Renting Space in Painting

Growing up as a mostly poor kid has some advantages.  With eight kids, my family could not keep up with the latest fashion trends, going for the Sears store brand shoes instead of the Nike's.  We were always two or three video game systems behind the current higher resolution system. My parents drove cars that were old, not so old they were cool but more like "what kind of car is that?" kind of old.  Okay, so we were that peculiar kind of American poor where we still had clothes, video games, and cars.  But still, we were continually forced to consider how we could fix up what was broken (like the time my dad used a metal baking pan to replace the housing around our damaged AMC Gremlin's headlight- genius!), fake our way into being stylish (like sharing the few cool outfits that  my older brother and I had between us when we started attending separate schools, so nobody would notice), and in general to just make do with what we had.  I remember countless times getting home from school to find that our living room had been completely reconfigured.  This was always my mom's doing.  Something about living with nine other people always lead her to daydream about a larger, smarter, and more custom built house, one with coordinating, contemporary furnishings.  What we had were cramped "eclectic" rooms furnished with the odd pieces that had been salvaged from the neighbors curb or hauled from a garage sale.  My mom did battle with this state of function over form by constantly reconfiguring the layout of a room, believing that a smart, diagonal interaction between the 1960's hardwood futon couch with recovered blue denim cushions and the 1970's grass green prototype Lazyboy recliner would distract from the large wooden TV (with good speakers) that served as the TV stand.  Or maybe the hunter green Naugahyde-upholstered wooden chest could serve multiple functions in front of the fireplace: accentuate the rust-red carpet, store extra blankets, make another sitting surface, and block sight of the non-usable fireplace.  At the time, we just humored my mom every time she solemnly moved the brass floor lamp to the other side of the living room, but I have grown to appreciate this environment where elements stay in flux and where faith in the saving grace of good design  thrives, despite the tragic circumstances in which it must operate. 

Fast forward from the early nineties to 2007.  I was trying to finish my MFA in painting, even though I had only managed to create a very large mountain of crap in two years of grad school, and I couldn't seem to pull my thoughts together into a coherent and unified artist statement.  Up to this point, I had managed to teach art in a low-income high school for 6 years, but I had taken far more education classes as an undergrad than actual art classes.  I mean, at one point in grad school I had to teach myself how to stretch a canvas, because I had been wrapped up in the history and philosophy of education instead of  foundations in acrylics and oils in my first go round of college.  I was feeling pretty defeated, feeling like an outsider to the world of painting, feeling like I couldn't keep up or fit in with my peers. But then I realized that this was very familiar territory.  It was then that I stopped talking about making paintings in my artist statement, and started using the phrase "using the space of painting."  I knew that I was never going to be a technical aficionado with paint, and that I was never going to discover the next "ism" or movement.  Instead I was going to be a renter in the space of painting, and move in with all of my second-hand, uncoordinated furnishings.  I would fake style. I would survive by being open to new configurations, and not committing to a fixed plan.

This has played out pretty well.  And, as the last few years have taught us about finding a home, ownership is not always superior to renting space.

Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com

Time to Paint

The other night at dinner I was sneezing and sniffling, and I made an offhand comment like,"I hope I am not getting sick.  That's the last thing that I need right now."  This week was the week before finals, the most grueling week of the semester.  This year it has been mixed with an art exhibit for teachers, an art competition for my students, along with the normal end-of-term public school drama and a flurry of holiday activities. My sister-in-law was with us, and she suggested a medicine that would nip a cold in the bud if taken as soon as symptoms started to show.  My wife looked at me unsympathetically and said flatly, "he doesn't need medicine.  He just needs to paint."  As the mother of four kids, my wife is great at feeling out fevers, assessing digestive issues, and layering medicines to cover any number of maladies.  But my wife has also become an expert at my psychosis.  She knows that when I do not spend a certain number of hours per week in my studio, that I "get a certain way." Here are the symptoms:

