If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
~ “If” – Rudyard Kipling
I can tell you 101 things that have kept me away from this blog, but with the help of people and, most recently, the Mighty Mo helped with a few more adjustments, I will begin to post more frequently.
I have been organizing the images I can post for the last few days. I have been drawing, exploring various tactile media, and focusing on 3D software for the past two years. I am at the point where I can start showing my work. So my last push is to get the blog up and running again.
Bear with me; you will see more of my work and other posts soon.
In order to experience a poem, we must understand it; in order to understand it; we must hear it, see it, contemplate it—convert it into an echo, a shadow, nothingness. Comprehension is a spiritual exercise.
Octavio Paz, Alternating Current, p. 49
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Floating through Space and Time, Mixed-media, Hendricks@2023
I don’t think I am creating anything as profound as Paz describes, but as I said many times in this blog—I am on a path, which is not totally visible to me. I get glimpses, but never too sure what I see. I do want to say that just because I post works of art, I do not think they are grand, that the technique is refined, or the lines sure and sharp. I know they are not. However, as I do and study my ideas, my voice and path will clarify. There is one thing I want readers and friends to know, and that is that I believe in a power greater than ourselves, and there is a piece, a bit, of that power, that Light within each of us. I don’t know if I am a theist, non-theist, pantheist, or panentheist. Whatever I am, I seek to reach, connect, and engage with that Light that exists within me… and you. I am saying this partly because I have avoided saying it in the public eye of art critics and peers. OH MY GOD! I just came out again. 😆
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
This article came to me through a friend on LinkedIn that I respect very much, Chris Zuege. The article is by Robert Rose. Chris posts on LinkedIn often, and I always find his posts enlightening. This resonated with me because the work I do is very off the cuff. I often wonder as I am working and when it is done. Am I the tool or the creator? For me, this quote and article gave me an answer. I am the tool, and what I create was loved before it existed.
I know it has been quite a while since I posted to this blog. The truth is that I was off learning. I studied color… read philosophy… learned more about 3D digital art. I will be posting more regularly again.
Today’s post was important to me. First, to wish everyone a great holiday and an even more fabulous new year and then share my last drawing of 2021. Its title is Tumult. It fits for 2021.
What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, “to lack, a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.” I read it again. It didn’t say “something helpful” or “enriching” or even “extremely valuable.” No, the word was “crucial.”
The quote above was written in response to an article in the New York Times, on Sunday, April 28, 1974, by art critic Hilton Kramer.
This blog is a journal of sorts, featuring my artwork and my ideas about art as I understand it. After 67 years of living, I now get to start practicing what I believe I am meant to do. That is to do art.
As I work, read, and reacquaint myself with myself through my art and studies, I seek a theory of me. It is becoming more and more apparent that I am emerging both intellectually and spiritually through my art.
I have never been keen on the significant art pubs or the art critics. Only because, through big words and lengthy explanation of what they see or how they interpret, the work often shuts out, divides, or disqualifies the everyday joe or mary from viewing, collecting, and enjoying art.
I guess part of objecting to the art authoritarians is that I never felt like I fit in being a blue-collar Catholic boy that is gay, not queer, dyslectic, alcoholic, and Quaker. So I often had to forge my own beliefs and codes of conduct.
That being said, I do believe there has to be some theory, some idea, path, or journey the casual viewer might need to understand my work or any artwork better.
Although, Wolfe is critical of Kramers’s reference to the “crucial” need for a perspective theory. Wolfe doesn’t say no knowledge is necessary. Thus every artist usually provides an artist statement for the viewer and gallery visitors.
I guess Artchangeslives(dot)com is where I work to find the theory of Bill.
“Must you know that yours will be the “better” picture before you pick up the brush and paint? Can it not simply be another picture? Another expression of beauty? Must a rose be “better” than an iris in order to justify its existence?”
I had a few busy weeks just wanted to check in and post an image that I completed. Spending my time between working with my monthly meeting and yearly meeting. I am happy I can continue using my design skills to help out.
As I draw, I notice I am becoming more critical of my work. I am slowing down, considering aspects of the drawings more closely. I guess that is why I like this quote. Does the next drawing have to be better than the last? Yes, I want to learn and travel the path with more skill, but skill is produced not only by study but by practice.
