Stripes

I’ve painted hundreds of paintings and illustrations over the years, most of them lacking something. Like most people I’ve focused too much on the fine details and the overall picture lacked the weight and impact I wanted (like life itself). Now I’m painting simple compositions and getting the weight I want. Heavy and stark. Some of the paintings are stripes. Stripes have lots of visual power, very human and man-made.

There’s a building across from the Port Authority that is painted in red, white and blue stripes. I like how it stands out.

I painted these horizontal stripes for many reasons. I like the color options and I’m going to add two more paintings. I like that they aren’t too contained to the edges, they keep the eye flowing off the sides.

I also like that the edges offer lots of color and texture. They frame the painting but not too much.

I think about art in general because it’s a way to break down life into easier-to-digest chunks. I walk all over Manhattan and look at the textures and patterns. Yesterday I walked up the upper east side (a big inspiration for stripes – Henri Bendel shopping bags et al), through the park to Lincoln Center, where we try hard to make the best art. I sat on a bench and looked at Julliard and imagined the likes of Nina Simone practicing her piano here. Did she practice in that building? Probably not, but I’d like to think she did.

Here’s the fountain in Hearst Plaza. The shiny things are coins.

Windows

This is a post about windows. At work, my co-worker quit so I got his window seat. I love the view. I don’t really love that I have to do the work he used to do.

Looking down on Radio City Music Hall

At home we learned that our apartment doesn’t offer window cleaning so we had to hire a guy. Best money ever spent. We’re amazed everytime we look out the window now. Major difference.

The next two months

In my opinion, the best life is a healthy and creative one

It’s easy to get off this track though

187 lbs. Too much around the middle, muscle areas a little skinny. Also, these are my new glasses.

Too many happy hours, too much tv and internet…

Distractions

I do believe we need a little of these things to keep the balance but in moderation

Lately I’ve been slipping, and putting on a few pounds, not working in the studio enough

So for the next couple months I’m going to focus a little more on what’s important

And cut back on the diversions

So here’s where we start:

As for art, I’ve made a few new paintings

Two of them can be seen on the left of this photo

I like how basic they are

Still I can get a strong colors and a lot of texture

I’ve started a new one tonight

I’ll post it’s progress here too

Another goal will be to make this blog look better

This is just the unvarnished beginning

The two on the left are new. I like this view of the apartment now.

TOAST

This is an idea for a food truck

Toast can take on many forms

Bruschetta is just toast

I used to go to a diner that served cinnamon roll toast

It was day old cinnamon rolls sliced to fit in the toaster and it was amazing

Last weekend I had avocado toast at a fancy restaurant

It was just toast with olive oil and quacamole

People laugh at this food truck idea when I share it

But I’m thinking high volume of cheap food that can be anything

That same restaurant that offered the avocado toast also sold “lobster toast”

$19

The toast truck would offer basic toast that would come with butter and jam

And from there we go up

Ah, imagine the possibilities

Plus, look at the fun truck ideas

“Minor Characters”

Thoughts on “Minor Characters” by Joyce Johnson

A memoir of her early life, including her relationship with Jack Kerouac

I like to review books that were written over 20 years ago

Really, I’m fascinated with Jack and the Beats

I’m also interested in the ladies who were in that scene too

Of course when you’re young you’re part of a scene

When you get old you don’t have the stamina to tear it up every night

The writers and artists hanging around Greenwich Village in the 50s

Found like-minded people and well-worn bars filled with booze and smoke

Very comforting to artists and writers

But then there was a lot of depression and general craziness in that crowd

That added to their audience’s attraction 

There can’t be a “scene” without madness and addiction

Wild parties and drugs and booze do offer the extreme highs

But they always come with equally low lows

I know this

This mood stretching, up and down, is the fodder of Jack’s books

If his subject matter were music one would call this “range”

Most music doesn’t have enough range for me

Same with books

I can’t read vampire books or Obama biographies 

But I did like Joyce Johnson’s writing

It was the best book about Jack I’ve read and I’ve read many

She captures the scene at that time and Jack’s suffering, when not drunk

And her own pain being young and wanting a life she couldn’t have

Working temp jobs as a typist, hitting Greenwich Village at night

Because it was filled with excited, drunk, young creative-types

Talking about what they were going to do

Lots of people think abstract artists and kooky beatnik writers just sucked

Like every opinion, there are truths but I tend to look at the positive things here

