Machine Systems

I've recently posted two new works on my website from my latest series titled "Machine Systems". From outside the box, these new works would seem a departure from previous work. However, they are nothing more than a different perspective of the same issue that's been swimming around inside my head for some time.

In the recent Prayer works, I've been dealing with two sides of the same coin, doubt and belief. As a person experiencing life, I think that we have a choice...to believe or to doubt. Machine Systems are visionary contraptions we build for ourselves where belief and doubt are used to create mechanisms for reaching the end goal. What's interesting for me about this idea is the pains we go to in our lives to build these machines, construct these systems that perform the same set of actions and reactions over and over again. And I wonder if in harnessing the power of these machines, we also let go our responsibility to alter the machine if the outcome no longer suits us. We believe so strongly in their ability to serve. They become somewhat autonomous movers and shakers in our lives and we forget we built them in the first place and can change the machine to affect our lives in different ways, reach new goals, create a variety of outcomes.

I think about my own machine systems. How I've spent my whole life building these wondrous contraptions that provide a set of reactions and actions for any given situation. I have a machine that says "You can have everything you want, but only if you work hard." This particular machine has served me well throughout the years, so I do not doubt it, I believe in it and its ability to produce the outcome it was built to achieve. However, because I built this machine, it has limitations. It cannot take into account my new experiences, ideas, and lessons learned unless I change the system or scrap it altogether and build a new one. For instance, working hard may very well achieve the goal in the end, but working smart may get me to the end result in less time and with more elegance. The beauty and elegance of the machine is to be considered and as I walk through my life, I no longer need to use hand tools to build my house if power tools are available. The elegance of the solution feeds my need for beauty.

So where does doubt and belief come into it? When I build the machine, I am motivated by what I've learned from experiences. I have deduced certain "laws of living". For example, I've watched my parents work hard their entire lives and they have achieved their goals. Therefore, I interpret this to mean that working hard will get you what you want. My machine systems are designed to work from this knowledge and belief in these laws. If I doubt the machine, it cannot work for me. Then I have doubted the laws and I am left reinventing the wheel with every task. So I build the machine with faith. I use it with belief. However, I have found that it is unwise to believe without re-evaluating the systems I construct. This has led to concession and a sort of inability to walk with grace and beauty that I find unacceptable. The machine takes over. It runs my life. It is no longer a tool I use to achieve certain material and emotional goals for myself. It no longer feeds me. It rules me and I am caught up in a confused contraption of my own design.

Walking with Honor

I have come to realize through my business experiences as both a retailer and as an artist that the world is riddled with people who do not walk with honor. I find myself disappointed with the human race when I have to deal with people such as these. I hear myself thinking, "Oh. You're one of them." In such cases, I alter my behavior, spend many hours strategizing how to cover my ass, expend precious energies trying to keep what I feel is mine. And this is because for these folks, life is a game where you can only win when someone else loses. It does not occur to them that games can also be played where the object is for all parties to prosper. Mutual cooperation for personal benefit.

I will continue to hold my ground. And I am concerned that so many people seem to be driven by building their lives on the backs of others rather than creating a life from the foundations of their personal integrity and vision.

Prayer

Over the last month I've completed two paintings that deal with prayer. When I started them, way back in 2005, they were painted with something totally different in mind. However, as they stood leaned against the walls of my studio, they led me down a another path. And I remembered the graveyards in New Orleans, the many photographs I took of the scratched "X"s scored into the faces of the tombs. Prayers and hopes of the living asking for the help of the dead.

Now these paintings have been re-worked and this theme of prayer has emerged with more clear intent. At first, I was thinking that in some cases, when the situation is beyond your control, the only recourse is prayer. Feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness could be comforted by prayer. When nothing else could be done but worry, your only possible action is prayer, a calm, focused meditation with a positive intent.

However, as I begin my third painting (the first of which is presented in this blog) I have encountered a new idea. I was thinking that the act of prayer was essentially creating a conscious intention for an outcome to a situation. A loved one would become healthy in the face of dire illness. But now I'm seeing that what I am really doing with my prayer is gaining comfort within the bounds of a situation. Trying to create acceptance for some inevitability rather than attempting to change it.

I am a big believer in concrete action. If I can see that I can change a situation by action, then my mind turns to creating solutions. And often, I find myself trying to hold back the flood, bailing water with the tiniest of buckets for days, and weeks, and years on end. This seems senseless to me, although I have been guilty of this on more occassions than I wish to admit. Maybe this is why I have viewed prayer as an action of change, a tangible, material affect on the world rather than a mental affect on myself.

