Replies: 32 Comments
on Wednesday, August 30th, Paul Dorrell said
May: There is an email box for me on my blog. I've worked with three Chinese artists in the past, each uniquely talented.
Jessica: By all means. Perhaps you have a story or two to share. That way it isn't just me blowing hot air.
Olivier: I'm pretty sure there's nothing artificial about you.
on Wednesday, August 30th, olivier said
again!!..read "I do not need more artificial..".
How do you call that in English when you want to write or say something and express the opposite meaning? "un acte manque" in French.
Ok I do need but refuse it and I am not ready to visit a psy..not yet
on Wednesday, August 30th, olivier said
I just came back from holiday and play a lot with water. Two days a week without sound a good rule, for me it is no alcohol when the sun is up. I must be more fundamentalist or it just because it makes me sleepy. At the cottage I have been painting some little Canadian panels, the water turned red the sky purple, you see I do need more artificial paradise I am just born in it. But I did miss my pin up a lot, more than you despite some times on our slow connection reading you passion. That makes me wondering if it is good for an artist to have some "holiday" and creating some art far away from his body of research? Sure some will argue that itis always instructive like these nude sketches I did for years as a student. It took me 20 years to ask me if I should be in favour of art again. Still in doubt.
Hi Chinese girl! I'm doing "Nineteen" right now...it must be for you. It is a pin up cut in 19 slices join by a metal string. It was also the age of my wife when I meet her. I will put her a Chinese bikini string thinking of you innocence.thanks
on Wednesday, August 30th, Jessica said
Great story, Paul! Enjoyed it a lot!
on Wednesday, August 30th, may said
I'm not familiar with you and I come here by chance.Shall we make friends with each other?
Hope you'll see my commends and send me e-mail.
I am a chinese girl who are in favor of art.
on Tuesday, August 29th, Paul Dorrell said
Walt, that's cool. Ain't run out of bourbon yet. Got used to those Arkansas counties long ago. By the way, they're the ones with the highest proportion of stills.
Olivier: Water for you, bourbon for me. Well, water for me on Mondays and Tuesdays. Good to hear from you again, you rascal. Was wondering when you'd weigh in.
on Tuesday, August 29th, walt said
Paul,
Don't know when I'll be in Arkansas next. I'll let you know in advance. But if you come you have to bring your own bottle of bourbon. Marion County is dry. I can supply the ice.
walt
on Monday, August 28th, OLIVIER said
What about water? Simply the best.
I was thinking about that recently. Why do we allways need to justify our acts when we getting older? Nearly the same age as you are, I realized during our holiday that we have lost some fundamental simplicity in our concern. Years ago I thought they were more old bowring person than younger one, so we must loose something in our travelling. No offence I am part of it too, I share you passion for sport sailing a lot too, never watch TV too, do not travel in any city with pleasure my inspiration is pleased in nature but it come from inside. Have you read the "life of Pi"? That's great art.
on Monday, August 28th, Andrew said
Paul, ever try Whyte and McKay's? Single malt? Might even convert you...
on Sunday, August 27th, Paul Dorrell said
Jose and Andrew: I'd join in this discussion, but it's Sunday, and I'm still working off the bourbons from Saturday. I guess I'm just not up to your intellectual speed today--but then I'm usually not.
on Sunday, August 27th, josé said
Henri Rousseau painted fabulous jungle scenes without ever having left his native France. It’s not about going anywhere physically but about finding the ways to stay alert and communicating to others what they sometimes forget to see. The coming and going I mentioned was not from one geographical place back to the one we left – it was about coming and going between our comfort zone and the unknown and how that keeps us on our toes. I agree with you Mark, each and every one of us finds his own ways, but what I was trying to point out is that I can understand Paul’s way, and that he seems to manage to do this without falling into the extreme of the bohemian who tends to shun others who think and live differently. He comes and goes, and he learns in the process, and what he learns he communicates through his writing to others who weren’t able to do the trip and hopefully instills in them the desire to experience the same. This is what I believe we artists should do.
on Sunday, August 27th, Mark said
The fact is no one way of living works for all. The bohemian lifestyle may work for some and not others. I like travel but as I said before my best work comes from what I know best and not what I have visited. Seeing new things often just help me see what I live near in a different light, cleansing the pallet.
