A new Fall

    Lets start again. From the beginning again with more emphasis. More complete with purpose. Better “throw’ as the painter Sam Scott says.

    A  painters work is cyclic like the seasons. I start a painting, work on it and eventually finish it to start something new again.  A new canvas, new beginning, new ideas.

   The geese are honking as they fly above my studio, headed to warmer southern climates. This really signals the coming of winter. The end of the busy summer season and the start of the short days of winter. Its November and there is the weight of snow in the air.  It has always been my favorite time of the year. As a boy I loved these dark days, the crispness of the outdoor air contrasted with the warmth and smells of indoor cooking. Now I like it for those same reasons but its also the time of year when the distractions of gardening and other outdoor activities has ended and the focus is on my studio. I was born in the fall and every fall I feel like I want to start  over.  Its not that what I did previously is wrong but its not where I want it to be.  I am coming to understand these thoughts more and more and now even welcome them. I realize that its the thread shared with all artists who have come before me. That longing for more, bigger, better.

   I have become more  of a studio painter over the last years. I’ve learned there is no automatic magic just because a landscape is painted outside.  I can’t call anything that I’m working on in the studio now completely new because the work is always a continuation, whether you realize it or not. Nothing  then is really new its just the next step. I’ve found old canvas from several years back that miraculously seem to have the initial seed of  current work in them. The future never seems planned but the past always feels meant to be. Its always the next group of paintings I’m excited about. All artist  feel hopeful about the future. Its where our best work resides.

   Melanie Parke, my wife and partner, tells me that astrologically I’ve started a ‘building year’.  Its a year where I’m to learn from the past and  construct something from those lessons learned.  Given the unpredictability of  life I’ve come to believe that astrology is just as dependable as anything else. At least it has plenty of potential built into the system. 

   Painting is a type of construction. A building upon action and reaction using pigments and mediums. Its not really about what we are painting. Its about how we are painting it. The subject is just our rationale for painting.   I like to paint  because it is the one act I can do where I don’t get to know where I’m going.  That can be both terrifying and terribly exciting.  Similar to the act of traveling – if you have to stay on schedule your just not going to have a very good time.

So I’ve stored the completed paintings in the studio, turning them to face the wall so as not to be distracted by their presence. I’ve cleaned my desk of paper work and bills. I ‘m starting a New Years resolution and its only November. My resolution is to throw all the crap out of my life the minute I deem it to be.  I’ve swept the studio floor, buttoned up the windows against the cold and rearranged the layout of my painting tables. I stopped listening to the news months ago. I’m eagerly awaiting the day in February when, I have been told,  something sinister is suppose to happen to my television and I won’t be able to get my local channels.  I see it as Gods recent gift to mankind – not being able to watch any type of  television news coverage of which we are told we can count on.  I’m emptying my head of useless facts and making room for useful ones. The artist, Agnes Martin went a step further. She said she gave up on facts altogether because they couldn’t be trusted. (Maybe we should tax things that can’t be trusted? Who would complain?) 

   Grace Hartigan one of the second generation Abstract Expressionist painters died this week at the age of 86. She once told an interviewer, “I didn’t choose painting, it choose me. I didn’t have any talent. I had genius.”   I don’t think Hartigan was referring to genius as ability but rather another definition of the word meaning “the prevalent character or spirit of a nation or age”.  She was referring to her good fortune to be a part of  a new movement, a new age in art. The hopeful excitement of the new.

Richard Kooyman

November 2008