step out

              abstraction. The root of it was planted. Expressionism was something i had done. Then, i painted expressionistic landscapes, still lifes, etc. In them i refined my technique, but left out the truth; hiding the expression behind apples, vases, mountains. Maybe i made them move with the expressions, but soon    the whole truth wanted its way out. Through abstraction I wanted to paint something refined yet unrefined, unfinished yet finished, something of the moment but also of after the moment. 

              Something so still it cant stop moving.

              So i came to Zhannu. To take a walk in this maze called abstraction.

              To be part of the community. I had to. I learned to speak a gyarong dialect, immersed in aspects of their farming; the way to know the people is to be in their land. Carrying 90 pounds of corn on your back     balance   as you find your way along the narrow paths between the fields. and then    repeating. sort of. like a meditation.  you'd better be grounded     or        you will fall        and break yourself. 
 

              A blind woman in the studio. No matter how many hours i put in. A painful process. Creating something out of nothing. With no direction, nor guidiance. Nothing but. an urge. the one that made me give back my grant.   my everything.   brought me out here. Nothing but      a vision of what i wanted to paint.
 

              Later I learned i had some of the rage of joan mitchell, except i was attached to the line. I was looking at de kooning, and burning a hole in the pictures of works of great chinese calligraphy painters. In abstraction, the brushstrokes have to start from within, not from the stroke next to it. Later, they come together as a whole. My work, if i think too much about it, becomes overly sophisticated. Can't let it get that way, need it to be         free       free         of a standpoint.           
 

             It is one thing to know.   Takes a lifetime to do.

 

            In my days off i draw the commoner and the ascetic. When i sketch people on the spot It is like fencing, dueling with the paper; trying to "hit the tip".  Physically i am leaning back and forth from the paper; mentally i am scrutinizing every gesture of the sitter. When you observe and start drawing your subject, whatever they are doing, they will do it with their own form of grace, and suddenly       you see them for who they are.
 

          The travel portraits are a prelude to what i wanted to evoke in my abstraction. When the subject is gone, It all comes down to the mood of a line.

          For me, abstraction is stepping out
                                                                        of the subject and  into     

                                                                                                                 their          
                                                                                                                                          . 

          

 

 

 

         The visionary strength, the genuineness of expression, the intensity of emotional effect, are what count.- Josef Albers