So if being a bohemian works for you do it without having to defend it, if wondering only a short distance from ones studio works go for it, and do not feel unworldly. I have know individuals who traveled little and had a worldliness about them because of thier opened minds.
Some need to always see what is on the other side of the hill and some are content with what they know. One is not better then another, all is good if it works for the individual.
on Sunday, August 27th, josé said
Andrew, I fear you may have misread my message, and when I read the last paragraph in your latest comment I see that you pretty much agree with me after all. By ‘home’ I did not mean a physical/geographical place we return to but a place within, which is why I didn’t simply write home. It is the place we retreat to to make sense of things - a place where we have created a certain order and where we can give-in to the routine that allows for the sorting out of the essential and the superfluous.
I am by no means no Earnest Hemingway, though I have been on the move since the age of 1, and have seen and lived my share of interesting episodes [France, Portugal, South Africa, Madagascar, USA, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Portugal again, France Again, Germany, USA again, Belgium, Portugal once again, UK and back to Portugal – all this within the ‘previous’ life, before I got married and my wife and I left for Berlin in 2000, and this to mention only the places I lived in for more than two years, there’s still the list of all the places I visited from those bases]. Technically speaking, socially and emotionally also, I have no home, but I found ‘home’ very early on out of a need to make sense of the constant change, but that would be material for another blog and would probably have very little to deal with art.
The bohemian is constantly on the run – whether it is fear of commitment, or revolt and inability to conform to a certain bourgeois way of life that drives one dangerously close to being ‘flat-lined’ before one steps into the coffin – his choices are noble and are pertinent at a certain age, in that they shape the mind and the body to endure the hardships that will open doors that remain otherwise closed. I too led a bohemian life after I left law school and decided to become a painter. But it has it’s moment in the scope of one’s life and if the lessons are not learned and the essence not harnessed and converted into positive results the bohemian will for always be on the run from society and from himself, unable to polish the diamond he had initially set out to create. Hemingway, to mention the example you quote, achieved this.
Once that ‘elasticity’ is gained it is forever there, the mind thinks differently, the body endures more hardship and change. It becomes like a drug or a disease we can’t live without even though it causes pain – because we know that the discomfort and the pain are necessary to remain awake.
From reading your previous comments and those of others here, I think we can say that we do agree after all.
on Saturday, August 26th, Andrew said
Jose, we often agree on many things about art and artists, but here, I'm going to have to protest some of what you've said. The base, the place we return to, is not, and historically has not been, a neccesary item in order to produce meaningful artworks. Hemingway, always on the move, finding his home in Paris, in Key West, in Cuba, in Africa, and a host of other places, communicated profound thoughts about man's circumstances in spite of not having a stable base. And, if you travel, and bring what you've seen back to the place you're from, chances are you won't be able to share those experiences with anyone who hasn't also lived them. I think of when I go home and see my old friends, the plumbers, electricians, and gas station attendents of Bedford Hills, and we go out for a beer. Their stories are of the people who live in that place, of car accidents, of things that happen there, and one thing they don't want to hear about is Europe. Why? Because they haven't seen it, and no matter how good you are, you won't get more than a blank stare if you tell them anything about it. So I listen, and talk about the things we've been through together, and stay away from the New. And as I grow, and absorb new experiences different from those around me, I find that I also am changed, and am farther from them, as they are from me through the experiences they've had that I haven't.
