Where are you?

"Where are you?"  I am so desperate to know...I look into my reflection in the lens and I beg...I plead for you to come. Who am I ? Where am I? This person I am to become. When will she find me? Take over me...guide me? Doesn't she know I need her? Her strength...her breath...her life...
Might I see a glimpse? Can I Capture a moment...an image...anything...in which to feel...witness...foresee your presence? Can I wait...be patient...not hide? 

I can't wait...I can be patient though and I will not hide. For I must find her...seek her...absorb her. She is some where inside of me growing slowly....taking her sweet tyme. Allowing me to develope...transform...metamorphis...fully discover what it takes to be her. So I go slow...I move slow... I'll grow slow. So I go on and I search...for the answer to my desperate hearts question...Where are you? Who are you? This person...the woman...I am to become?

Francesca Woodman

            

             It was 31 years to the exact day of her death, January 19th, that I stumbled upon the massive collection of photography by Francesca Woodsman. How haunting was that anniversary for I've never seen such breathtaking work and for that moment, all was still. She eviscerates herself in each portrait as silver gelatin bleeds existence into her story. Silent tones cast shadows as the outsider is drawn in to her world, subdued through out space in time; the distance between her life and mine. It is pure emotion and her work can not be critiqued or foretold; it must be felt. Her spell has been cast over me and I am enslaved to every portrait for I've never seen such beauty in one's mind.

Everything I Love About Creating Art

               My love for being an artist is not in the objects, or the imagery I create, but within the process. Every piece has a journey, with a beginning, middle, and end. Unforced the work will be completed. I love art that is messy and hands-on; applying paint with my fingers, getting it on my clothes, and really digging into the process. Allowing thought to overtake me as I feel every wrinkle, curve, stroke, edge, surface, and even smelling the natural aromas throughout the creation process of the piece. All of this makes my work special to me and never easy to release into the world of another because such intimacy is shared within the creation process in which the work and myself have shared. However, with each new piece there is always learning involved. Every piece I create reveals something I didn't know or fully comprehend about myself. I need to learn to let go in order to grow as an artist and individual. That kind of internal growth is also what I love about creating and what I find to be the important part of the whole process of making art.
              
              An accomplished artist and friend of mine recently revealed to me that he was inspired by my work.  It was exciting to be recognized as an artist by someone else within the artist community because at this time I didn't really consider myself an artist. He shared with me some objects which were special to him because he believed I could create something amazing from them using my techniques and vision. These relationships that are built around art are riveting because even though these people may not relate to your work exactly, they understand the process and have their own excitement and love for creating. To be with other artists is so inspiring because their is a charge of creative energy within the simplest conversation.
              


ILA  Mixed Media on wood
KC  2012

             Artistic expression is always complete when the moment your vision finds a connection with a viewer. To have my work enthrall the eye and envoke thought in an outsider is when my piece has finished its journey. For them to look upon the work find a deep meaning in it for themselves and to love it as much as the I do is a rare connection. However, art is powerful in it's ability to link minds and through the interpretation there is strength and meaning to a deeper connection that separates the artist from the work as it is passed on to breath on it's own within the life and home of another.
          
              This is everything I love about creating art. The relation of the materials, the process, and how the mind achieves the artistic vision and the experience of inner growth. And of course the connections between people; art brings people together. It may be people apart of the artist community or those who simple love to view art and must always be surrounded by it's presence. It is a sharing of the minds, which is not always spoken aloud but in artist expression you do not necessarily need words, just someone to share the experience. I have discovered over time that a lot of my work has certainly been inspired by other artists, not just the work they've done but through a deeper meaning and understanding of who they were and how their lives were interpreted into their work. Their is so much to inspire art and each piece is so personal and always hard to part with when it's journey has reached it's end but knowing that my work is loved means everything to me and this is why I have to create and why I am a artist.

Evoking Emotion

Sometimes the artist vision may seem vile and perverse; it may be hard to look deeper into the meaning when the artist ultimate agenda is to make you look away. It is not rejection of the work but an idea. I love this feeling! Uncomfortable, disgusted, violated maybe even slightly filthy after; a piece powerful to evoke such emotions that haunt you through relapsing images burned into the crevices of a fragile mind. When they are before you there is no turning away; now you are the pervert because you stared just a little too long and hard. How do you understand what is beyond that sickening crust in the depths of this evil soul if you don't allow your self to look, to study and then visualize its brilliance.

