Ephemera

 

 

 

 

endless

Parts 11 - 20 in a series of paintings with an as yet undefined end.

 

 

 

 

Studio Notes

What is all this?  Why do I do it?  Like a cancer the seeds of doubt are ever present.  They're there.  There are many ways to combat them, to prevent their spread.  They may even go into remission.  You feel good, confident.  This is something.  It has meaning.  But the doubt never really disappears.  It'll knock you down when you least expect it.

 

Studio Notes

When is it finished?  Or why isn't it finished?  Answering these questions is often torture.  No one has actually posed the question.  It's just you and the painting.  The painting may pretend to be finished.  And you might even agree - for a time.  But you stare and stare.  "Ha!  You charlatan!  You mountebank!  You are not finished."  So you go in again.  Just a little white.  Just a light wash of ultra-marine and phthalo.  The painting puts on that fake smile again.  This goes on and on.  Eventually you see through the ruse and there, hopefully, is your painting.

 

 

 

 

 

This is Part 11 in the series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

September 2020

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 11 (September 20 & 21, 2020)

 

I expect the deterioration of the paintings to really gather speed now.  Nature kind of circled around the first two years of the project.  Now it's in there; it's taken hold; it's claimed the artwork.  I'm beginning to wonder if anything will be left in 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

 

久多 | Kuta

 

Warm in the sun, cool in the shade.  It still feels like summer.

The painting is beat up, like someone after a fight, crooked, dirty.  The separation of painting and supports has accelerated.  Another 6 months I think the divorce will be complete: the painting will live among the twigs and leaves; the supports will remain hanging in the tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

亀岡 | Kameoka

 

Clear blue skies.  The forest is unusually dry.  Kameoka has always been wet - dark and wet.  Strong dappled sunlight illuminates the forest floor.

The decay, always pronounced, seems to be on pause.  What is noticeable is this painting is barely red anymore.  Brown, gray, black.  But only incidentally red.

 

 

 

 

 

 

美山 | Miyama

 

First brushstrokes of autumn, an overeager painter.  The sun pokes holes in the forest canopy creating spotlights over the floor.  Like Kameoka, the forest is dry.  The greens are less vibrant, as if unplugged.

The gold kimono fabric seems to still be attracting the local wildlife: more bits missing.  Otherwise, immeasurable changes.  This painting has been fairly resistant to change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

京北 | Keihoku

 

The picturesque flow of water down the mountain in July is something like a leaky faucet now.  Shrinking daylight means a gorgeous battle of light and shadow.  Another face of the forest.

I've written about the earth taking up residence on the painting's surface.  Soil is accumulating in and around this little crease in the mountain incline.  This painting too has more or less abandoned its original color - blue.  Termites and water are beginning to inflict damage on the supports.

 

 

 

 

Studio Notes

Just when you've given up on a piece it will open up.  You've got to have patience, yes.  But you've also got to have courage.  Those little gestures, familiar strokes...those will get you nowhere.  Boldness is rewarded.  Timidness should be avoided.  You are a painter, not an accountant.

 

Studio Notes

There is that feeling, oh, this can't be finished; there isn't enough paint on the panel; I didn't spend enough time on it.  A painting must be labored over.  It feels false, lazy, dishonest if it is not.  I'll never be a Japanese painter.

 

Studio Notes 

There was a bumper sticker you used to see on cars back in the 70s and 80s.  It read: "The worst day fishing is better than the best day at work."  Substitute painting for fishing.  And a good day painting is really untouchable.

 

 

 

 

 

This is Part 10 in the series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

July 2020

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 10 (July 12 & 13, 2020)

 

 

 

 

亀岡 | Kameoka

 

The recent rains have rearranged the forest again.  The path to the painting is straight up the stream.  The painting is dark.  It seems to belong to the forest now.  A natural Shinto-like barrier of twigs surround the painting.  A silver drop of rain on a blackened leaf compliments the gold thread the bugs have decided not to eat.

 

 

 

 

 

美山 | Miyama

 

The forest wearing its best summer green.  The colors of the painting haven't changed much, but they seem to be a reflection of the forest.  Assimilation.  A light rain punches it up - electric green.  A fallen tree I've long admired has morphed into stag horns.  Another Shinto nod.

 

 

 

 

 

京北 | Keihoku

 

Waterfalls.  Last year's chest-high jungle less ambitious this time.  Here too fallen trees reinterpreted.  A different lens.  The dirt and debris on the painting seem more permanent.

 

 

 

 

久多 | Kuta

 

Kuta is cool: 17°.  A gentle rain gets aggressive.  Like my camera, I lose focus.  The old tree which the painting calls home seems taller, further away.  Close inspection is impossible.  The white white of two years ago is gone.  Mother Nature has toned it down with vague browns and grays.  A corner has been turned.  It's not my painting anymore.

 

 

 

 

Studio Notes

Some paintings just have tension.  I don't set out to create it.  It just happens.  I can feel it.  I can feel it while I'm painting, and I can feel it when I'm finished.  I wonder if the viewer also gets this feeling.

