Pollock

Jackson Pollock was the poster child for Artists With Emotional Disorders and/or Mental Illness (which, let's be honest, is just about every artist to one degree or another), yet he took it beyond the extreme. The man was unbelievably tortured and pretty much on a collision course with a horrible and dramatic death from the day he was born. And the art he is most famous for- his large abstract canvases of the late 40s and early 50s- are simply breathtaking. I guess if the trade-off for being able to produce such emotionally charged works was to be utterly-out-of-your-mind-batshit-crazy then it was worth every psycho, violent minute.

I once, while at the National Gallery in Washington, waited (for what felt like years) for the docent in that gallery to finally leave the room, whereby I climbed over the ropes and cozied up to a favorite Pollock and gently ran my fingers all over that glorious work. Now, please don't tell me how I shouldn't have done that. That as an artist I should have more than known to keep my oily, art-damaging fingers off the canvas. I am aware of it now and I was aware of it then. But sometimes rationality and plain old self-control just fly right out the window. I should know, I'm an artist.

And in case you were wondering, all that heavily dripped paint felt amazing.

Number 16, 1949

Autumn Rhythm, 1950

Chair 3

Arts & Crafts Period Chair With Window, graphite on paper, 2010

Some Things Never Change

It seems to me that the whole art business is rotten- to tell you the truth, I doubt if the present enormous prices, even for masterpieces, will last. Is this of great influence on the artists? Not at all, for generally the greatest of them personally profited but little from those enormous prices and they would not have painted less, or less beautifully, without that enormous rise. And whatever may be said of the art business, for the present it will remain so that he who can make a thing worth seeing will always find certain persons interested in it, who will make it possible for him to earn a living. I would rather have 150 francs a month as a painter than 1500 francs a month in another position, even as an art dealer.

Vincent to Theo in a letter dated 27 October 1883, from Drenthe.

Sketch from a letter to Theo dated 28 October 1883.

Work in Progress

Portrait of Bram in Progress: graphite, red chalk and watercolor pencil on paper, 2010

Two Paintings, One Theme

As you all know by now, I am rather obsessed with 19th century Impressionism as it was executed in France, though I'm not especially picky as to whether my artists were actually French, Dutch or American ex-pats living and working there. I do, however, tend to gravitate towards a certain look and feel to the canvases I love, as well as to a particular subject matter. I've been madly in love with these two works for a long, long time. I adore the gray green grass and darker sap green of the distant tree line, the tiny buildings and the riot of rich red poppies dotting both landscapes. As subtly beautiful as the overcast sky is in the Metcalf painting, the vibrant, vivid summer sky in the Monet is incredible and simply awe-inspiring. I've seen the Metcalf in person only once (it's in a private collection, the lucky dogs) but don't believe I've ever seen this particular Monet in the flesh. I'd kill to see them both side by side, to be able to make an in-person comparison of the two. And then I'd just have to grab one or both of them, and run like hell to freedom! Man, do I love these two paintings!

Willard L. Metcalf, Poppy Field (Landscape at Giverny), 1886

Claude Monet, Field of Poppies, 1886

Chair 2

Study of a Small Arts & Crafts Period Chair, graphite on paper, 2010

Flowering Garden

I have a study of a garden one meter wide, poppies and other red flowers surrounded by green in the foreground, and a square of blue blowballs. Then a bed of orange and yellow Africans, then white and yellow flowers, and at last, in the background, pink and lilac, and also dark violet scabiosas, and red geraniums, and sunflowers, and a fig tree and an oleander and a vine. And in the far distance black cypresses against low white houses with orange roofs- and a delicate green-blue streak of sky.

Oh, I know very well that not a single flower is drawn completely, that they are mere dabs of color, red, yellow, orange, green, blue, violet, but the impression of all these colors in their juxtaposition is there all right, in the painting as in nature. But I suppose you would be disappointed, and think it unbeautiful, if you saw it.

-Vincent in a letter to his sister Wilhelmina, from Arles between 29 July and 15 August 1888

Flowering Garden, July 1888