The end of the year, the beginning of the year, the bullfight

Wilbur and I started the New Year in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

It’s a gorgeous old city full of US citizens, us gringos. That is a complex thing for me but I was totally taken with this place and all the people in it. Thus, I add to the “gringofication”. The textures, the smells, the energy, the love…the deep spirituality, so rich and abundant, completely intoxicating.

We went to a bullfight, the end of 2022. I’ve always been curious about them. I will say that my curiosity was more than satisfied. I’m still processing the experience. It was brutal, a display of bloodletting and torture that I certainly have never witnessed before. It started as a beautiful celebratory event. Costumes, pageantry people cheering and talking. It was so very clear that this was something that people loved and even took pride in. There was a band playing some “oompa” sort of tunes. Then it started.

We sat through a total of five “fights”. There were moments of grace and even beauty as the matador and the bull did their death dance. However, as is well known, the outcome is never in doubt. For me this fact overshadowed any sort of aesthetic appreciation. We just couldn’t make it through the final one, so we left.

This isn’t a football game where the winner and loser is in doubt. Here we know who the loser is. It was grim but I have to admit, initially, fascinating. As it all wore on it got more and more depressing. Not just for us but I could feel the crowd get less enthusiastic. People were distracted, the original celebratory vibe had turned into a grim death watch. The matadors costumes, at the beginning all sparkly, became stained with dirt and blood. The crowd had thinned out, the people walking out with us were quiet, there was none of the celebration and joy one felt on entering the stadium.

It’s said that the bullfight is a metaphor for life. Picasso used it as one for the artistic life, the act of creation, creating art from death. The “little death”, “la petite mort,” often associated with an artist giving their all to create what they are compelled to create. Hemingway used it as a metaphor for masculinity and the struggle to be free and then of course death. I don’t know about these metaphors we need new ones. Metaphors that celebrate our love, our planet and our joy of being alive. Yeah, I am a wild-eyed optimist!

We left the stadium fraught. I kept thinking how we are evolving away from such bloodletting, but not really. I thought of the war in Ukraine, all the genocides still happening. The young men and women killed by our policing system. The slaughterhouses that feed us the sanitized version of what we just witnessed. Wilbur, walking slowly, declaring “toxic masculinity”…she is right.

But then we ARE evolving away from this. Wilbur and I always say to ourselves that the arc of change is different for other people and places, we are changing but change isn’t the same for everyone. My 2023 resolution is to continue to question my own framework of thought. To try and see the way my privilege has formed my thinking. How I am that matador pathetically strutting and preening, facing the illusion of his death. I am also the bull, blood glistening down my body standing confused while pointlessly clinging to life. My resolution is to stay awake to life, to be a friend to death and to question why we have to struggle at all to understand either.

Rudy and Me

A reprise of a blog I wrote for the RACA magazine

With a hard thunk the trailer hitch drops on the ball. I slap the hitch lock down and the Spirit of RACA is securely attached to my truck. I am hauling paintings for the next exhibit of my work in Minneapolis and this is the routine.

When he was a young man, my maternal grandfather, Jackson Rudolf Ratcliff, made his living hauling grain and selling farm machinery. I imagine him pulling trailers, loading trucks, moving stuff down gravel roads past the rows of fields. Rudy would look at the green and dream his American dream. I haul my art around, down gravel roads past rows of fields. Each time I load up my truck or my trailer, I think of my Grandfather driving trucks pulling trailers through the Midwest.  

I watch the cycles of farming. The tilling, planting, tending, the harvest; all in a fixed pattern tied to the rhythms of nature. As the years go by, I sense a similar rhythm in my studio work. The winter has me hunkered down, focusing on death. The spring brings green and growth, expansion and life. Summer has a languid Italian feel, and then fall dries out, getting crackly.Our farm neighbors know I make paintings. They see me out in the yard or walking around the roads looking at things. I draw or paint outside and I like to imagine that they think I am odd. Yet probably they are just thinking, “look at him paint.” Maybe being an artist in the country has a bland normalcy—I like that. They see me load my paintings. I see them, their pickups loaded with bags of grain, refilling their planters.  They plant their seeds. Perched at the edge of my window, I witness long green lines emerge from the dark earth. Initially thin and faint, they’ll soon bellow green, fecund, loamy and wet. I know that these seeds are quite calculated, the products of selective breeding and chemistry. But the green—the green has always been there.   The color of spring green is luminous and infinite. It is a color that exists in dreams and the hallucinations of the mystics. It is the color of the sacred robe. In the green of spring—that vibrant and unnatural green, soft and harsh, a color of immense promise—we are all compromised.Always there is a bit of release when I load up the trailer with my labors from the past six months. I am sending my work out into the world. Are my paintings seeds? Or are my paintings the plants? Maybe they are the fruit. Or maybe they are the death before the spring. I don’t know.  I do know that, like the green specks pushing through the mud, they have to be made.

The wind tosses some dust into the air.  My grandfather, long gone, hauled grain and farm machinery. I haul art. Our gravel roads are the same. We both ponder a past rich with memory. We both consider a future full of hope and love. The cycles of RACA continue. 

That’s my Gramps hauling some sort of farm implement

Hey!!! Thanks for it all

Hi everyone!!!

Retiring is such a weird word. To retire, to be retired, re tired???

Yes, after 32.5 years of teaching painting, drawing and the occasional art foundations class I’m hanging that part of my life up. Wilbur and the kids often heard me proclaim it to be an ideal job. It was. I could never have imagined a better one. For the majority of my academic career I was encouraged by colleagues and administration to do what Joseph Campbell proclaimed as the secret to a happy life, “Follow your bliss!” I did this every step of the way all the time, even when I was chair.

Here’s the catch with that idea though. To “follow ones bliss” you also have to bring everyone along with you! I mean what is bliss if everyone else is miserable???

Of course it didn’t always work. One of the things I’ve learned about teaching art is that you can only invite people along. They still have to do the hard work that any meaningful journey entails.

But I tried.

