prosperity. I don’t think it was effective in invoking fiscal prosperity but it definitely woke an era of unprecedented creative output for me which continues to this day. 

“The Juggler Paintings”
Oil on Canvas and Panel
Various sizes
1993-94
 
I have often been fascinated by the visual and metaphorical aspects of juggling. The basic idea is so straightforward and simple. Somebody has a little nack… a little trick that they do which captivates an audience just long enough for them to be mildly amused, maybe drop a few coins in a hat and then move along. A few may actually reflect on the larger meanings of the little schtick… most will not.  
 
Even though painting is in some ways the polar opposite of juggling I have often thought about the similarities that are on a deeper level. The juggler hones his craft with countless repetitions alone in his garret. Then, for brief moments he captures and captivates his audience with a little show on the street.  
 
The artist too must work away in his studio preparing his paintings for an exhibit. If he is lucky the gallery that hosts the show will drum up a little crowd who will come mostly for the party and the libations. With a little luck he may have an audience that actually looks at the paintings for a few moments. And maybe one a rare occasion, someone will want to purchase a piece… but not without much haggling over the price.