Going to Barcelona, Which Can Be a Big Deal for an Exploding Head and Other News
In 2012 I went to France and my head exploded. At first I thought it was ghosts, wrecking havoc on my stress and timidity. I stayed in Montcambrier, a 14th century bastide on a hill with Roman roads cutting through farmer’s fields. I painted pictures and feared going to sleep in the bed provided, since every time I walked into the room, a wave of body odor from some unseen stranger upset my nose and made my hair stand on end. I set up a 10 day camp in the unheated studio in late October and barely stopped painting to eat or sleep. It was a wonderfully horror-filled experience. I didn’t speak the language and denied myself human interaction like a hermit monk. I wouldn’t even visit the bakery across the street, although the morning smells were so inviting. On my last night I was finishing up a painting of a chicken and heard the intensely loud slap of a paddle against a wall. It knocked me off my chair and I laid on the floor shivering in terror with my eyes closed, praying to any sympathetic god within earshot.
Back at home a month later, in bed sleeping, a cannon BOOM went off in my head and I thought I was dead. I went to the computer and typed “my head just exploded” and Google saved friends and family from hearing another boring ghost story about my terror-stricken trip to France.
So for this trip I’d like to keep my head from exploding. I think it will help that I’m not traveling alone, and our daughter will be in Barcelona to welcome us. I know a little Spanish, however, hearing Catalan will certainly bring some distant thunder rumbles to stressed-up neurons. I hear there’s a thriving local craft beer industry, and marijuana bars if I want to take on a seldom-used stimulant for a racing heart. Probably not a good idea. Is valium over-the-counter in Spain? Any popular tapas topped with a dollop of benzodiazepine?
This time I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my head quiet. Roll the cannons back into the armory and lock the doors. Rose deserves a break, and a promenade with a relaxed man. Breathe peace in and anticipation out. The sun will be shining, and there’s only one life to live.
Just got word that a grant request I submitted back in November has been accepted. I’m getting paid to create 25 - 30 paintings for exhibition before December, 2022. That’s good news!
A several page application, but the following overview will give you the gist:
This is a painting project intended to educate about alternative definitions of power, especially as it concerns freedom and art. I will create 25 - 30 new paintings and exhibit them at the Art Association of Oswego. Early 20th century psychologist Karl Groos studied infants and recorded their delight after figuring out that their actions could cause predictable effects. For instance, the observable thrill expressed by babies after manipulating the path of a toy by randomly moving their arms, and then repeating the action and getting the same effect. Expressions of utter joy would ensue. Groos coined the phrase “the pleasure at being the cause,” suggesting that this is the basis for play, which he saw as the exercise of powers simply for the sake of exercising them. Before Groos’ study, the majority of economists and social scientists believed humans seek power because of “an inherent desire for conquest and domination”. 100 years of repeated experimental evidence proved otherwise, that aggressive suppositions like Nietzsche’s “will to power” were unfounded. Human beings love play and seek fulfillment through self expression, not domination. Groos posited we exercise our powers as an end in themselves, even if the situation is pretend, which reminds me of another keen observer of humanity, Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Tying his work to the ideas of the philosopher Friedrich Schiller, Groos suggested that this is all that freedom is. For instance, the desire to create art “is simply a manifestation of the urge to play as the exercise of freedom for its own sake as well. Freedom is our ability to make things up just for the sake of being able to do so”. Those who are denied (or deny themselves) the personal power of make-believe suffer openly as literal prisoners and slaves, or privately by the self-imposed refusal to implement their innate powers of freedom. As we come out of a once in a several generation pandemic, humankind is faced with the awesome responsibility to dismantle the dominating power systems that threaten life on earth with climate and nuclear catastrophe, whichever comes first. My paintings will address the insanity of present power paradigms, and seek solutions to arrest the onset of doom. Certainly, a theme like this advances equity, diversity, and inclusion—microbes, CO2 ppms, and thermonuclear weapons do not discriminate. We are all in this fight/no-fight together. I have been painting and writing for 30 years, 15 of them professionally. I paint nearly every day, exhibit regularly, and publish books on art, culture, and politics. I would hope that the community would support a painter/philosopher intending to exhibit paintings with ideas to preserve the community:)
Spring cleaning is underway in the winter studio of the basement painter. April is a good time for the chore. The mind is ready to de-clutter, empty its winter piles of garbage. Usually I just organize canvases on shelves, stack paper paintings in boxes, arrange paints and brushes on the art cart, throw away stiff, painted rags strewn about the chair, and pick up the many repurposed raw meat Styrofoam® palettes to add to the Texas-sized plastic trash vortex churning in the hot open sea.
But I’ve been uncommonly surly these last few days, to the world and to myself. Drunk with displeasure, getting into arguments with songbirds, feeling all nasty and low-down and ready to pop. I fingered through a batch of old 11 x 14’s, took eight off the shelf, stacked four at a time, two-on-top-of-two, at the easel, and let them have it with whatever ails me.
Abstracting the lot. Colors left, right, above, below—smear, brush and toothpick til my heart’s content.
But it’s never content this time of year. So when I had enough and the sun rose higher, I went outside with seeds of beet, arugula and spinach, and dragged my fingers through the dirt. Then a walk to clear the mind and back home to pace like a caged animal. I would cover up my past again this morning if I didn’t have appointments outside of the studio that involve public appearances with washed hands and shaved face.
I noticed that each of the last four paintings, (completed after the soil scenting), shown very little, if any, of the old misterpiece coming through. I must really want to let go of the past and block out the future.
How should a painter live in the present moment?
Tie his hands behind the back and “Om” away creation.
Especially his/her own.
Meanwhile, for those who buy paintings to match colors in a room... Have I got a new Throop line for you. I call it “Flippin’ Off Sparrows—The Temporary Insanity of Spring Fever”.
Please begin every title with “An Abstraction of an Old Figurative Painting of a(an or the)” and finish with the subject name beneath. All are 2022, acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14":