My favorite part of teaching was watching the light go off in a students head. I could always see it in their face and feel it emanate from their body. I loved that. I also LOVED bothering students. I loved being irritating and getting obsessed with uncomfortable questions. I’ll miss that the most.

To all of my former students that happen to read this. Thank you. I know that a majority of you probably never touched a brush again. I didn’t want to make you a painter, or even an artist. I only wanted to invite you along on the particular quirky path that a life well lived traverses.

If you HAVE found yourself continuing to paint I wish you well. Understand that I have nothing invested in your vision. I only opened the door a crack, you had to push it hard and stumble through. You did it all yourself and you owe me nothing. Well done!

Here is my prayer for you. I hope your voice is strong, your vision clear and your hand is steady.

The Ghosts That Love Me

Brian, As usual, I ask, where did the real inspiration get generated?

Hey Paul...gosh that's always such a hard question for me. This time I'll try to weave an answer. 

I think both of us might have received our art training at a time when the idea of inspiration was suspicious.  At least it was for me.  Inspiration was viewed as an idea that was rooted in irrationality.  Yet as I've gotten older and slowly sorted things out I've come to think that inspiration is a real thing.  I started thinking this way about twenty years ago after reading the book of Agnes Martin's lectures.  She kept using the word.  I kept thinking about it.  I realized that there is a kind of instantaneous inspiration.  That's rare for me.  I have moments of insight and those can bring about some sort of new understanding of my work.  Other times inspiration is a slow methodical unraveling and reweaving together of previous memories, thoughts, work, muscle memory, that moment and stuff like that.  I addressed this a bit more in a previous blog, I’ll link to that one.

Mythic Garden of the Future

2021

Brian Frink

This particular drawing you asked about was inspired by:

Ashile Gorky

Specifically his Garden in Sochi and Liver is the Cocks Comb paintings. I've been thinking a lot about these paintings lately.  I don't know why, although when I think about it I've been thinking about them for a long time.  So….my own landscape I'm in, the trees and gardens around the Poor Farm.  

Ashille Gorky

The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb, 1944

Albright-Knox Museum

David Bowie  

He has a song on his Aladdin Sane album; I'm playing it right now.  There's a particular lyric, "perhaps the strange ones in the dome" has always stuck with me.  I mean I first heard this when I was fourteen years old and it's always floated around and that’s a long time.  When I was working on this drawing that lyric came up again.  This also connects me to different work I've done in the past.  The lyric is from his song Drive-In Saturday.  It has a weird sci-fi vibe that attracts me.  It also has a great sense of optimism about the future. Like the future is going to be cool but really different, so don’t worry.  I haven’t taken the time to figure the song out; I just listen to it and let meaning be. If you look at the lower part of my drawing you will see some architecture type shapes. These are my strangers in the dome.  

Artist: David BowieSong: Panic In DetroitAlbum: Aladdin SaneLyricsAh ooohHe looked a lot like Che Guevara, drove a diesel vanKept his gun in quiet seclusion,...

 The drawing was self-generated

I don't think of inspiration as a priori, it always comes with the work.  Wilbur and I left for a weekend retreat in the woods last weekend.  Before leaving I stuck a piece of paper to my drawing table.  When I came home it was the first thing I saw so I started drawing.  Something about the weekend informed the beginning…but they were just scribbles, lines moving along the surface of the paper.  No image in mind.  Then the images started to form.  The garden was first, the moon happened later.  I chose the color pencil because my hand felt like using it.  Then the drawing slowly evolved from that start. There is also just the pure sensuality of drawing. I take great pleasure in that feeling.

Rothko

So this one is a real mystery to me but I've been thinking about Mark Rothko a lot.  There's that painting, an early one, Untitled.  It is another one that keeps floating up in my head.  

Mark Rothko

Untiled 1944

I'm in an artistic crisis

I am.  There's a lot of changes and transistions occurring in my life.  So I'm flailing around a bit.  The funny thing for me is that when I'm in a crisis I tend to work more and I roam around a lot.  Maybe I'm always in a crisis!  I usually kind of enjoy it though.  A good crisis of identity and search for some sort of meaning and purpose creates some fertile soil.  

That was way more than I suppose you expected

Lol…sorry.  I can get very obsessed and your question inspired me.  

The interesting thing for me regarding the two paintings I cited is that they are transitional paintings, especially the Rothko.  So I'm reaching back thinking about other transitions and changes.  Maybe it's the pandemic too.  I keep thinking about what I want to leave behind and bring forward.  I also keep thinking about the famous quote from Guston, here it is…

Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out. (Philip Guston)

I'm a total fan boy of Guston.  I love his paintings but I think this is a total dumb quote.  I've quoted it a zillion times to students and stuff, but I'm really starting to think this is a bunch of hogwash.  Why? It is the layers of complexity that are the really interesting things. All that stuff bumping into me.

I tend to wallow in my memories.  I love the crowd in my brain and I accept their guidance counsel and influence.  

They are the ghosts that love me.  

Almost The End

Almost done with my grading. What a weird semester. I felt like I was part computer technician, You Tube video person and finally a professor. The part that I love about teaching studio art was pretty much totally gone. That is the improvisational day-to-day inventions in class and the personal interactions with students. 

I have a general art making and teaching philosophy that has guided both for my 32 years of teaching. There is a core belief that's pretty much the same and then there is a constantly shifting practice based on new information. I won't go into what they are because in truth they are very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to articulate with words. I mean I can...I have when needed but so often it reads like meaningless gibberish. 

This semester of teaching online challenged those precepts big time. I think it was a good thing though. It’s my last year of teaching, I retire at the end of next semester. In a lot of ways, designing my classes for online teaching turned into a retrospective tour of those 32 years. I ended up going through each day of a semester, deconstructing, reconstructing, examining and reinventing all of the assignments I had taken for granted for so many years. In many ways it was a beautiful gift to be able to do this.  

I was also living my art ideals in real time.  Allowing for new experiences, questioning old habits and processes and living in the moment, welcoming the creative muse into my teaching. 