 

Studio Notes

Exercising restraint.  Knowing when to stop.  That is sometimes as difficult as putting down the next mark.  Don't vs. do.  That "do" is sometimes a mistake.  Then you have to rework, add more, and the painting becomes heavy.  That light touch.  That's difficult.  Effortless.  Even if it took weeks and months to do, it should look like it took seconds.

 

Studio Notes

Finally this piece has calmed down.  What a battle!  Try this, try that.  Each new effort thwarted.  A boxer who's not really fighting, gloves up, blocking your attack, objective is to frustrate.  Sometimes you just have to wait.  You know it'll get there.  Painting is patience.

 

Studio Notes 

Of course something really good is followed by something really bad.  It's like a footballer that scores a goal expecting to score again in the next match.  It's unreasonable.  Humility must be kept in check.

This painting has gone off the tracks.  How to bring it back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Checklist

 

1.   A slow drift towards madness

2.   They tore it down

3.   postcards in the wind

4.   余白

5.   never came back

6.   ambivalence

7.   misdirected energy

8.   He is so necessary

9.   re-sprout

10.  You’ve been replaced

11.  morning music

12.  begins to fray

13.  時間

14.  buried

15.  “exquisite chaos”

16.  analogue-ist

17.  accepting

18.  the follower becomes the leader

19.  as good as it’s going to get

20.  A Checklister

21.  “you give yourself away”

22.  unapologetically

23.  I’ll show you

24.  not there

25.  reminds me of something

26.  an old horse stroll

27.  Dying is never easy

28.  providing the ammunition for snipers

29.  equanimity ↔ equilibrium

30.  burn it down

31.  the river following time

32.  wildly romantic

33.  degrees

 

 

 

 

 

This is Part 9 in the series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

March 2020

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 9 (March 22 & 23, 2020)

 

It's two years since the project began.  The half way mark.

 

 

 

 

亀岡 | Kameoka

 

I was surprised to find the painting face down among broken twigs and leaves.  The forest floor in curious disarray, rooted up.  On closer inspection I discover a bite has been taken out of the painting.  Wild boar!  Some kind of beastly party.

The quandary of leaving the painting as I found it, or returning it to its original position two years earlier.  I anticipated and indeed hoped for changes brought by the elements.  I never considered wild animals.  Ha!  Crazy project.

 

 

 

 

美山 | Miyama

 

A brief moment of dappled sunlight dancing across the surface of the painting.  Gorgeous!  Cinema de la nature.

A tattiness that is not new, but somehow more emphatic.

 

 

 

 

 

京北 | Keihoku

 

The mitsumata are out in force, like popcorn exploding over the hillside.

A slight shift in palette from the usual layers of brown to a vague green.  A handsome addition I appreciate.  It compliments the moss covered rock under which it rests.

 

 

 

 

 

久多 | Kuta

 

The forest is cold.  Spring has yet to touch Kuta.  Everything still in its winter wardrobe.

The wood panel has begun to separate from the supporting frame.  This might eventually slide off and find a new home on the forest floor.  Wait and see.

 

 

 

 

Studio Notes

There's always the fear of repetition, that I'm just painting the same thing over and over.  Or a variation of the same thing.

It's this bloody small studio, like painting inside a closet.  Gesture is restricted.  Ideas too, perhaps.  Ha!  Shift the blame.

 

Studio Notes

Paintings are always personal, I suppose, because you put something of yourself in them.  This piece for some reason feels a little more personal.  There's history in there, a record.

It's loose.

 

Studio Notes

Blowing the dust of 2019 off the brushes.

A spare attack, leaving plenty of room for the painting to breathe.  Revisiting 間.  There's maybe some long ago Brooklyn in there too.  White.  It's early, but it might be something.  Yeah, so far we are getting along.

 

Studio Notes

From a certain angle...  In a certain light...  A painting with such requirements - is it good or bad?  Is it part of a game?  Make the viewer work a little.  Or should the viewer just be knocked out?

Tension seems to have come into my work lately.  A struggle - color, material, form.  Like spring battling winter, autumn vs. summer.  A new dynamism perhaps.

 

 

 

 

 

This is Part 8 in the series of short films documenting the (four)est art project in the mountains of northern Kyoto (Japan).

 

January 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

(four)est

notes and impressions

part 8 (January 17, 2020)

 

The paintings continue to grow into their surroundings.  Less and less are they intruders.  And so too are they becoming less mine, belonging more and more to nature.  Well...maybe a custody battle.

 

 

 

 

亀岡 | Kameoka

 

A fog over the mountains.  The forest is damp.  Forever damp.  There is a fine layer of moss beginning to grow over the painting.  A new color.  The reds more and more muted.  It blends with the rock.  Connected.

 

 

 

 

美山 | Miyama

 

The warm winter has confused the sakura.  No further developments to the painting.

 

 

 

 

 

京北 | Keihoku

 

The layer of dirt that is always decorating the surface of the painting appears more permanent.  The stream down the mountain just a trickle.  Everything is quiet.

 

 

 

 

久多 | Kuta

 

A little snow on the highest peaks.  It's a little disappointing to find not even a melted patch.  The reverse side of the painting is turning green with moss.  The front is stubbornly unchanged from the last visit.