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.

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.  

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.  

 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.  

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.