Hans Bellmer's life size and all too obviously adolescent like ball joint dolls grip the viewer by the throat and force Bellmer's hatred for the fascism of the Nazi political party down their throats. German born Bellmer used his art to protest the evil ideals of the Nazi's perfect and superior being. Images of the dolls in bondage, obscure positions and simply staring into his lens are haunting portrayals of the unobtainable perfection that simply does not exist. His photographs are like a quest through the darkest and most sadistic of minds.

 Pain, despair, hatred or even disgust for a artists work may seem negative in theory but to have been enthrall into these emotions is what is truly is overwhelming. To be overcome by dark emotions and releasing them through artistic expression, only so that  it may be absorbed by another is beautiful, actually. That intensity that is conveyed in a piece and that deep emotional response is the beauty of art . 

To Have Known Frida Kahlo

    Intense emotion for another artists work and overwhelming powerful connection to the artist themselves can seem spiritual or even mystical. The feeling enthralls and drives an unseen force through the hands of the artist; like pulsating synapses of energy from one mind to another and a pure understanding of the others  pain, heart break, and their life. From a madness comes the vision and then the creation of visual form in which another can see but never feel the roots from which it grew.



 Rick Moreno Knows Frida Kahlo; may be not in life but in a surrealist world of rich color and inner vision he has touched the artist who inspires the depths of his mind and the soul of his art. The doors of his sanctuary are seemingly ordinary; just another street... just another house... just another person living within, but beyond the threshold is a world that is culturally emmense, bursting with vibrant hues and symbolism of ancient beliefs and ideals. Rick lives for his art.

Creative energy radiates through him as he speaks in a  uncontainable excitement, for which only the surfaces on which he paints is powerful enough to contain. Passionate seems so vague a word to describe ,  but when there is no words to depict you must let the work speak for itself. 



Although the painting is not completely exposed in this photo it is stunning and breathtaking with it's vibrant with motion and colorfully full of life.

 



Frida is present in much of Ricks work, but she is not just a inspiration or a influence, nor is she muse. It is holy and beyond mortal understanding. Their are some who are truly immortal. Their eternal life enriches the lives of those who may exsist in other time but are connected though a high power, and it is that unexplainable phenomenon of two souls connected over decades of time which the art of Rick Moreno is created.

I greatly admire not only Rick's work and his connection to Frida but I also admire him as a person. Just like his paintings he is vibrant, full of life and culture; there is no mistaking that this man breathes art and it is rooted deep in his soul, which he shares unselfishly with everyone he meets. He is truly a amazing man and artist and I am honored to know him.

Reflections of an Artist

I.O.U. (Self-Pride), 1929-1930

 "What can I do? In a narrow mirror, display the part for the whole? Mistake the aura and the splatterings? Refusing to throw myself against the walls, throw myself against the windows? While I wait to see all this clearly, I want to hunt myself down, to thrash myself out."                              

                                                           ~Claude Cahun

   Self portraits are deeply intimate reflections of an artist's internal being. Through mirrors there is disillusion and manipulation, but through the lens of a camera the soul becomes it's prisoner when the shutter closes and it is then exposed. There is no turning away from that moment; it is forever. Every line and wrinkle of time, even a second of rapture or a life time sadness appears across the silver gelatin plain of every photograph. No other autobiographic portrayal could be more true for it is not a memory to share but a precise piece of emotion in times ever shifting hands.

Claude Cahun, Que me veux-tu?, 1928

"What do you want from me?"

  The riveting and breath taking photography of Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob) strikingly tells the artist's tale of a world without a name or a identity. Every glimpse is masculine and feminine at once. Peculiar without realization that we are both, but in awareness there is empowerment and sensuality. Cahun's body of work is sexless, genderless and erotic. 

Untitled (self-portrait) 1929



Untitled (self-portrait) 1929
San Fransisco Modern Art Museum







The art of androgyny. Not to dress as a man or a woman but to completely remove those very words from language and express though pure emotional experience. Cahun ambiguously embodies this ability through out every photograph; with overwhelming surrealism it became highly recognized in the early movement in the 1930's. Imagine the strength to live in a era when being this open and expressive was not understood and ultimately faceless in the world. No holding back. Complete fearlessness. A coveted need to eviscerate one's self  for all to see, to know, to be aware. To exist is everything.   