I’ve always felt it my responsibility to turn a classroom into an environment that formed creativity not just discussed it.  This requires a terrifying level of vulnerability from the person in charge of the classroom….me.  Asking fundamental questions that go so far as subverting my own authority and knowledge is what I’m talking about.  Welcoming my students along on my journey of self-discovery along with all the successes and failures, questions and frustrations.  

 I’ve never once felt I was a teacher.  Never.  That is because I questioned my own knowledge in real time, in front of my students. What I am is an artist struggling with their art in the deepest ways possible.  Then I talk about that, I attempted to exemplify and model that behavior.  At times the classroom felt chaotic and out of control.  There were many times over the years when students were frustrated that I wouldn’t tell them “what to do”.  A lot of times when I ignored someone because they needed to figure it out on their own.  Other times I would babble on for hours, I can preach the gospel of painting!  

The pandemic with the resulting online teaching tossed much of this up in the air.  I could never see what the students were doing.  It’s like art making was turned into bits and bytes of information.  It was impossible to be vulnerable before my students.  Well, I did try with my You Tube videos.  But I don’t think they could smell my fear, they couldn’t really see me shake. 

Now I’m grading them all.  I am, of course, being generous.  Did they learn as much?  No, I don’t think they did.  Or maybe that’s the wrong question.  Did they learn?  I think they did, I also think they learned something different than all the other students in my previous sixty-four semesters.  An overworked word, resilience, they learned that.  I think, I hope, they learned the connection between the life they live and the art they make.   That difficult to teach connection between their sense of who they are, the moment and their art.  Sometimes I think of that as desire, other times fear, then most of the time it’s a feeling that is all about, yes…. vulnerability.  Letting go and opening up to extraordinary and magical things.  Maybe that’s what they learned, I hope so because it really is all I’ve ever tried to teach.  

A Letter to My Students 2

Hi Class,

How are you all doing today?  I know it's Wednesday and I'm breaking my studio time to check in and chat a bit.  Happy to do that!!

I've posted up a new assignment that some of you may find a bit "confusing".  I want to assure you that that is the point.  Up to now I've been spelling things out...as best is possible.  Most of our assignments have been pretty directed with explanations and demos.  I've been slowly shifting to a more self directed phase of class.  Meaning it is up to you, sort of.  

Or more up to you.  The whole point is to be creative right?  That's what we will be doing, being creative.  Of course like any kind of freedom it comes with a bit of consternation.  That would be not having directions that are clear.  It's really odd but we LOVE directions! We LOVE being told what to do and how to do it.  BUT think about this question for a moment:

How can you develop creativity, a creative mindset, if that's all you do?  Expecting to be told what to do and how to do it. 

It's a conundrum to be sure.  

To be creative invites risk.  Risk contains the unknown, you have to take a chance.  What is at risk?  Failure.  We all want predictable clear outcomes that are positive.  However to be creative, to engage in creative thinking you have to take a risk.  

One other thing....

Risk also has another, kind of unexpected, side to it.  That would be vulnerability.  To risk is to be vulnerable and embrace failure.  Think about it as telling someone that you love them for the first time.  I mean when you really feel it.  You have to risk, be vulnerable and accept failure, rejection.... OR success!  That person loves you back.  

Fun isn't it?

But this is the core of art.  Vulnerability, risk, rejection, failure, rejection, success.  

I'll still be doing some demo videos, I'm working on a color pastel demo for you.  However my videos will mostly be technique ones and not illustrations on how to do the assignment.  

So when you start working on the new assignments, look at them a bit differently.  Think about risk and creativity.  Think a bit "backwards" about them.  Step out and take a risk, don't worry I'll be your net.  I'll catch you and applaud the risk you took.  Then I'll watch you soar!  

I’m now going to quote Annie Dillard. This is from her amazing book (which means READ IT) Pilbrim at Tinker Creek. For me this quote sums up the nature of risk.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Thanks and carry on...stalk the gaps…risk everything.

Brian

Seeking A Metaphor

I think in metaphors, well we all do. I also look for them. For me I’m far more interested in what the metaphor is than anything else. Of course, this might sound weird, but a lot of the time I’m super confused about them. It’s like I can think of it then it slips away. Strange. Still, I can look up the definition, that’s easy. But then thinking of it in the world of images is so much more complex.

Ok just ruminating now. I came up north this week looking for things, or something or anything.

Usually I just look at the water. I did that...but this time I turned my back on the water. The hill was there. I started to think of hills, what is a hill, why is a hill not a mountain. A hill is nearly invisible. Then I saw the shadows rising up on the hill. Shadows are interesting to me because they are projections, illusions, ephemeral, shifting, hard to see, hard to define. I learned this from one of my favorite artists, Jasper Johns. His work has always used shadows in ways that are obvious and subtle.

These shadows are the sun, behind me. In a sense the sun projects me into the image. Suddenly the shadow is my future. It’s climbing up another hill, it is only here for a moment but in that moment it projects life and energy, constantly changing.

Hill 2020

A Letter to My Students

Hi all,

I'm sending this message out to you all as a general one.  It is not to a specific person, so please don't read into it in that way.  Apply what I am saying to yourself as you see it is needed.  

We are close or at midterms, I've lost track.  It gets lonely down here in the art lair and I lose track of time.  

But I know we are close.  Most of you have been keeping up with things really well and I appreciate that.  Some of you have been having a hard time getting things going and I also appreciate that.  It is a difficult time and trying to do your artwork through this online thing is difficult.  It's hard to motivate and it's easy to let things slip.  I understand that.  

The rhythm of attending class helps get one into the habit of making things and producing what you need to produce to progress.  We really don't have that with the online class.  However, what you do have is the flexibility to work at your own pace and take real ownership in what you create.  I think that is cool.  I love that.  Because eventually you will be out in the world, responsible to no one but yourself. Those of you that want to follow an art path, that path of being an artist, will HAVE to learn to self-motivate.  To create your own assignments, to not rely on doing what you are told, to push yourself, to hold yourself accountable and all of that stuff…right?  So this online format is perfect for that.  

You are kind of more of your own boss…kind of.  I still have to give you a grade at the end of this semester.  I hate that because it is not the artist's way, but it IS the way of the system we are working in.  

Note to reader the following is a free form screed….  

