“Live your life in such a way that you will experience your eternal life now. Because eternity is not a long time, eternity is not future or past, eternity is a dimension of now… find that eternal dimension of yourself and you will ride on time throughout your existence.” ~Joseph Campbell (Man & Myth) Forgoing the job was the opportunity cost of retuning to a life of making art. It was a return to my roots in order to save my life. The term 'art saves lives' is true enough in this case. Different people thrive on different things; for me a key need is relentless artistic innovation and discovery. Life in the corporate world - no matter how gilded the cage - is a complicated affair at best. I'd made a Faustian bargain in the mid-90's when I shifted from artist, to art director, to creative director, to artistic liaison, this trajectory eventually launched me ever further from making art as my daily practice. It was a natural enough progression, and justified by telling myself that 'I would help both artists and management better understand the potential of digital media and to position the company to better capitalize on the coming change.' That sounded good, however, to any that might follow that path, be sure that your altruism is its own reward ! ; ) I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare.. my business is to create. ~William Blake In the Hindu world they have an interesting conceptual structure for a human life and divide it into several phases. The centerpiece of life is called dharma; these are the years of responsibility and conformity to the expectations of religion, country and family. What follows dharma is moksha – release from those restrictions in pursuit of enlightenment. If my years in digital development and production were my dharma, the SkiPaintings are my moksha. There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it. ~Henry Moore The SkiPaintings are works of joy that revel in the glory of nature and the physicality of place and time. “The person who plays the role does a better job, than the one who thinks he’s ‘it’. There’s a wonderful secret about action, whether it's in the playing of roles, or in the participation of an athletic event, or playing a piano, ‘if you’re all in it totally, you’re going to be clumsy. You have to have a certain distance to risk mistakes, to risk failure and to be in action from a center.’ This gives us a certain distance from our role and also enables us to appreciate the role of somebody on the other side of the court.” - Joseph Campbell (Man & Myth) After leaving on October 22, I found a studio on November 7, 2004. It took 9 days to build it out and on November 17 the painting began. I painted 22 works over the next four weeks, small studies that explored the concept of the SkiPaintings. Could I actually paint anything after all these years? Was this complete madness to have walked away? Driven by passion and fueled by an oath never to return to the corporate world the dice had been cast. I kept thinking of Cortez; when he landed on the Eastern coast of Mexico in 1519. After unloading his horses, supplies and men he ordered the ships scuttled (sunk). This eliminated any chance of return and from that point on his army had to conquer or perish. There can be no safety net when exploring new territory. I loved every day and the joy of creating physical objects d' Arte. These are the small works of Suite One. On December 18th I stopped work, packed up 11 of the paintings into panels I'd designed and then my wife, son, our dog and I headed up to my folks home. My Dad, son and I built a case for the paintings over the next week using many of my grandfathers' woodworking tools and my great-grandfathers workbench. It was a week that spanned five generations and thoroughly connected me to the flow of my life. We built a wooden case that would stand up to the abuse to travel, protect the enclosed works and show off the paintings to best effect on a first viewing. |
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There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad. ~Salvador Dali After Christmas (Boxer Day in the UK) my son, then age 13, and I loaded up the truck and headed out to talk to galleries in Park City and Aspen. We left in a storm blowing in from the Pacific and rode it across Utah and Colorado for the next two weeks. There are fewer signs more auspicious for this Westerner than the great storms of the Pacific winter. This land lives on the water of the winter. Blowing down from Alaska and across the great ocean these storms slam into the coast range of California and rain heavily on the western faces of the hills. This is the rain, wet and heavy that turns the hills from golden blonde to mystical shades of green. As the clouds rain out they lighten and rise over the coast hills and travel East over the Great Central Valley then pile up against the massive Sierra Nevada. It's here they begin to snow, the dense water heavy snow that we affectionately call "Sierra Cement". This is the snow that can come fast and pile dangerously deep if you're caught unprepared. This is the water that sustains California. As the clouds snow they lighten, rise and continue their Eastward journey over the Sierra and then out across the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah. By this time they've lost their heaviest water and so they drift across the desert holding their cargo as form. The massive storm clouds float over the slowly rising desert dropping what they need of their weight to retain their altitude and getting colder as they travel. By the time they reach Utah the clouds are light and dry, wrung out from their journey. It's here that the mountains funnel the majority of the surviving storm into the Salt Lake Basin where they rehydrate. Sucking up the moisture of the Great Salt Lake the storm reforms. Not as it was over the Pacific - a wild Bacchanalian orgy of raw power crashing on the buttress of a continent. It's now transformed into an Apollonian counterpoint - where perfect snow crystals swirl down as the effervescence of champagne powder. Light and fluffy this is the mystical powder of Utah. |
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“Shakespeare says, ‘Art holds the mirror up to nature.’ The nature that it’s holding the mirror up to is not this thing that the photographer’s going to catch; it’s a kind of ‘x-ray camera’ taking pictures of the very depths of your soul. And you find yourself fulfilled and brought into relation; the outer world with your own self through that. ~Joseph Campbell (Man & Myth, d2 t16 4:40) So this is something of my quest, to live a life giving the best of what I'm able. Art in the digital age poses vast potential. We are enabled by our ability to manage complexity and limited only by our ability to encode what we envision. Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it. ~Salvador Dali |
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