                                                                            

   Biography on Cahuns intriguing life!       

Other Artists like Cahun!

The Touch of Picasso

                                

 "I wish to reach the point where the viewer cannot see how I painted my picture. What does it matter? My only wish is that nothing but emotion rises from my picture." Pablo Picasso

A Woman's Profile On a Red Back Ground
Oil on Canvas  1959
Bears strong resemblance to wife, Jacqueline.



I've never felt such a connection with an artist as I have with Picasso. His restlessness to create was fueled by his belief that if he stopped painting death would take him. There has never been another like him with such prolific work that is so within our reach. He died almost forty years ago on April 8th; the day I was born, and to this day he is still considered the most innovative  painter and sculptor of the 20th century. His paintings come to life with the faces of those who were closest to him, friends, family and lovers. Through his visions he immortalized his subjects as they inspired each stroke of his brush.

  "Picasso" by Felicie is one of the most beautifully written books I've encountered about any artists; possibly because Picasso himself hand his hand in it's creation as well. Without biographical references the book is purely about the his inspirations,

 his art and of the unseen world through the eyes of a genius.

  

"Picasso" artfully

portrays a man who lived and breathed his love of creation.

   Through the lens of friend and one of the only photographers privileged to enter his studio, Edward Quinn, a almost voyeuristic intrigue overcomes you. His photos are  intoxicating images of precise moments of stimuli being absorbed and inspiring the future of his art work. From a moment in time to his translation onto canvas, the artist would be engulfed in that exchange of energy which some would never be able to comprehend or appreciate.

Slight and insignificant truths overwhelmed me when reading this book and seemingly cause this connection I feel. Picasso hand painted all the dishes that he ate off, his first sculptures were constructed with junk and garbage, he did a lot of his early work on just pieces of cardboard, his love of animals and insects as well as his love of the circus. 



The Mountebanks
Oil on Canvas  1905



 "My night is magnificent,I even prefer it to natural light. You should come and see it...this light which sets off every object, these deep shadows which circle the paintings..." For it is these dark and profound lines which I find most beautiful in all his shapely and most abstract work.  



Les Femmes d'Alger
Oil on Canvas  1956
San Fransisco Modern Art Museum





Life
Oil on Canvas  1903
San Fransisco Modern Art Museum

  Through color Picasso painted his own state of being. The "blue period" was in fact all painted in bluish tones and hues. This was influenced by the suicide of his friend for the love of a woman who Picasso in fact began an affair with after his friends death. He paints the male figures of his lost friend through out this time of melancholy and guilt.  The "rose period"

 with soft hues of pinks and reds was significant of a time of romance for Picasso.

  Two of my favorite paintings are "The Dream" and "Portrait of Jaime Sabartes", however how can one be so naive as the pick a favorite and honestly I haven't see these beyond the pages of art books and reproductions. After a visit to The Stein Collection exhibit at the San Fransisco Modern Art Museum the feeling of actually seeing Picasso's work changed the whole perspective on his art. It's in front of you, the radiant colors, the texture of each stroke of his mood; sometimes soft and heartfelt and other times furious. There is a desire urging you to touch and the frustration that there are others around you who that you just wish would completely vanish. Alone with the peice so that you can be over come by the image Taking it in into yourself through your every pore; burning a imprint from his mind into yours and completely absorbing the artists touch onto the canvas as if he were touching your body himself. This is how I felt when I saw "Seated Nude" (not depicted for no photography was allowed in the exhibit).http://pablo-picasso.paintings.name/rose-period/ Never could I say I love one piece more than another for through out his career he has been a chameleon and shown the world how the effects of the surrounding world translates through the artists mind. Picasso radiates energy of life even after death; he is immortal.



Portait of Jaime Sabartes
Oil on Canvas 1901



Stein Collection at the San Fransisco Modern Art Museum thru Sept. 6th

     http://www.sfmoma.org/

Picasso Masterpieces at The De Young Museum thru Oct. 10th 

    http://deyoung.famsf.org/

 (I look forward to adding my experiences from this exhibit next month!)