What is the artist's way?  I'm glad you asked.  It is understanding that to get better with your art it is 100% up to you.  It is understanding that sometimes to get better you have to get a whole lot worse.  It is understanding that you have to both be hard on yourself but also cut yourself a lot of slack be gentle to yourself.  It's understanding that the inner critic just the inner jerk that you shouldn't listen to.  It is understanding that you do have an inner asshole that makes you strong and forthright with your art.   The artist's way is accepting change.  It is recognizing that what you think is the only way to do something, is not the only way to do something at all.  It is that you don't have talent.  It is understanding that you do have talent but for now, or forever, it does not matter.  It is understanding that lazy artists rely on talent.  It is realizing that you will be totally different in a year, deal with that fear.  It is also realizing that your grade does not matter.  

 OK!  I got that out of my system…lol.  

I am a very easy grader.  I'll just say that up front.  I am.  I am because I seriously don't care about grades as they pertain to art.  AND grades are more reflective of your behavior than anything you actually do.  This is how we have all been conditioned.  

I will also be far more generous with grades because of the crazy online thing.  I assure you that I will.  It cuts you some slack, but it also cuts me some.  I'm floundering in the dark with this.  

I also hate the whole "hard ass art teacher" routine.  You know, the super critical, nazi art teacher that puts everyone down.  School of hard knocks…blah blah blah.  I hate that stereotype.  I am a supportive, encouraging and generous teacher.  I do not believe in harsh criticism especially if it is without a constructive subtext.   Yeah, I can get taken advantage of and I always know but I don't care.  You only hurt yourself.  

This is all my long winded way of saying that if you have not moved forward much on this class and you are feeling down, just get going…there is still time!  OR if you feel like you can't, it is time to withdraw.  What I want you to avoid is trying to do everything in the last two weeks.  I really dislike being put in that position and it usually ends up poorly.  Ie…I will flunk you. 

Well, I don't know what else to say.  You are all great, I love being your teacher and I hope this motivates those of you that need it.  For those of you that don't I hope it was an entertaining read!  ;)

If you need to chat I'm am very happy to set up a Zoom meet.  

Much love,

Brian

Making Paintings Has Been Hard For Me Lately

Making paintings has been hard for me lately.

Maybe it is the election.

Maybe it is my online teaching.

Maybe it is my forthcoming transition from academic artist to just an artist.

Maybe it is the dead flowers.

Maybe it is the stupid f’n election.

Maybe it is my quest for poetry.

Maybe it is my suspicion of nothingness.

Maybe it is that what I see is so blindly beautiful that I can hardly stand it.

Maybe it is death.

Maybe it is life.

Maybe it is the dead flowers.

Maybe it is the dirt on the floor.

Maybe it is in the water.

Maybe it is that bizarre dream where I didn’t have any hands.

Maybe it is something that I never admit.

Maybe it is the fear of painting.

Maybe it is the fear of not painting.

Maybe it is that little familiar feeling of worthlessness.

Maybe it is the Goddess that screams at me.

Maybe it is the Goddess that soothes me.

Maybe it is the f’n election.

Maybe it is the tax man.

Maybe it is something that I nevernevernevernever admit to anyone.

Maybe it is something I am declaring right now.

Maybe it is the color orange, or blue, or green, or red, or purple.

Maybe it is all those elusive colors that will forever confuse me.

Maybe it is love.

Maybe it is hate.

Maybe it is that FUCKING rag over in the corner that hasn’t moved in five years.

Maybe it is there for a reason.

Maybe it is the painting that I can’t seem to finish.

Maybe it is the painting that I will never do, no matter how hard I try to do it.

Maybe it is the painting that sits there staring back at me laughing.

Maybe it is that brilliant dream of youth.

Maybe it is the problem of my death.

Maybe it is the dust motes that never seem to go anywhere.

Maybe it is miracles.

Maybe it is beauty. Maybe it is ugly.

Maybe.

I’ll go paint now.

My Letter to a Student

Excellent!  I'm really happy that RR resonated with you.  It was a bit of an intuitive leap for me to recommend him to you.  However you brought out his political activism via his art, a logical relationship to what you stated you are doing.  Good job in observing that.  He's one of my absolute most favorite artists ever.  I've seen three or four (maybe more) retrospectives of his art.  The first one was way back when I was in high school, so his work sits deeply in my mind.  I think it has to do with his fluidity, he is constantly in motion, trying things, digging the process and not really caring if things are consistent.  He also exemplifies the idea that art is an idea first...a thing second.  It's a post Duchamp perspective that he carried forward creating wiggle room "out of Duchamp" for all of us makers of things.  A very important contribution to visual art.  

His work is ramshackled, funky while still being incredibly smart.  One of my professors always used the word "presence" to describe a strong work.  "That work of art has presence".  That's RR, it's like his work is some sort of aesthetic black hole sucking all perspectives into its poetically driven vibe.  Such great stuff.  

I was in a gallery in New York years ago.  Back then a person could wander around in the back rooms looking at stuff.  I was doing this and a small sunset painting, well it was more than that, but it was exactly that...a sunset.  It couldn't have been more than 9x12" in size, just a little thing.  I looked at it and it sucked me in, totally blew me away.  Yup...it was a little Rauschenberg...never have seen anything like it, It had presence.  

An important part of being a good painter is learning YOUR way so well (I do not mean style, style is anathema to a true artist) that your work is stamped with your presence, it is your humaness, your humanity and self shines through the bullshit.  That's how it works.  

B

Yay!!! It's The Future!!!

I remember when I was a kid way back in the 60's, imagining life in 2020. The number seemed like such a futuristic sci-fi date. I wondered what life would be like. Would we live on Mars? Would we have those transporter things like on Star Trek? Would we talk to little machines and they would talk back to us? Would all our food be a colorless goo? Would I be dead??? That seemed a possibility. Maybe we would all live forever.

2020 actually feels pretty normal to me. I still feel like that kid excited about all the future possibilities. From a philosophical perspective my future still stretches out as far in front of me as it did in the sixties. (meaning it doesn't) Yet my imagination throws its rope out to forever (a nod to a dear mentor, Ken Holder) and I really think it is a lovely place. It's always fraught, death and disaster constantly lurk. But there are also flowers and art and love.