Art bridges that, if it's carefully constructed to do so, as you touch on what's still familiar to them and to yourself...you can communicate emotion without words getting in the way. Bohemian is not a solution, but neither is it something to be avoided. It is an element of a solution made of different ways of looking at the same things. Like the couch potatoe mentality is an element of that solution. The trick is to be capable of being both, as well as a thousand other things. I've said before that a role is useful only until you start to believe that's what you are, and then it becomes limiting. Like believing you are an artist. If you believe you can be anything, then when you choose to play the role of artist, you'll make better art.
on Saturday, August 26th, josé said
Being an artist is about shedding new light on things and wiping away the dust and the cobwebs that accumulate over the years to reveal things we may have forgotten – not just material things but the way in which we stand to them, thereby providing a door to our inner world. That is where the Real Beauty in art lies.
Let’s not get carried away by definitions of extremes here. The bohemian is just as likely to fail in revealing the new as the guy ‘sitting on his couch’ year after year. The bohemian is as limited, stubborn, and steadfast in his worldview as the accommodated couch-potato in that he is only familiar with his own reality and has as great a difficulty in stepping out into a world that does not conform to his expectations.
What distinguishes the artist is not his bohemian quality but his ability and willingness to go anywhere and come back with news of the places he visits and a fresh view of what he sees of the place he was familiar with upon his return. The artist establishes bridges, both to the unknown parts he has visited and tells us about, but also to those others we have forgotten and which he sees afresh upon returning. His work is neither constantly on the move nor accommodated, but more like a constant coming and going, to and from a place he knows he can find himself – and having found himself he is able to place a new brick on the new structure he plans to build to carry us and him across to ‘another’ side.
If he has no place to come ‘home’ to he remains adrift unable to communicate anything worthy of mention, unable to shed any meaningful light on what he saw on his adventures or of what he sees on his return – at the most his work becomes an empty aesthetic statement of his stance and worldview with very little bearing on his contemporaries.
Paul, that was a great blog about how we go about staying awake. I wish you all the best on the completion of your screen-play and the response you get to it.
on Saturday, August 26th, olga said
Ha-ha, Paul. Walt got you:) It was him, not Ellen.
on Wednesday, August 23rd, Paul Dorrell said
Ellen: it would be my pleasure. Northwest Arkansas is one of my favorite places--that is after San Francisco.
on Wednesday, August 23rd, walt said
Paul,
Next time I head down to Arkansas I let you know. We have a property near Bull Shoals Lake in the Ozarks just over the Missouri border. Maybe I can get you down there and take you sailing, or fishing.
on Tuesday, August 22nd, Ellen Fisch said
I live near NYC. My parents left me a small house in the White Mountains of NH that I maintain, but had not visited often in the last few years. When my kids were young, my husband, a former school assistant principal, would spend every summer in NH. Now my children are grown & my husband has interests in NY so I have the extraordinary luxury of having a place of my own to use for whatever I like. I do have a fair amount of space at my house in NY, but there are always distractions. I come to NH with a laptop, projects, watercolors, drawing pads and usually find myself chatting at the post office, reading at the library or wandering around the country roads with my camera. In NY I paint or work at my easel or on my computer art 6-7 hours a day/7days a week. I usually feel keenly the leaking away of time if I depart from a project in NY to even go to the supermarket. In NH, time has a different meaning. I am fortunate to have my little retreat. It offers me a chance to step away from my work (and my family) to recharge my energies. I think that while I am not producing any concrete work in NH, my time there may be equally as valuable as the time I spend in the studio.