Things like breaking away from old, tired ideas

Going out of the house at night to be with your crazy friends

Not needing the perfect style and all the material stuff

Living downtown

But here I sit, just finished work, about to start on a freelance job

Which I do before and after work everyday

No “scene” here yet

I’ll close with a picture of me when I was a young fella

I’m on the beach in Spain

I used to drink like a fish

But I’d still go running on the beach a lot

I’d stay up real late drinking and talking

Wake up with horrible hangovers and vow to change

Which I would, for a day or two

Until I’d see all the fun in the bars as I walked home all sweaty from a run

And I’d get all excited about going back

All dressed up with a pocket full of “ciens” for beers

Having read Joyce’s book, I wonder how I would have fared in that scene

I’m shy like Jack, and like to loosen up with a drink, maybe two…

I’m old now though, and wiser on the subject of wildness

I feel safe here with my freelance work tonight

Non-beatnik girlfriend coming down for the weekend tomorrow

I’ll start reading “And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks” next

After that I’ll read another Joyce Johnson memoir called “Missing Men”

Which I hear is sad but she writes in a beautiful way

Accepts the past and appreciates the time she had

Now I was young

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green…

That’s from a Dylan Thomas poem, I didn’t write it

I painted “Now I was young” on a painting though and some people have asked what it means

If anyone ever read this blog they might ask why I’m writing in the form of a poem

Yet there’s nothing poetic about what I’m writing

I just like things that don’t make any sense yet they still work (in my mind at least)

If everybody had to write like this we wouldn’t have to sit through so much blathering

From columnists, critics, and other such blowhards

Some are good, but most writers need to self-edit

To just put down the main points, we don’t have all day

“Now I was young” seemed like a perfect way express thoughts on a life

The “as” was too flowery so I took it out

Now… I was young… 

I felt like that when I painted it

I was 38 and had two dogs and a cat

A new girlfriend

Now I’m older but I still feel young

I’m fascinated with Portland and how it’s something new I’ve found

Experiencing new things and getting excited about them is a young thing

So maybe when I’m 70 I’ll look back to the early Portland days and think

Now I was young

For now I’ll add this big scary painting I call “Ox”

Just because

Not worth reading

Seriously, not worth it

I just have to put down a couple thoughts about who has a lust for life and who doesn’t

I’m reading “Minor Characters” now, by Joyce Johnson – one-time gf of Jack Kerouac

She writes about being fascinated by bohemianism at an early age

Like most outsiders, they have a lust for life that they don’t think others have

Maybe they’re right

Jack wrote that the only ones for him were “the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk…”

Part of this might have been that these are often qualities you find in people who are drunk and high

Things that Jack also enjoyed

I think about the young people in New York hanging around Greenwich Village, excited to be in the crowd

Even if they didn’t understand at the time that their dislike for the mainstream was mainstream thinking in their small world

We all find our people and have a hard time understanding everybody else

But her book gives a nice description of being young, not just in the 50s but in general

Even though lots of these hip cats are gloomy and angry, there’s a spark of life in the way they dress and present themselves

I see the lust for life in their need to show people how much the world is boring them

They’re communicating with tattoos and cool hats

They don’t hate life and people, they just want more

More life – good and bad, more people, more feeling

I understand this because I grew up in a small town where I was constantly looking for people and things to do

But rarely ever finding anything

But before I waste too much time here I’ll summarize

The ones who are mad, mad to live, mad to talk…

Are seen as kooks by the ones who like to go home after work and make food and watch tv

I don’t know who’s right

I don’t believe in killing  yourself early, like Jack and Neal

But I also don’t believe in killing yourself slowly, suburban-style, with over-eating and sloth

One last thought

There is a really old lady who begs down on the street

I can see her from my balcony – I took this photo of her

For some reason I think she must still have some lust for life

She’s out there everyday leaning against the wall behind her walker

Everyone gives her money and talks to her

It seems tragic that this old lady is out there begging

I don’t know her story yet

But she still wants something out of life

Whatever she’s getting with the money

I’m sure she could go into some sort of facility and not have to worry about money