I know for sure that there are little machines that talk so that's cool. I bet we will have big nerf Robots, squishy soft things that are warm and vibrate in a pleasing way. They will carry us around, out to our self driving thing, it will be warm and soft and vibrate in a pleasing way, it will take us to other soft warm gently vibrating places....

To all the kind people that have purchased my work over the years, many, many thanks for your support. I think of all my paintings and drawings living on walls. I wonder about them. Are they still appreciated? Did any get tossed in a dumpster? Are they living their lives, happily, mutely confronting their own unique futures?

I hope all of you have a wonderful 2020, much love from the Poor Farm Studio!

If I Were a Bird

If I Were a Bird

The Birdhouses of Joseph Frink

Joseph Frink has been making things his entire life.  I’m not sure if he ever thought of himself as an artist but he is one.  

He is an obsessive maker.  Furniture, goofy signs, countless clocks, toys for his grandchildren, holiday decorations and many other things.  He has made paintings and he draws, he is a compulsive creator and maker.

For the last several years he has been making birdhouses.  These are not functional birdhouses, not really.  Although I suppose a bird could live in one.  Frink’s birdhouses are more idealized, fanciful houses for an imaginary bird.  What kind of bird would live in one of these homes?  One with bright, exaggerated plumage? Maybe a big pink bird that has the magical ability to shrink down, slip through the entrance hole and sit back to watch a bit of television.  Maybe you or I can be that bird imagining living in one of these houses.  

Each house is different.  Frink uses found materials, natural and human-made, to create designs and embellishments on the exterior of each house.  The backs of many of them are reserved for a special statement or symbolic purpose.  He never adds an embellishment for simply a decorative flourish, indeed, there is always a conscious scheme to what he does.  He uses appropriate and well thought out color choices for each birdhouse.  Sometimes it’s a muted palette other times a bright, strong combination.  These choices are not arbitrary, rather they are well thought out deliberate constructions.    

Frink loves to give his birdhouses away to special people in his life.  All his children have been given one or more.  He loves to give them to people that he has regular contact with.  People that attend his church, good friends, neighbors.  He donates them for his church fundraiser, his favorite waitress at Grandma’s in Duluth, he sent one to friends in Japan. 

He doesn’t create these to make money.  They are a gift to the world.  They are objects of humor, joy and delight possessing a particular and unique aesthetic vision. 

The Art Spirit is the gift of our species to the universe.  It is true that artists sell their work for money, a necessity for sure.  However, The Art Spirit at its core is a gesture of giving.  A person, an artist, makes a choice to live their life in service of this ultimate human compulsion to create.  It is a pure, genuine response to the world of our imagination.  

We all construct imaginary places to be, houses perched on a branch teetering with possibilities, dreams and vision.  Frink’s birdhouses tap into our collective desire for play, for imaginary lives and identities for fanciful rainbow hued realities.

If I were a bird I would live in one of Joseph Frink’s birdhouse.  Now that I consider it, perhaps I already do.    

The Moon Within

My moon landing memory.

My family ran a campground up on Island Lake, near Spooner Wisconsin. Back then it was basically in the middle of nowhere. The television, like everyone’s, got its black and white image via an antenna that was outside on the side of the cabin. Since we were far from a larger city the reception was always horrible. No cable, or internet connections in those days, the idea of a perfect picture was not even an idea. There was always "fuzz" or static. The particular TV set we had at the cabin was also old, the image was always stretched out and people had pointy heads. Sometimes one of us kids or my dad would have to hit it hard to sharpen up the picture, this sort of temporarily improved things.  It was the same TV set that I recall watching The Beverly Hillbillies and Johnny Carson. Or, horrifying images of the war raging in Vietnam, civil rights protestors being beaten, fire hoses pummeling them down, dogs attacking them.  Yet that night, fifty years ago, something very different, something hopeful and beautiful was on the TV. 

There were some campers staying with us so my dad ran a feed from our antenna to another TV set he had put up outside for the campers to watch. This seemed like an amazing luxury to me, another TV set up OUTSIDE! It was a marvelous localized technological advancement that seemed even bigger than what we were witnessing ON the TV's.

We sat there, a warmish summer night, on our screened in porch watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. I recall his head being a bit pointy, the black and white picture was really hard to see, it was like snow falling. Yet it was magical moment burned into my 12-year-old brain. As I ponder it here at 62 I suddenly have an image of my Granny Frink, who around that time would tell us kid’s stories of seeing her first airplane. She had a bit of wonderment in her voice. And we were amazed, not that she had seen an airplane, no. What amazed me was that there was a time when airplanes DIDN'T exist. There was a time before when our imaginations could only fly. It was a hard thing to believe. I think there is another subtler point here to make. That is that we were watching an amazing feat of technological advancement ON a similar feat of technological advancement…the TV set itself. My Granny witnessed the flying plane with her own eyes. My similar experience was mediated by another medium. As Marshal. McLuhan famously said “the medium is the message”. A prophetic statement that still resonates and has become even more entwined with our collective and individual experiences and memories.

Now my grandkids can look at me as I tell them the story of watching people-on the tv-walk on the moon. The amazement I felt, and still feel. When there was a time when my imagination was the only way to go to the moon.  The moon still lives large in my imagination and it is in my art.  I think we are always treading some weird fragile line of truth, myth, poetry, thought, rationality and prescience.  The stories we tell each other balance on this line.  There are momentous events that shift reality, that alter our very imaginations. For my Granny Frink it was an airplane, for me it was fifty years ago watching the little pointy headed people jumping around on the moon.

The Flat Files From SoHo

See these flat files? About 36 years ago I was with my partner in our electrical business, David James (painter and very nice guy). We were in SoHo and saw a sign:

FLAT FILES 60 BUCKS, YOU HAUL!!!

We happened to be driving his panel van so we stopped. I bought one and I think he bought two. They weigh a freaking ton, I am not kidding, these are back busters. I was 27 and after a few years of warehouse work and as an electrician I could handle them. So David and I muscled them into his van.