• Clumsiness.  This is always an issue, but I manage to loose any portion of grace that I posses.  Plus, I also spontaneously invent swearing phrases that are embarrassing and do not make sense, like "Shit cakes!", or "Frick-riken!" This reminds me of my dad ("Dag-nabbit!")
• Irritability.  Like, to the point that I am scolding inanimate objects for not cooperating with some every day task, or saying things like, "why does gravity always have to work against me!"
• Distractabilty.  The details of things seem to evade me.  Also, I start to care less about putting small pieces together.  This is a surefire way to create hell in a high school classroom.  "Sure, you can go work out in the hallway with your friends.  Whatever."
• Self-centeredness.  Like talking back to the radio when Robert Siegel is interviewing a politician with an annoying point of view.  Like becoming very possessive of every minute of alone time.    Like paying  attention to every sneeze or sniffle.

This is the paradox of the art studio- if I spend a couple of hours per day steeped in my own mental space, caring only about those things that only I care about, I become so much more empathetic toward others.  If I zone out, wearing my ipod, and listen to loud, vulgar music like the Pixies, I am transformed into a calm and more lucid speaker.  If I hyper-concentrate on small, isolated tasks such as masking off a complicated shape or making just the right unpracticed-looking brushstroke, I can dance through a complicated day.  And even if  I am facing a very busy schedule, spending a couple of hours in my studio always means that I will get more school work, house work and relationship building done than if I gave those hours to more tasks. 

Isn't that a shit cake?

Please visit my work at kevinpkellyart.artspan.com

Starting a Painting

Over the last week I've built two panels that are 4'X6' each, wanting to make a large diptych.  I have stretched canvas over them and gessoed them, but today I started "working" on top of them.  The start of paintings...it's a funny thing.  I can't really say where paintings start.  This one could have started last month, as I sat in my studio finishing up the small pieces that are now a part of the "Formed Alliance" exhibit that is now up at the Frame Guild in Wichita (small plug there), looking over at the vacant end of my studio and feeling a sinking tug at my gut, wanting to return to painting something big.  It could have been a few weeks ago when my son said, "Dad?  How come you haven't made a painting about gum before?"  It could have been the weeks since as I have dealt with insomnia, half way composing a large horizontal plane in my mind and half way willing myself to not compose it now, as I always make better decisions in the moment reacting to happenings with the canvas and media instead of some "plan."  As I said above, today was that day when the happenings started to happen, along with those moments where I was negotiating, compromising, and daring things to happen. 

I have learned not to romanticise or fear the blank canvas too much, partly because it is such a cheesy cliche and partly because those ideas tend to slow me way down.  I am always telling my students that left brain thinking dictates that we do not have to start at the beginning of things, with a logical plan, but can start by jumping into the middle and starting to swim around.  I did find a great nugget of wisdom years ago when reading a book about Richard Diebenkorn.  The passage talked about how after the artists death when family members were sorting through his studio they discovered a little list of notes the artist had made for himself about starting a painting.  I, as an overly eager undergrad, promptly copied the list so that I could post it in my studio and allow it's light to shine on me.  I am reproducing it here without permission or proper bibliographic citing:

Notes to myself on beginning a painting...
1. Attempt what is not certain.  Certainty may or may not come later.  It may then be a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued- except as a stimulus for further moves.
3. Do search, but in order to find other than what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Don't "discover" a subject- of any kind.
6. Somehow don't be bored- but if you must, use it in action.  Use it's destructive potential.
7. Mistakes can't be erased but they move you from your present position.
8. Keep thinking about Pollyanna.
9. Tolerate chaos.
10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

I love this list.  I have no idea who Pollyanna was/is, (I am pretty sure Richard Diebenkorn's wife was named Phyllis) but I know that seemingly random obsessions can often prove useful when entering into a studio mentality.

One day, after making many many more paintings I will have to make my own list of starting notes.

Please visit my work at: kevinpkellyart.artspan.com