Category Archives: Art

Rosy Outlook

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ruffly-roses + text

Every sign of growth and newness brings new hope . . .

Somehow, sometimes, a bad thing can be a good sign. Like the third day following surgery, feeling pretty lousy. So perfectly fits the expected pattern that despite the awfulness of watching my loved one’s pain and exhaustion, it’s oddly reassuring to me. Strange, no? Kind of the way this screwy world can work, with funny, breakable characters like us in it. We see and feel hurt that we dread and yet can find promise in it. We look for the expected outburst of anger or depression, the need to scream vituperation at the gods, and a weird calm descends and what emerges instead is a single blink of zen, that sense that something new and right will come of it all in the end.

oil painting on canvas

Peace conquers all darkness . . .

There was a time when I had a project deadline for a painting and there wasn’t a glimmer of hope that I would finish it in time. A lot was riding on the outcome, and my life outside of the studio was not exactly providing either inspiration or even enough contentment and comfort to help me fake it. So I decided the only alternative was to take my frustration and anger out on the canvas. Since the subject and treatment of the painting were wide open, what better way to find catharsis than in the virtual reality of art.

I’m sure you know where this is headed: I got into the studio late at night, frazzled and feeling pretty desperate and certainly hot under the collar, and planning to take out all of my aggression and madness in making a wild, dark, slashing abstraction that would act as a personal bloodletting, maybe give me a cool high-intensity painting that would start me on a useful new artistic path, and get lots of that pent-up grotesquerie vented. No surprise to anyone that’s ever had the slightest brush with pop psychology, a few hours after I dragged myself into the studio, I produced the most floaty, peaceful, candy-coated painting of ethereal sweetness that I’d ever managed to produce, possibly after as well. Didn’t fire off my moment of impending doom into a monstrous painting; I dealt with my darkness by making a world of safety and joy to swallow it up instead. From grimness, growth. And yes, it became the impetus for a series of idealized abstract landscapes that still remain among my most gentle-spirited works to date.

Boston rose photos + text

From the dark earth, newness emerges . . .

Be Still and Listen, Thou Big Dope

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run-down beauties

It's there, if you use your six senses . . .

Just because I believe that inspiration and the skill to fulfill it are best bought with persistent and focused labor doesn’t mean I don’t think it lies all around for the taking, too. There’s just so much astounding and strange and beautiful and fun stuff in every imaginable cranny of the world that the real charge here must be to keep all senses twitching at all times, not least of all the antennae of intuition. And I also lean toward the ‘it’s all been done already’ theory of creative endeavor, wherein pretty much every grand idea in history has very possibly already been had and it’s our pleasure and somewhat difficult responsibility to somehow recombine the DNA of our arts into something new and wonderful that’s now our own. So I have no hesitation about going shopping amongst all kinds of artworks extant for a better chance of gathering useful inspirations from them to move me toward my own next project.

When I go to an art exhibition I’m not only basking in the inherent attractions of the works hanging on the walls and filling up the galleries but also filing away molecules of inspiring marvels and, not least of all, building up a slight head of steam that makes me antsy to get into the studio again myself. When I attend a concert, dance, play or other performance, I’m absorbing whatever tremendous artistry, craft, skill, design, and magic came together to make the moments possible, and on the side, I’m mentally revising, redesigning, rehashing and reinventing on my terms every aspect I can imagine, making it mine. It need not diminish my admiration for the work in hand, but rather tends to let it bloom in every direction as an expanding universe of potential artistry. Granted, I am no dancer, haven’t acted since high school (unless you count acting competent, or like I’m not scared, when the occasion requires), and I’m certainly no great shakes as a musician of any sort. But I’ve attempted each just enough of each to appreciate the fineness of what I’m seeing when I sit at the feet of masters.

Even when I dine, the food and its preparation and context can provide a wild cornucopia of not only tasty satisfaction and belly filling sustenance but also another source of artful inspiration of every sensory variety. It might lead to more food (a grand enough goal, to be sure), might lead instead to some seemingly unrelated object’s invention.

Most directly of all, reading stuff that makes me shiver with happiness or shock or reverie or any other sort of appreciation has a strong tendency to get the creative juices flowing–specifically, toward my pen point.

Boston photos + text

Now let me lie between the pages of a fine book . . .

It’s all, and always, research as it happens. Right down to the purposeful hours I spend staring into nebulous space after the fact, looking for that miraculous confluence of thought word and deed that will combine all of my life’s experience into the right synchronous process of art-making to produce my next inspired work. Luck, be thou a true lady . . . tonight, tomorrow, forevermore. Muse, approach.