on Tuesday, August 22nd, Mark said
Andrew, What I was trying to say (learning curve) is that with learning to sail it hasn't given me much time to think of painting, as we sail. Sailing is an art, one can sail but not be a sailor, just as one can paint, and not be an artist, I want to be a sailor. Having said that though, as my skill improves and I can relax a bit I am already thinking more about what is happening around me and what I see and feel and how can this be incorporated into future works. When at home in my studio I can then think about what we have experianced (such as 4' waves, heavy wind and those damn big power boats that seem to aim for us, beautiful sun sets, wildlife and other boats)but I have not as yet used this experiance in my work but it will come. Strangly I have found my skills as an artist (my painting outdoors and being very aware of my suroundings) has helped me sail. The greatest joy of sailing is moving quietly through the water, being able to get close to those things you can not with a power boat such as Herons and Egrets and baby Osprey, and not disturb them (I have begun to do some paintings with Herons in them). Just as I do not paint to just make a picture (my joy comes from the proccess) one does not sail just to reach a destination but to enjoy the means of getting there(if getting there is your only goal you get a power boat).
As I said in an earlier comment my greatest inspiration comes from those things I am most familiar with, so in time, soon, sailing will be a bigger part of my work, and I look forward to it. I live in a hilly, wooded farm area, so being on the water, seeing the land from a different perspective, as well as weather, and being in a very different enviroment, how can it not work its way into my paintings. I just need to relax, become a better sailor and the rest will happen.
As I re-read my comment here I see that sailing has already influenced my work more then I knew. Funny how things can sort of work thier way into our work through the backdoor and we do not always know it at the time. Thanks for your question Andrew as it has helped me realize how much sailing has begun to influence my painting already. Take care.
on Tuesday, August 22nd, Andrew said
Mark, it occurs to me I need to ask you about the learning curve you spoke of, and the exploration of new territory, both in travelling by boat, and in learning how one works. Paul spoke about 'breaking the routine' for inspiration, and you said neither you nor your wife had sailed much before. Does the new way of thinking, surrounding sailing techniques and feelings particularly, open doors of inspiration for your painting? Something like, you feel the way the wind powers the boat, and think about how to evoke that in an image?
on Tuesday, August 22nd, Andrew said
Oops!
on Tuesday, August 22nd, Mark said
Andrew the sailboat is mine not Vic's.
on Tuesday, August 22nd, Andrew said
Buying into a gypsy chique fantasy? I wouldn't want to do that. If it's a hollywood image that we see and try to copy, that makes us phony. When you insist upon displaying the trinket symbols that go along with what you wannabe...not in living a lifestyle that breaks routine regularly, as I think is what Paul has in mind. The adoption of a role is in itself a routine, and the role of 'artist', of 'boho', of 'writer' can be the one that stops inspiration. Walk for a moment without it...just as a human being, and see how much new territory this leads one into inspirationally. The sailboat's new for Vic, and just learning how it works has probably brought up new ways of looking at things. Tried to click on your link, Vic, but couldn't get to any work. Love to see what you're doing.
on Monday, August 21st, Mark said
A bit off of the blog's subject but Paul's remark about a contemplative life made me contemplate (excuse the pun). How unable many are to be alone, not lonly, but by one's self, to contemplate. I know and have known so many people that could do so little by themselves, and I often thought how sad that is. Being and artist, painter, writter, sculpter can be and should be a solitary endevor. For me at least a painting can not be done by commitee but alone. I have great kids, grown and on thier own, I have a beautiful wife who I miss when she is not here, but at the same time I need to be alone, to think, to contemplate, not just about the painting I am working on or what I want to do next (though that is the bulk of it) but to be with just my own thoughts, something else that seems hard for people to do now days. Sorry to go off subject. Take care all.
on Monday, August 21st, Paul Dorrell said
Great comments, all of you. But please note, while breaking routine and taking risks is a necessary way of life for me, I still have a sane home to retreat to, a wonderful family, my kids--virtually grown now--have always known stability, and I rise each day at 6:30. When I'm on a book or screenplay, I write each morning for about two hours, seven days a week.
