me and louise

my buddy rebecca snapped this of me, scruffy and make-up-less, at SFMOMA and i'm so grateful for the token, for the archive of this experience. it serves as a reminder that i truly do need to follow my own heart and do this thing my way, a way that feels right for me.

it's about honesty.

when i look at louise bourgeois' work, her honesty and bravery radiate right of the surface of her objects. it radiates from the core on out. and standing so close to one of her sculptures, i felt the deep buzz of her love for her work and it was very hard not to touch it. in fact, i should have touched it. the only reason i didn't is the security team at SFMOMA are fanatical and watch every move you make so that they can tell you NO PENS ALLOWED! ONLY PENCIL!





and since the beginning of the year, i've been crawling deeper and deeper in to my own values and ethics when it comes to art and life. and the two subjects are so connected that they are basically the same thing. i want to be a smart artist. i want to be a brave artist. and honorable too.

the passed few days i've been trying to photograph finished drawings that have been hiding in one portfolio or another for quite some time. the grunt work of documentation, but also a very necessary step in the process of curation. because i live with the work and it isn't caged away in a separate studio space, i can easily lose track of what i've made. and this experience of going through the work piece by piece, laying it across every inch of my small cottage, crowding myself with all the black and white and nebulous greys is such an inspiring thing. i can see the lines that connect one work to another. i can see how far back these fault lines run. that i've always made portraits of some kind. the only thing that has changed is my idea of what a portrait is.

in a nut shell, each piece of mine is a portrait- of loss, of desire, of anger, confusion, longing, struggle, failure, and love.

the work is personal and the work exposes things that even i am surprised by sometimes. even the work i consider to be not "good enough" for public consumption, has such a steep value to it. the pieces that i struggled hard with, the work that never came easy and never really became what i wanted it to be, is the work that supplied the best learning curve. it's the work that taught me the most, showed me the most, and, like a good teacher, kicked my ass all over the place when i needed it. my Learning is evident in those pieces and, because of that, they are Good.

it's interesting how one's eyes change.

and i feel lucky that those pieces can have a voice every now and then here on the blog. there's really no such thing as "failure". it's a false construct. it's a lie. Learning is not failure.

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i'm learning a lot these days... and sometimes i get tired, sometimes i get mad, sometimes i am totally frustrated and confused. and then the next morning arrives and i scribble away in my notebook and some sort of answer or brightness falls out of my pen and i find a way to proceed. when i feel especially lost, i spend time with the work of artists i admire. louise is at the top of the list. i am currently trying to leech some of her bravery, some of her gnarly french fuck-off attitude. i love the way she lived her life. i love the way she never gave her power away. i love how she stood, secure and strong, on the foundation of her beliefs- the things she believed to be important about art and life. she was unshakable and didn't give a shit if anyone agreed with her.

talk about faith.
talk about courage.

what a gift that woman is.