The Feast that Never Ends

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Thanks to our kind friend Joelle, I met fellow blogger XB tonight over dinner. Her blog, ‘In Search of My Moveable Feast’ at http://www.xiaobonestler.com/, is a wonderful melange of food and culture spiced with her delightful wit. I’m also reminded by both blog-mate and the friends around the dinner table tonight–composer hosting, saxophonist and pianist and conductor gathered around the table with me as we all enjoyed the meal and conversation–that shared love of culture and other naturally crazy things is an endless banquet of marvels and wonders.

ratatouille ingredients + blackboard text

To dine is divine, and among friends the conviviality never ends . . .

Is the conversation inspired by the food? The food by the gathering? The gathering by the conversation?

Of course all three happen. In the case of a tableau like tonight’s at table, there can be so many possible tangents to pursue. Avidly swapping bits of life-story over splendid bowls of creamy cool beet soup with yogurt leads to thoughts of yet other meals, stories, and gatherings. Discovering common interests with newly met friends over a glass of wine: how can that not lead to further tales (tall and otherwise) and onward to inspire more the pleasure of dolmas and Greek salad, these then becoming sustenance for other hungers for knowledge and enjoyment?

It is, clearly, an infinite table, this one where strangers sit down to untasted treats and rise up as well-filled and newly minted fellow sojourners. Art is the avenue where all of these fine riches intersect: thought and music and speech and history and language and hope and hilarity and the sharing of ideas in inspiring new ways.

I don’t doubt that the cats, from their respective corners, were moderately bemused by our various enthusiasms, but I for one found in all of it great nourishment.

Senility isn’t a Second Childhood If You Never Left the First One

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It’s pretty simple, really. I’m planning to carry on a long tradition (I won’t name names) of remaining not just childlike but completely immature in every way possible. That way no one will catch on as I slide on down into full dementia.

One of the things that makes this so wonderfully easy for me is artistic license, naturally. But another is simply that I’ve never shaken the innocence of the young and naive twerp and am happy to continuously wallow in my ignorance and the fantasies it engenders. I’ll try to be a realist as far as required, sure, when it comes to stuff like keeping my teeth brushed and taxes paid and not subsisting entirely on quiescently frozen treats, no matter how alluring that may be. Beyond that, no promises.

photos + text

What good can come of being overly adult when there's still so much mischief to make?

I can pull up the ol’ Big Kid Underpants with the best of ’em, but much of the time I don’t really see the point. Far preferable to frolic the halcyon meadows of silliness for as long as I can get away with it.

parakeets in car + text

If you're not ready to just jump in and hit the road, step aside!

Too responsible or distracted by Real Life to get on board with that? See you later, pal!

Stories without Words

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I may have mentioned–some few blog entries ago–that the visual world is full of stories for me. It’s not just me, though. You’ve heard it plenty yourself: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” There’s no end of people inspired to find tales, ideas, inspirations of every kind in things seen, in the real world and in all sorts of visual images, and what we like to imagine they mean, or could mean. So have at it. I give you now a digital collage and know that no one else will see precisely the same collection of Stuff or relationships between the things collected here exactly the way I see them. You might guess why I put some of this together in a single image, maybe even could see some of my motivation more clearly than I do myself (you shrink you), but the fun of the whole thing is the same as what I love experiencing when I have an art exhibition: seeing my own work through others’ lenses and knowing that they always bring something different to it than I did either in looking at the finished piece or in revisiting any part of its birthing.

digital collage of Things

All these things together . . .

Every sighted person “reads” the world through his or her own filters, and for the most part, that’s good. It’s not only what helps us to be ourselves fully in the world but what gives us a large measure of pleasure in existence: we can create the world in which we find ourselves as well. Imagination and interpretation are colorful ways of coping with reality and reshaping it as we go. We can be horribly misled by our crazy or wrongheaded or under-informed explication and conceptualization, and that usually leads to trouble of one sort or another (not least of all making one be a chump, a dimbulb or even a full-fledged jerk). But really, isn’t there a lot of fun in just giving ourselves a moment of fiction to stretch our boundaries and enlarge our existence in some small measure?

Happy Place

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MDW's landscape, composited

Matins to Evensong

When the world is showing its extra cruel side, it’s time to find the peaceful center of my personal universe. I will keep mourning the lives and loves lost, the battles still raging, the injustices not yet righted, and the imperfection of a reality where children still starve, books are still burned, and toxic waste is still piling up around our midriffs.