I've been hauling mine around for all those years. Moving them in and out of studios. Loading them into trucks and trailers. Taking work out, putting it back in. I'm thinking this is their final destination, back to my studio from upstairs. I built a nice wheeled table so I can move them around the studio if I need to change things up.

I was going to toss them because while they are flat files they are kind of flat, little skinny drawers. Yet they hold a lot and they keep things flat. Plus this is the kind of thing to leave your kids. They need some old 60 dollar flat files in their future. Right?

Eight more drawers...whew... Now I'm 62 and soft as hell after 30 years of university teaching. Taking lots of breaks.

I Finished a Painting

I finished a painting.

It’s a good sized one, almost sixteen feet wide by eight feet in height. For a few practical and other reasons, it is a triptych, three large canvases meant to be seen together as a whole.

I created this painting as a part of a proposal made about a year ago. The university I teach at, Minnesota State University, Mankato (in Southern Minnesota) has a competitive lecture series called the Douglas R. Moore lecture. Mr. Moore is a past president who established this lecture series. There’s even a monetary award, which is cool. It’s always great to get paid to talk about what I love to do.

Which is paint.

My idea for the lecture was to discuss a recent body of work I call Magical Landscapes. The structure of the lecture is to talk about the history of landscape painting in American Art, the Modern era of landscape, Contemporary influences and then I document the making of one of my paintings.

My intent is to explore how to make a painting from the ground up. Sort of a step-by-step account of the process. From a historical perspective, to contemporary precedents, development of the content/direction and then the actual painting process. I guess sort of a demystification of making a work of art. Somehow, I have to jam all this in a thirty-minute talk with questions to follow. Talk about editing! My discussion of the history of American Landscape painting will be at best…cursory.

That’s for my talk though, come to it! March 27th, 7pm, Ostrander Auditorium here on the campus of MSU,M.

I’ve been posting the creation of this painting which I’ve titled “Moon Within” on social media. I’ve been doing this because the dialogue I’ve had with my social media community has really helped me to figure out the lecture and yes… the painting. It’s been a true collaboration and I’m appreciative of all my friends and their commentary. Much of it will be incorporated into my lecture.

One question several friends have asked keeps resonating in my head.

How do you know it is done?

It’s one of those difficult questions because there is a basic disconnection between what the viewer thinks about the painting process and what the process is actually like for the painter. The viewer sees the completed painting without the many steps between start and finish that the painter took to bring it to that point of finish. This presupposes that the painter had a clear plan and objective, which is sometimes true but mostly never.

I always think of it as taking a trip. There is a destination I’ve set. I even know how I’m getting to that place. Yet the trip itself is always full of uncertainty and usually a bit of chaos. Same with a painting.

A painting is finished when it declares itself complete! Within the time frame of a few moments, to continue the travel analogy, it has become a destination, a place, a world of its own making.

A big mistake a lot of young painters make is that they start their next painting on top of the one that just declared itself DONE! The declaration just wasn’t heard. All my years of painting has taught me to listen and to hear my paintings yelling at me. Although there are times when I still drive over the cliff with the painting screaming at me!

A painting is finished when:

It is a surprise

It looks like I didn’t make it

It is delightful, not heavy

It won’t let me touch it

It is self-declarative

It is fully present, further changes seem inconsequential

But there is a problem with all of this. Here’s the problem: There is no finish, no end, no completion.

All of the paintings I love, Rembrandt, Picasso, O’Keeffe, Burchfield, Turner, Murray…it’s an endless list…I walk up to that painting, I stare at it, it’s a shadow!! I cannot figure it out, I get closer, I never will figure it out, I’m confronted by a mystery that is inexplicable, I keep staring, I think I’ve got it….there is no point in trying figure it out…the point is to indulge and savor the mystery.

That is when a painting is truly finished, when it embraces the mystery of its own making. The irony is that it is finished when it is unfinished!

I’ll be exploring these sorts of thoughts in my lecture on March 27th. Come to it if you are in the area. I’ll also be exhibiting “Moon Within” so you can see it in person.

Much love to you as we relish the mystery of our unfinished evolving lives!  

Moon Within

184”x96”

Oil on Canvas

2019

New York new york

Wilbur and I move to New York in 1979.  We lived in Brooklyn until 1984.  Those five years gave our lives a certain kind of strange and wonderful momentum that continues to this day.

I can remember taking the subway a lot.  I did electrical work for money and my jobs were all over Manhattan so I got to know the subway quite well.  I’ve returned frequently and my familiarity with the system has never really faded.  It takes me a couple of days and then it’s like getting back on a bike. 

While riding the subway the opposite window becomes a mirror in the darkness of the tunnel.  If you ride the subway a lot you know what I’m talking about. Thankfully it’s not a perfect mirror and today I saw a man with a gray beard that I barely recognized.  I still feel like that twenty-three-year-old riding home from work staring at the window become mirror.  Time is always such a shock.   

On the 6 train

I can’t help but reflect a bit on time and the passing of years.  Some people are stuck in time, others flow smoothly through the years not giving the passing much consideration.  I like to think of myself as the later.  I never really worry or even think too much about getting older.  And yet here was this really old looking guy staring back at me.  I felt my past leaning on me a bit while the subway clanked its unique rhythm.

To make art is an incredible privilege.  I think it is indicative of a healthy society in the sense that there are economic and social systems that support the activity. At the same time art making is one of humankinds most basic activities, it happens everywhere in all cultures.  Rooted in the shaman but also in the politician/business person.  To be an artist is a strange and potent mixture of cultural stereotypes and pressures. 

Hilma af Klint

Wilbur and I went to NY, specifically, to see the Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. I suppose it was a bit of a pilgrimage. If you are not familiar with her work you should check her out.  She created monumental abstract paintings well in advance of Kandinsky and other celebrated early modernists.   She is a pioneer of abstraction who was overlooked probably because she was a woman and because she played around with mysticism.  Yet the guys did that too, so who knows?  I’m not blogging about that nor is this a review of the work, I can’t do that.