Sure there is no general subscription that applies across the board. Sure the approach is different for everyone. But however done, I feel the beauty of it is realized in attempting to live a contemplative life.
on Monday, August 21st, Mark said
I am so ashamed so ashamed, for not mentioning Jude. One person that has given me new inspirtion, as well as making me see the world in a different light, he is a perfect human being named Jude, my grandson. Can't wait to teach him to paint and sail.
on Monday, August 21st, Mark said
Bordom, inspiration, adventure, comfort, the unknow, the known, romantic and unromatic. This is one blog where there can be no difinitive answer. There are as many ways to experience the above as there are different artists.
I think an artist can break from bordom or lack of inspiration by being on the edge with thier work, try a different technique, go bold with color, try a subject unknown to you. Though my wife and I like to travel when we can (mostly by sailbaot, more on that in a bit) I find my inspiration most with the things I know. Painting them in a different light, or unusual angle, pushing color. In new places I always find things to paint and draw, yet I am at my best in my back yard, across the road along the trout stream where there are deer and turkey and even mink and other wonderful things, in the deeper forest up the road or toward the farms and orchards within walking distance from my studio. These things I find inspiration from when I get stale from to much studio painting.
Now sailing. My wife and I purchased a pocket cruiser, a 19foot sailboat that we can sleep on as long as we can stand it. We got it two years ago when I was 51, neither of us knew how to sail, but we have learned. My wife named it "Plein Aire" her idea, not mine, but it fits. Here is the thing, my hope is to use the boat to explore the thousands of miles of coastline along the Chesapeake Bay and do many great works of art. This is our first season on the bay but the learning curve of sailing and responabilities (elder Mom's) has prevented me from getting much material for paintings. We have had some wonderful times on the boat and some very scarry times on the boat and I would not trade them for anything. Yet still I look to the boat as a future way for future paintings, and seeing places in a way we could not see them from the land. Plus it is trailerable so when we get a bigger vehicle we can take it anywhere our hearts desire. This may not have much to do with the blog though I think it fits in with what Paul is sayning about travel to help inspiration. We dream of a bigger sailboat one day and maybe even live on it (so long as I have a studio some place for large works).
We must all find our own ways. What works for one will not work for another. None are wrong not all are right. I do look forward to seeing what others have to say. Take care and be creative.
on Monday, August 21st, Matt said
Vick- There's no right or wrong.
Sometimes throwing caution to the wind can be a good thing and sometimes not. In the end it's up to you -each person- to find whatever adventure rocks your world.
on Monday, August 21st, Vick said
No Andrew--you are buying into that whole gypsy chic fantasy. I grew up with a parent like that, boho to the max. I know what your kid is going to be like, and that kid will be a yearning for stability. I have a high tolerence for random wierdness because of my background, but I also enjoy knowing where I am going to sleep at night and that there will be coffee in the cupboard so I can get on with my day. I don't live in the 'burbs and I visit Europe often. I get tired of that romantic myth, though, that gypsy lifestyle that allegedly gives one creative carte blanche. You can get that and pay your bills. You can stagnate creatively living on the road as much as you can by living your life in a shopping mall.
on Monday, August 21st, Olga said
I think it's very individual, to get inspired having stable life or break the routine and living on the edge. It also about someone's physical abilities, health. Good on you, Paul, that in your nearly 50, you still have an energy and wish to go to Colorado, Utah..
on Monday, August 21st, Andrew said
Vick, that may be ok for you, but not for me. I've always lived on the edge, and prospered at the same time. Going to live in Europe was just the start. I didn't speak any of the languages, now I speak three aside from English. Not because I tried. Because I had to. Comfort has never been an issue, because I'm comfortable sleeping on a pile of ropes on the deck of a freighter. It isn't romantic, it's just the way my life is. Last week I blew the engine in my 1972 VW bus, in a foreign country, and just managed to get it back to Italy. The last hundred miles clattering from a thrown bearing, and me wondering if I was going to make it to the ship, with my 1 1/2 year old son beside me. The passion of living just isn't there if everythings settled to go without a hitch. Hitches are inspirational. That basic security is what's going to keep you making the same old same old.