Solace isn’t a solution, but it’s a balm that eases the troubled spirit. And what is my solace? A quiet moment calming my thoughts. The love of my nearest and dearest ones drawing me close, or building a safe perimeter around me when I need one. Music, music of almost any kind, has enormous palliative power. Writing a little something or a little nothing. Making a photograph, a drawing or a painting or a mixed media concoction of some sort: while the end product may have some measure of use in righting my inverted innermost, it’s the process that matters. The practice. The act of making–creating, bringing newness into being, starting afresh. That’s what carries the healing and renewing power. What carries me through the cold hard world when it’s not catering to my taste.

For such resources I’m endlessly grateful.

O that the sexton were here to write me down an ass!

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Silly ass (drawing)

Pardon my pride . . .

Lucky me, I am privileged to wear the insignia of the Village Natural without fear of persecution just because I am an artist. People tend to make allowances for much foolishness and many strange contortions and comical pratfalls when they know that one is cursed and/or blessed with the uniquely kinked P.O.V. of the creatively imbued. Non-sequiturs may fill the air like a flock of misfired shuttlecocks and gimcrack ideas being flung about cause ten-man pileups from mental whiplash, and yet all is forgiven–or at least shrugged off with a certain amount of paternalistic tolerance. I am happy to accept the adulation and well-meaning condescension of those who, collectively, constitute my fan base and oddball support groupies. This is, in fact, my due after the long years of toiling in secret at mystical labors whose total output, howsoever prolific, sparkling, scintillating, cashmere-comfy and glorious it may be, will cure nothing direr than ennui, save no one but from the disaster of blank pages, and solve no conundrum greater than to confirm-or-deny one’s concept of his favorite color. I accept the obeisance of the (albeit sparse) masses, because I like my work and because I believe in pointless beauty. Shouldn’t everyone?

Am I Blue?

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In a word, no.

The relentlessly blue sky of triple-digit Texas, still occasionally fooling me into thinking it would be “nice” to “go outside” and “do stuff” shortly before I snap back to sanity–and if I don’t on my own, the giant slap from the outdoor air will reboot that for me instantaneously–could conceivably lead to a little case of the blues. The prospect of job-prospecting can certainly be azure-tinted. The creeping necrosis of ancient age can induce a bout of cyan-shaded maundering in many.

blue poppy

Cerulean sweetness

But really, mes amis, isn’t there a lovely side to the melancholy, a lure inherent in the dark, even? Seems to me it’s part of the whole Artiste mythos, a contributing factor in the raging Romanticism that makes everyone think it’s okay at some level to be utterly bonkers in a gothically twisted way if one happens to be a Creative Type. Anyone that knows me the slightest degree beyond phone-book-listing knows that I think it’s a massive heap of hooey to say one can’t be truly creative without suffering deeply or that misery somehow engenders and enhances artistic brilliance. I’m more of the poster child for Better Living Through Chemistry and stand around shaking my scolding digit (choose one) at those who use such dangerous rubbish as an excuse not to take their treatment. If the treatment (whatever therapy, from talk to shock) isn’t making you more of the creative soul you were born to be, more, in fact, the very person you were born to be, that’s a failure to find the right recipe of treatment for your individual needs, not proof that treatment is not for you. And decidedly not proof that being unwell is preferable in any way to being whole and contented.

That doesn’t mean I expect or want to be leaping deliriously from one sugar-spun rose petal to another while pan-pipes tootle gaily in the copse. One-note existence of any kind is guaranteed to annoy, at least before it bores you to death. So I’ll take my bumps on the way, settle under the lapis lid of passing sadness when it can’t be avoided. But aside from any urge to grouse, I’ll also take what inspiration I can from the blue-tinged moments and dash back as quickly as I can into the cheering light of a strangely blue-sky world.

Lest Anyone Think I’d Reform

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Fear not! The earlier post is only a ruse to lull you into complacency and think I’m capable of improvement. I will never surrender my crown as drama queen, nor stint in my whinging self-absorption, just because I’m privileged and sunk up to my eyebrows in splendor. If the temperature actually descends into temperate territory again, rest assured I will find plenty of other sources for topping up my tank of curmudgeonly crankiness.

Brian James Fosnick

I'm often thrown by the littlest things . . .

And I will equally pursue the limits of saccharine sanguinity and dive right over them, so beware of the syrupy swamp as well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

How Moby-Dick Sank the Reader Ship

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kids outside the office door--BW graphite

Tell me I CAN'T do something and I'm more inclined to do it . .

attach a sense of duty to

a thing I used to like to do

and in a flash, a dash, a blink

I like it less than I used to think