Maybe I should put the best thing this week first – another self portrait I did today at my studio – like I’ve said before – every time I want to throw in the towel – I manage to do something that surprises me. I do think I’m running out of certain colors though – and a thought went through my head while painting this – it goes like this:

“What’s important in Art is inventing your own language”.

“Learning how to paint like someone else is not that important and you can only go so far coping someone else’s recipes”.

Marshall Sponder – Self Portrait – Standing – 18″ x 36″ Oil Pastel on Canvas Paper, 2008

I spent somewhere between 5-6 hours on this piece – thought about tying together some of the larger abstracts I’ve been doing and the figurative work I’ve also been doing.

Oh, by the way, I went back the the Metropolitan last night with a friend, Janice, who used to paint over at my studio and has since left to paint in her own studio in Dumbo – we viewed the Poussin show and the Courbet show and had a pretty good time – it’s rare that I can go to museum with another painter and even rarer that I have a good time.

I did this self portrait tonight.

Here’s the thoughts I had about this painting tonight as I micro blogged them on my Twitter stream as Tweets.

I painted a self portrait tonight at my studio in Brooklyn, it’s one of my best – will post to www.artnewyorkcity.com later.

Occasionally, when I feel like I just want to give up painting, I end up doing some of my best work. I have debated if I put in enough time to have a studio space worthwhile, lucky if I make it over here once a week.  I could come over more often but then I’d have to party less at art openings, opting to go make art instead of attending openings.

But part of me is restless; I can’t seem to live with the solitude Art demands. It’s as if I need to be around where “it’s happening”, absorbing and synthesizing of the crowd.  Being alone, like I was tonight, is ok from time to time, but more often I’d rather be around people and that’s the conflict in my nature that makes me question if I could really be a successful visual artist.  Visual artists, unlike musicians and dancers, usually require solitude and isolation to create…and I fear isolation and then, just as I’m ready to give it all up, some energy jumps out of me and takes over, and I am hanging on for the ride.

 I feel, at times like this, as if my life energy jumps into the work I’m doing…and creating the work is not at all like most people think it’s as if every stroke is its own composition and the result is subtle symphony made up of thousands of strokes that reverberate.  But there’s no words that actually describe this process…though I believe this makes paintings have a life of their own and allow viewers to feel the art speaks to them, even hundreds of years later.

Tonight, as I was finishing my self portrait I experience a curious sensation, that my portrait seemed to be “thinking”, as if part of me was trapped in the painting, and the painting was looking out at me.. Eerie…the I comforted myself by telling myself that I’m the creator, though part of me wondered if the painting was the reality and I was the creation.  

 

Oh well, it makes a good story, esp. when alone in a big studio with the eerie feeling of presences…and then I left to go home and I stopped to have coffee and some blueberry pie, a reward for having done something right in my life, a life filled with wrongs and misunderstandings, where so much of my life is not quite as I’d want it but that I have the ability and this point in my life to capture all these sensations both in words and paint  

 If all else in my doesn’t quite work, at least this part does, and I got better as – got older now I need to go home and post that painting on www.artnewyorkcity.com and www.theanalyticsguru.com      

Reading Ten Faves: Bonnard’s Open Window in Modern Art Notes I was immediately attracted to Pierre Bonnard’s Open Window (below, left) and thinking of my own Halo Still Life, on the right:

I was thinking that in an Artist’s work, there’s going to be ups and downs, things they respond to more, they do really well, and other motifs, that are not as “successful” (however that’s defined).

It’s hard to explain why the “open window” series is more successful, than, say, other paintings that Bonnard did – but almost all of his window paintings I respond to – where as some of his other scenes don’t always do it for me.

Sometimes, it’s impossible to really explain why some types of subject matter, maybe a particualar model even, lead to work that’s superior – it’s hard to explain even how that happens – and sometimes, it’s hard to even know how some paintings come to be.

For example, I was looking at some of my own work recently and thiking – why do I find those particular works more pleasing or successful? I don’t even know how I did my Self Portait last year – it sorta “happened” and if I tried to paint something like this today, I’d probably not be able to.

Funny how things work but while I often saw myself standing before Mount Saint Victoire and painted my friend Christine Boulet there, I had not painted myself in front of the great mountain and favorite landscape motif of Paul Cezanne.

Actually I did paint myself against Mount Saint Victoire yesterday but it did not come out quite the way I wanted, nonetheless, I’m posting a image of my painting here.  I had envisioned myself as being more inspired, yet what I communicate here was a feeling of being annoyed or perplexed and the mountain was much more superficially treated than I originally intended. 

But then again, I was trying to paint myself from the mirror and also the landscape from a movie I made – because my picture in the movie was too blurry to really do a good portrait – not that this portrait below is that great – again it’s a one sitting painting.

After meeting with Drew Knapp last night – I’d look at my work more critically, but then again, I have to take in information yet make my own decision on what’s right for me – I’ve decided that I can continue to work as I have, quickly, but also work on some paintings more than one sitting – in other words – I’ll try walking the Middle Path.

Actually, there’s a weird story with the St. Victoire portraits I’ve done – I sent the two I did of Christine Boulet to her a couple of months ago – but no one told me about the tax on imported goods (it just never occurred to me as this is the first time I sent anything to another country); when I shipped my two paintings to Christine I declared a value of 1000 dollars on them and she just got a bill for 163 Euros … and I never even insured the paintings.

Had I known, I’d have put a value of 0 dollars on them though that doesn’t quite feel right either – they were done our of friendship and have value – but a dollar value, what I picked was arbitrary.

However, it brings up an interesting point – let’s say I had written in 10,000 dollars instead of 1,000 dollars as the value of my paintings – nothing would have stopped me from doing that …right?   And in accepting them, they’d be taxed in France for 1600 Euros!  And yet, there’s be just me, putting down a number that came into my head.

Now, I’ll try to fix this – if I can, with FedEx tomorrow – but the reality is that I might not be able to do so.  

Just another example of money and value being created out of thin air.