Standing as a kind of coda to the Klint work was an exhibition by the contemporary painter R.H. Quaytman.  Over one-hundred years separated these two artists.  Quaytman’s work was in relationship to Klint’s work but also commenting on the Guggenheim space.  A series of dark square panels with a centered white circle was installed in each to the Guggenheim’s exhibition “bays”.  As the spiral of the ramp rose the circle paintings descended.  I thought this was an effective use of the space, referencing the repeated use of the circle by Klint and then tying it into the unique architecture of the museum.  The white circles were a sort of screwed on cap to the upward spiral of the Guggenheim.

It got me thinking.  About the museum space.  Klint had envisioned her paintings created for a spiritual temple of sorts.  A yet unbuilt space would link the viewers of her paintings to the cosmos and spiritual awakening she is attempting to elicit.  I kept thinking that perhaps this space Quaytman asserts, the space I was slowly walking in…was that space.  Was Quaytman using her art to signal that this was the temple? Or was it a statement opposing the dominating architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright?  

The making of art bends time and space, I am utterly convinced of that.  When I am working on a painting time does not exist.  What I thought as a seventeen-year-old is still at play in my imagination and forms that moment.  What I made as a seventeen-year-old informs what I create as that sixty-two-year-old staring back in the subway window.

This is the metaphysics of art.  It is the making real of what Vonnegut called “getting unstuck” in time.  While mortality is certainly the end game for us all there are “slipping glimpses”…to paraphrase De Kooning of a more infinite reality lurking in the art we make.  A reality that is big and open unimpeded by fame, market, money or prestige. It is what makes art real and worth committing to a lifetime.     

Goodness Gallery (my artist statement)

Blue Sky Blue Pond, 2018 Watercolor 

I am fond of telling people “I paint what I want to paint”.  This is a true statement, I DO paint what I want to paint.  I believe I have developed a personal artistic philosophy, history and an understanding of paint and paint process to do this.   It is also a declaration of my freedom. However, I’m happy to do a bit more for you, dear viewer, of my exhibition.

During the past ten years my working process has changed significantly.  I have begun to create distinctive and at times unrelated bodies of work.  Part of this is an overall statement I want to make.  That statement can be distilled down to the idea that painters in this post-Post Modern time period have the unique ability and freedom to move around. I don’t think we are encumbered by style, technique or concept.  I, therefore, constantly shift my gaze and my process to fit my desire and need.  Think of the Jazz musician who also does Rap, or the author of varied genres of books.    

The work in this exhibition is work from two different series of works called Oddly Shaped Paintings and Magical Landscapes.  

The Oddly Shaped paintings are related to folk art, my Father’s birdhouses and the history of shaped paintings and the landscape.  

Moon Slice

The Magical Landscapes are related to Magical Realism, the tradition of landscape painting in the United States and my observations of the cycles of nature.  

Yellow Flashes 

I think both of these bodies of work deal with the metaphor of the edge.  The edge of things is interesting.  It is a transition from one place to another.  Or perhaps a transformation from ice to water.  It might be the representation of the shoreline or water or the night sky.  I am constantly obsessed by that place in between things, that’s where the interesting stuff happens.  

Now I will quote Annie Dillard….

Quote, “Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.” 
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Many thanks to Chris Allen for taking the very brave leap into the unknown to start the Goodness Gallery. I am very honored to be the first artist to exhibit here.  Thanks to Zoe and Olivia for assisting me in unloading and for their work in the gallery. I would also like to thank BJ Shigaki and all the other terrific volunteers and staff helping Chris with this new adventure.  Here is to a long run and a prosperous journey!  Go Goodness!! 

You Can't Go Home Again....Thank Goodness!

Wilbur and I are in Plainfield Illinois, our old hometown, for a really quick visit. I apologize for not seeing people but we are here to celebrate the birthday of her niece Emma and then go visit my niece in Champaign who just gave birth to little Josephine...what to go Maggie and Sam! 

Wilbur and I went out to dinner last night at a fancy little Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Plainfield. It is in the old police department, back when there was one cop and a jail cell. In the bathroom, where the bars from the cell were still installed, I pondered all the drunks that sat in there. Maybe quite a few of my former classmates from high school. 

It is a real fancy and even fanciful place called MORA. Wilbur and I had an amazing meal. The waitstaff is a fantastically diverse group of ethnicities and gender identities. They contributed to a wonderful, homey vibe that we enjoyed. 

The Plainfield that Wilbur and I grew up in was unambiguously white. It was also racist. Stories were always told of Black families trying to move in and either being run out or their houses were set on fire. I never witnessed these sorts of things but I did witness a great deal of talk. 

Then there was Billy. Billy was the son of good friends of my parents. He and I were also friends. When our parents would visit each other he and I would hang out and listen to music. We talked a lot and shared a lot of ideas about art and music. He was also gay before anyone knew what that was. Billy was absolutely tortured at school. It was obvious why, he looked and behaved a lot like a girl and so he was a target for the particular kind of cruelty that so many people have had to endure. Did I do anything? No. To my own shame I could not speak out for Billy. I didn't have the courage, language or understanding of what was going on. I was just happy to not be the target. This is the usual story, isn't it?  It does cause me sadness.  

Billy eventually moved to New York city. I never saw him again. He lived there until his death at a very young age. I never knew why or how but I hope he found himself.  

So, sitting at this restaurant in my old hometown- a town I worked so hard to leave-pondering Billy and his dreams.  I sat pondering another person, a person in my own family who also has suffered from our American dream, I felt pride at how this person has fought and overcome incredible obstacles to achieve their dreams. 

I couldn't help but think about change and love and how we can grow. How there is hope in dark times. How there is still good food and the company of people we care about. How we can work on our art on our purpose, on the stuff we really love to do and that alone can bring powerful change. The kind folks at MORA were working hard to make us feel welcome. They just wanted to serve us and bring a bit of warmth into our lives. They had no idea that they were part of a revolution. 

As we left MORA I was telling everyone how it was in Plainfield.  I told them to see all of them working here, serving incredible food in the old jailhouse was almost like a miracle.  I told Jacob the young man at the door about the Plainfield I knew…he just laughed and said, “Really??  No way!!”