But however I reached this present moment in my ideas about personal prayer, I feel that prayer is a complex action and maybe there is much more to this mental exercise. I hope that through continued painting on this subject many new layers of meaning will emerge.

Belief

Recent events have had me thinking about belief. It's easy to believe in something you can see, taste, touch or smell. But those things we believe that are intangible or not explainable are often those things which command the most diligent dedication and unshakeable belief.

I send out several entry forms every month for juried competitions. I contact countless publishers to try to have my paintings put into print. I invest money and time that is not easily found. I paint in my studio everyday. I catalog those works produced. And I try to keep myself from creating harsh judgements along the way which seems the most difficult task of all. And I do all these things because I have belief. Belief that painting is still worth something to people other than myself. Belief that I can make paintings worth having in private homes, collections, shows, magazines and anywhere else they can be shown and experienced.

Just getting up everyday and performing the tasks of an artist is enough to shake my belief in myself, in my art, in painting as a human endeavor. Up to now, there have been relatively few rewards, an almost complete vacancy of those tangibles which would make my belief easy. But I keep doing it anyway. And I think holding judgement with a strong, short leash is most important for me or else I open the door for doubt.

On my circle of emotion, doubt is directly opposite of belief. And I ride the circle both in my artistic work and in my daily living. Everyday I can choose to believe in those things I feel are worthy of belief or I can choose to create doubt, insecurity, and skepticism. And while a certain amount of judgement is needed to make this choice, there is a moment when I choose to believe, a moment I choose to let go and float out into that unknown. Am I ever sorry for throwing myself into places where danger may be lurking in wait for my release?

No.

When I reach the end of my days, whenever and wherever that arrives, I will not have doubt and resentment. I will not have dark monsters swimming around inside my head. Fears that kept me from trying something, for believing in something I can't explain. And it doesn't matter now or then whether I succeed or fail (however you may define those concepts). What matters is that I walked through my days with belief. In myself, the people around me, and in every action I took along the way. I will rest easy and my journey will have been better than any painting. And in fact, those things I choose to believe in everyday, the fact that I paint and believe in the power of art is what makes my life so satisfying. Without belief, I simply have no motivation.

So perhaps belief, wherever you choose to place it, is one of our most powerful tools for a happy and fulfilled life. And that is indeed what we are all seeking, however we choose to go looking. For me, painting is an important search tool. A magnifying glass for inspecting what's happened. For finding those tangibles that make my belief unshakeable.

The Latest Issues

At the start of every month I find myself browsing through the magazine racks to pick up the latest issues of Art in America, Art News, Art Forum, Modern Painters, and perhaps a few other art magazines. What strikes me over the last few months is the abundance of film and installation and the general lack of meaningful painting. What's wrong with painting?

I love paintings. In fact, it is my life's dream to do nothing else but make paintings. And I feel sad and disappointed when I thumb through the glossy pages these days. While I have nothing against installation and film as a media or mode of operation, I still marvel at the wonderful immediacy and intimacy a great painting can produce no matter the size.

A friend of mine has suggested that the fact that installation and film may be so prominent these days is that the art world and the greater public may feel that art is for the masses to behold, not for the individual to possess. Afterall, when was the last time you went to someone's home and saw an installation in their living room?

It makes me wonder where the first step was taken that led to this seeming separation of the art object from the individual owner. And I am saddened that of my friends, the only ones who have art in their homes are artists themselves or close friends or family to an artist. I love a good painting or sculpture in my living space. It fills me with joy to have such a beautiful and unique object in my home. And the best pieces I have just keep on giving. They are never the same. Or rather, I am never the same when I view them and they offer avenues of digression that meander through my daily experiences and give me new ideas and reflections of living. New understandings. And I can't imagine not having some art in my home.

As a painter, I call on myself every time I push that brush against the surface to create something that when someone else views it, they say to themselves, "Wow. I guess we still need painting". I can't see myself building installations, or calling a fabricator to give them the specs for my new piece, or amassing a crew to help me accomplish my grand vision. I suppose my view of making art seems rather simplistic, but I just can't get enough of moving around in my studio, making marks, trying to create meaning, and crafting a beautiful object. It just makes me happy. And I know that many artists feel the same. So why don't the magazines see it that way?