the series continues

I have been working lately on a series of paintings dealing with ideas of domestication and containment. What I'm interested in is the way we categorize and contain things in order to be able to deal with them. House plants, various containers; I am attempting to find ways to use the most banal of objects, painted in extremely simple ways. I think of them almost as icons or symbols. References from which more information can (hopefully) be gleaned.

This started with a painting of shelves of jars, inspired by a friends comments about putting parts of their lives in jars to save for later. Having moved home to the suburbs briefly, I am morbidly fascinated by the segmentation of items in a house, surrounded by (often, too many) rooms, manicured lawns, little gated communities that make up towns. Everything is broken down into smaller, more domesticated bits. I believe that this is a form of symbolic conquest, changing (or chaining) the natural and the chaotic to something solid, nameable and commonplace.

As usual, I am not sure if all of this gets across in the individual pieces. I think that they work as a whole, but I worry that shown apart they will not be understood. But I hate the idea of doing twenty pieces all the same size and insisting that they be displayed as parts of a whole. I like all my specifically-sized paintings. This is something that can be sorted out later, though. Right now, all the completed paintings can be counted on my fingers.

I will post images as soon as I have a few amassed. In reference to the earlier post, the teaching position has been not at all what I expected, although not necessarily in a negative way. Seeing the students work is inspiring in a way, although I do sense that they are working blindly at times. There is a lot of assignment completion going on, which is necessary and what they should be doing at this point (trying to get into college and all). But I haven't found a lot of motivation for my own work from them, other than the reminder that "I'm not inspired" is a lousy excuse. I do enjoy watching them learn. I feel that I often communicate this to them poorly, but it is deeply satisfying to explain something to someone that enables them to make better art. Whether it's a new color mixed, the right way to build up a cheekbone in clay, or simply which brush to use and how much paint to put on it. And I love pointing out art history references for them, which they are seriously lacking. I think I am making connections between things that either I forgot about or had not made before. It's interesting to go back into a familiar environment, but from the other side.

frustration

I am struggling to produce a coherent body of work. Either I lack the focus to complete an idea, or I am picking ideas that aren't interesting enough to focus on through to completion. I believe that I am forcing ideas. Maybe I don't need to be painting right now. I can't tell if the work I am producing is any good. It is certainly, at best, schizophrenic. I am trying to focus my energy on an idea. I know that I need to be drawing, but whenever I sit down to draw I am almost instantly bored, distracted, or just annoyed. I am hoping that the teaching job-- if it ever comes-- will be a good way to sort out thoughts and by steering others wind up on the right track myself.

All the themes that I come up with to work under wind up being constrictive. I know that I am not thinking properly, not "using the world" the right way, but I seem mentally unable to get any further than this. It all leads me to question why I feel the need to paint at all. I am chronically uninspired, or at best distracted.

I am unwilling to give up but seemingly unable to get past this.

i believe in nothing[s]

In preparation for a job interview tomorrow, I have been assembling a sort of mini-portfolio. I haven't looked at the work i did in Rome for probably two years and I was struck by how much better it is than the paintings I am currently making. The old paintings are basically about nothing, almost purely visual [at least in their conception]. The current paintings are trying to be about something, and I can't get myself interested enough. They seem almost shy, maybe even a little bit bored with themselves. I have never really wanted to "say something" with anything I make. Maybe by trying to force a statement I have watered down whatever the paint itself was saying before.

The current body of work has focused on memory- differences between the memory of something and the thing itself specifically. I try to choose recognizable images, remove them from the context of my memory of them, and bring them into an iconic state. Ideally, this points out the flaws in the ideas of image-making as story-telling and communication. I have to be honest and say that this has not worked out terribly well. I am unsure of how to make a painting about the idea that something is actually nothing, but have the product of that thought be a something.

In any case, the visual is my strength and I should not be forsaking it for a deeper meaning. At least, not one that I have to impose artificially. I have hung several of my better pieces from the past on my bedroom walls (there is nowhere to hang them in my work space) and I am hoping that by exposure to them I will be able to steer my thinking back into a better place. I do not think that all this has been a waste, these last few years of painting. I have been stripping down and stripping down, and now the time has come, i believe, to build up again. To thicken the application of paint and be comfortable making real nothings again.