Inspiration as Inspiration

A Facebook friend Arturo Cruz asked me recently about inspiration.  He was making astute observations (as is his habit!) referencing artists that have influenced me.  His questions got me thinking about originality and influence.  How artists really never create in a vacuum.  We work to make something new but that newness always has a patina of the individuals varied and unique influences and experiences.  Arturo was asking me about my inspirations. 

I was taught to be suspicious of the word inspiration.  I began my formal art studies in the mid-seventies.  It was a time when overly romanticized impulses regarding motivation were looked at askance.  The notion of inspiration was linked to words like “divine” and thus viewed with a lot of skepticism in a secular world.  “To be inspired” seemed so external to the idea of the individual’s assertion of self.  It smelled like religion.     

Several years later I read Agnes Martin’s thoughtful book titled Agnes Martin: Writings.  It’s a series of meditations on her painting and process.  It’s a book that I recommend for those interested in what makes an artist tick.  What is pertinent to my comments here is her use of the word inspiration.  She used it constantly.  Reading this word within the context of her rigid formulaic (I mean that in the most respectful way) oeuvre was highly impactful.  I started to think of inspiration as not being given to me by some divine source, rather, I started considering thinking of inspiration as the workings of my mind.  The churning of memories with the moment.  The overlay of history, thought and time with my actions as I painted.  To be inspired entered my vocabulary.    

I can’t help but see each mark I make, created in the present moment, as immediately and instantaneously surrendering to my memory of that mark.  I turn and make another mark, that again mixes with my memory of everything.  This process continues on and on.  Each work I create is thus a compilation of momentary glimpses into and subtle mixtures of everything I am and everywhere I’ve been.  They are contemplations on the infinite expanse of mind and consciousness. 

Ok,….that was some crazy stuff.  I agree.  Yet, while writing those sentences, I was inspired.  I was thinking about a whole bunch of different things, different artists, trips and moments in my life. 

Here is my greatest problem as a visual artist.  I can’t simplify.  I recall my mentor, the painter Rodney Carswell, telling me to “settle down”.  Rodney always talked about making work that was in his words, “clear”.  An artist works towards clarity, I never (still don’t) fully get this although when I see certain work I can feel it.  My brain always seems to be going in a hundred different directions.  Even back then, in 1975, I would be making about twenty different things at once.  My ideas would rapidly ebb and flow, change and shift, contradict each other, subvert the subversion.  You get the idea, I was always a mess. 

Yet I was a focused, driven and an impulsive mess.  A big part of my evolution as a maker of things was that I had to accept who I am with what I was doing.  Meaning I had to allow the thing that I was/am making to dominate.  I can’t impose order or structure on this thing, it has to be.

I inherited some of the DNA of late modernist painting mixed with the moment by moment shifting sands of pluralism and Post-Modernism.  This was just luck and timing.  For those of you not accustomed to those terms think of this as being between rock and roll, disco music and punk.  Think of it as coming of age in a time between being rooted in an idea and being untethered from ideas.  Sort of mixed up and sort of not. 

I was pondering this dilemma while visiting The Chazen Museum in Madison Wisconsin to see the great exhibition by the painter Dan Ramirez, titled “Certainty and Doubt”.  It is an exhibition that touches on aspects of his work from the mid-seventies until the present day.  I've admired his work for many years.  Ramirez is an artist that is firmly rooted in the modernist ethos.  He is also attempting to push it into some unfamiliar territory.  Territory that seems to contain a spiritual necessity.   

While viewing this exhibition that reflects on the artists relationship to modernism and his contribution to a formalist painting discourse, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own struggles. His work is clear, precise and focused. 

Mr. Ramirez struggles with the formalist strictures of abstract painting combined with the romantic desire for meaning and ultimately a spiritual recognition, thus the title, “Certainty and Doubt”.  It's hard to imagine a better title to sum up this particular moment.  It was an outstanding exhibition that I am grateful to have seen.  Does doubt overcome certainty or does certainty eclipse doubt?  I don't know.  I left his exhibition inspired. 

Rembrandt River With Wooded Banks

But back to me.

I saw a show of Rembrandt's landscape drawings many years ago. They were these small horizontal gems that seemed to be about everything and everywhere. They were tiny but infinitesimal.  

I've always wanted to make something like those Rembrandt drawings. Oh, and Turner. I forgot about Turner. The Turner exhibition I saw in San Francisco a couple years ago had a huge impact on me and the creation of this new body of work.  His watercolors were especially impactful.  Loose and evocative they seemed to be born of some strange alchemy.  

Turner, detail photo by Brian Frink

Turner, detail photo by Brian Frink

I've been busy working on small landscape paintings and ink drawings.  I call these my "Everywhere/Everything" series. Not sure why I'm calling them that except they have a kind of trippyness about them. I feel like I'm looking out at the landscape and seeing it full and with wonder. So, these are water, sky, field, land, forest.  This work feels like the fullness of experience not an attempt to pare experience down to some essence.  This fullness is so very compelling.

One of the things that intrigues me about what painters like to call "the idea of painting", is that a painting always places the viewer within a particular context and frame of reference.  A painting implicitly assumes the gaze and attention of the viewer and that attention is essential; without it the painting would not exist.   Without the interpretive attention of the viewer a painting becomes an extremely shallow, uninteresting box, a shadow really.... on a wall.  Sculpture, by contrast, assumes the viewers presence but not necessarily their attention.  A sculpture still exists. 

The idea of a landscape image as a metaphor for awe and wonderment is a critical idea for this recent work.  I understand the the landscape I stand before is a completely created space.  In a very real sense the natural is the unnatural.  This is what I find inspiring, the complex web of compromises, conditional relationships and contradictory thinking of contemporary life.  We are so fraught!  I hope these paintings of mine ponder the forbidding wonderment of life now.  If you are curious about this new work, please follow the link provided below.  Thanks !

Everywhere/Everything 2017 Ink on Yupo 

https://squareup.com/store/jamesmaygallery/item/brian-frink-gathering-stars