But she’s still fighting, even if it is on the streets

Starting a new painting

I’m about to start a new painting

Here’s my last painting, which isn’t finished

This still lacks the feeling I was trying to convey

It’s just kind of a painting of buildings

I’m looking to show what I usually go for

How one feels about time passing, good or bad

It’s an abstract thought I can never explain – or paint very well

But it’s what I try to express

I think about buildings and windows because that’s where people spend their lives

We don’t live in caves or the wilderness

Even the outdoorsy people

We live inside boxes we make and there are windows to look out of and into

But I didn’t mean for that painting to get so tight

So for my new painting I’m going to paint an old oil can

Not because it’s beautiful, which it is

But because it’s old and I used to to pass it on my way to work everyday

It sat outside a door of an old building, in a fenced in area I couldn’t get to

But I took a photo of it

Because I don’t know why it’s out there

Or how long it’s been there – it looks like about 40 years

It’s interesting but I can’t really explain why

So that’s what I’d like to put in a painting

That look that interests you but you’re not sure why

Most artist can tell you the point of their work

Pop artists were making comments on popular culture

Picasso was painting the things the rest of us couldn’t see or visualize

Like a person’s soul or something’s essence

Rothko was painting something that would make us a feel a certain way

Some of the abstract artists would say they were breaking the rules

That blocked them from really expressing themselves

I understand that

As I start this painting I think about why others artists did what they did

And I compare my reasons to theirs

Theirs always seem more intelligent

But they’re looking back and I’m looking into a blank white canvas

I’m painting what I don’t understand because I want to understand something

Then people want you to explain why you painted something, but that’s it

Because it was something I didn’t understand

A question that wasn’t being asked

How can I then offer up an answer?

Now I’m getting abstract

The week

This week was rough but I made it through

Friday night now, back from drinks and doughnuts in Old Town

Earlier today “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” kept running through my head

I knew eventually it would

But bad weeks are never a total loss

I finished a book by Kinky Friedman – “Jesus, Coca Cola, and Elvis”

I love finishing books and picking out a new one.

Slept a lot, made progress on freelance work

Found a video on youtube of Marvin Gaye singing “Ain’t That Peculiar” acapella

How can someone sing so good?

He was a tortured genius

Another youtube discovery:

The end of “The Way We Were” with Bob Redford and Barb Streisand

Streisand proving that unattractive people can be beautiful

Actually I think that the young Babs was very attractive

Good skin tone and cheek bones, killer eyes

Redford is the Man

But now it’s getting late

Can’t remember any other good things from week

Weekend will be solo

No people, no KB

Much work, work, work

First sleep 

Now sleep

Maybe I’ll start writing like this

I’m not cool and I know that. That’s why I’m not ashamed to tell you that over the years, like a schoolgirl, I’ve kept some journals. Many years ago I started writing like Bukowski would write a poem, only not as good. Maybe it was because I thought he could put down so much by limiting himself to short lines on a page or two. So, for example, when I moved to Seattle I wrote:

4-19-01

Drinking beer on a Thurs. night

Just started a new job

In a new town

Got no place to live

Staying in some guys basement

So I went to work

Then drove around

Hoping to see a For Rent sign

Got some beer at Safeway

Came here to sit in front of the tv

Watch baseball results of the day

And feel safe

For now

So that’s how I’d write everything and now if I read them it’s a little more entertaining and somehow contains more meaning. I generally ramble on too much anyway so maybe I’ll occasionally blog in this style. I’ll start now. Similar theme to above post. 

“Another new job”

08-15-10

The towns get better

I’m more relaxed with new beginnings

I’ve had a lot of practice

Portland now

Sunny, hot summer days

Cool mornings and nights

Had to buy a coat on cold walk to work last week

After over year without a job I started to worry about things less

Life usually works opposite of how you think it should

So now I’m coasting for a while 

No direction other than just not becoming homeless

KB and I get together on weekends, here or in Seattle

Take the train

Going to sleep soon but I don’t have to work until 11:00

I’ll read Kinky Friedman till I get sleepy

Tomorrow I’ll do another day

A path will emerge soon

Portland is great