Solo Exhibition Announcement!!

I’m very excited to finally share this news.

I have signed the contract for a solo exhibition at the Sioux City Art Center in Sioux City, Iowa, opening in early May of 2027.

This is a very big deal for this old artist. Truly next level, and I don’t say that lightly.

The exhibition will be in the Art Center’s third-floor gallery, which is a large and beautiful space. Even more exciting, I will be creating an entirely new body of work for the show, including very large-scale paintings.

And here’s the thrilling, slightly terrifying part: I have not made the work yet.

The exhibition is wide open. It is a rare and generous opportunity to build, create, take risks, and dream at a scale I have been wanting to return to for a long time. Over the next year, this project will be my central focus.

I’m thinking about gardens, forests, rivers, water, growth, change, and the way painting itself becomes a place to wander through. I’m thinking about the relationship between the body, memory, landscape, and imagination. I’m thinking about paintings large enough to stand with, not just look at.

I’ll share more as the work develops. For now, I’m grateful, excited, and ready to get to work.

Onward. Go Be Beautiful!

Corot Studies: A Small Boxed Edition

I’ve been working on a new series of iPad studies that began after seeing a group of small Corot landscapes at the Frick. They were modest in scale, but they stayed with me: quiet, atmospheric, restrained, and deeply felt. Not dramatic in any obvious way, but full of weather, memory, and emotional space.

These new works are not copies of Corot. They are responses. Conversations, maybe. Small acts of looking and re-looking. I think of them as field notes: portable studies made in the space between observation, memory, and imagination.

I’m now creating a very small boxed edition of these Corot Studies. Each set will include six archival pigment prints, housed in an archival portfolio box. The edition will be limited to five complete boxed sets.

The first two prints are finished, and I’m very happy with how they’re coming together. There is something important about seeing them become physical objects. On the iPad, they exist as light. Printed, they become paper, ink, surface, edge, border, touch. They slow down. They ask to be held and looked at differently.

These studies are also part of something larger that is beginning to unfold in the studio. I can’t announce the full project yet, but I can say that these small works are helping me think toward a much more ambitious group of paintings. They are a way of searching before the larger work arrives.

That relationship matters to me. The small digital study is not simply a sketch for something bigger. It has its own presence, its own weather. But it also carries energy forward. It helps me ask questions about landscape, atmosphere, structure, scale, and the strange emotional charge that can live inside a painted space.

For now, I’m enjoying the intimacy of the box. Six prints gathered together. A small archive. A portable landscape. A set of clues.

More soon.

Sam Gilliam at Pace NYC

Continuing Disruption: MSAB Grant Blog 2

I’ve been gathering scraps of canvas that have been lying around the studio for a few years. Some were unresolved starts. Some were leftovers. Some were just odd pieces that I had not quite known what to do with yet.

On a recent trip to New York, I saw Sam Gilliam: STITCHED at Pace Gallery. The exhibition focused on work connected to Gilliam’s 1993 residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in rural northern Ireland. Because his usual paints could not be shipped, Gilliam created a large group of painted and stained loose canvases in his Washington, D.C. studio, folded them up, and sent them ahead. Once in Ireland, he worked with a local seamstress, cutting and stitching those pre-painted canvases into new works.

It was an incredible exhibition, and it prodded hard at my own interest in unstretched canvas. Gilliam’s works were not simply paintings taken off the stretcher. They were paintings that had been cut, folded, stitched, handled, and rebuilt. The canvas was no longer just a surface. It became material, object, memory, evidence.

That matters to me right now.

As part of my MSAB grant project, I’ve been thinking a lot about disruption: how objects, seams, sticks, stones, shells, cuts, folds, and interruptions can change the logic of a painting. Not just visually, but physically. What happens when the painting refuses to behave like a neat rectangle on the wall? What happens when the surface gets interrupted, when the painting has to negotiate with something attached to it, embedded in it, or stitched into it?

These old scraps of canvas have started to feel less like leftovers and more like raw material. They carry earlier decisions, earlier failures, earlier questions. Bringing them back into the work feels like a way of continuing the disruption rather than resolving it too neatly.

That feels useful. Maybe even necessary.

Check out Mr Gilliam’s exhibition here: https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/sam-gilliam-stitched/

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, Blog One

"This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund."

I’ve been working on ideas supported by a State Arts Board grant, and after a fair amount of thrashing around, I think I’ve found an interesting way forward.

The work has led me back to some older, unresolved pieces that have been wandering around my studio for several years. They began as unstretched, unprimed canvases, works I found compelling at the time but never fully brought to resolution. For a long while, they remained in that suspended state, neither abandoned nor complete.

The grant project has centered on incorporating objects, sticks, stones, and shells into my paintings. I had made a few pieces along those lines before, and I was curious to see where that impulse might lead. What interests me most is the idea of disruption, using objects, shapes, and processes to interrupt the body of the painting, sometimes subtly, sometimes more forcefully.

But the disruption is not only visual. It also changes the act of making. What happens when a stone or a stick is fixed to the surface? How does that alter the way I move through the painting? How does it shift my relationship to the work and, in turn, its meaning? That question has become central for me.

Another important part of my studio practice over the past several years has been the daily drawings. I’ve made hundreds of them, improvisational line drawings that wander, search, and accumulate. At some point I began to recognize a connection between those drawings and these folded canvas, object-based works. That realization has opened a door. What had seemed like separate bodies of activity now feel related, part of the same language, part of the same inquiry.

This feels like the beginning of something rather than a conclusion, which is probably the right place to be.

GO BE BEAUTIFUL!!

GO BE BEAUTIFUL!

Lately I’ve been thinking about where my little phrase “GO BE BEAUTIFUL” actually came from.

For five years I served on the McKnight Distinguished Artist committee. We were responsible for selecting the recipient of the Distinguished Artist Award — then $50,000, now $100,000 — a serious responsibility. It was always such a joy to do this.

During that time something happened to me that I didn’t expect. For the first time in my long career, I was in the minority. I was the only white, straight man in the room. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t immediately comfortable. There were moments I felt judged by my appearance before I had even spoken. After decades of moving through the art world with a certain kind of unexamined ease, that experience landed hard.

But I stayed. I listened. And something shifted.

What I began to experience wasn’t exclusion. It was shared leadership, real shared leadership. Intelligence distributed across lived experiences very different from my own. Authority that did not default to me. Perspectives that were foundational, not ornamental.

And instead of feeling diminished, I felt lighter.

Lighter because I didn’t have to carry the room. Lighter because the room didn’t need to look like me to function. Lighter because the work was stronger when it was truly diverse.

After one meeting I walked out with this phrase in my head:

GO BE BEAUTIFUL.

Not “go be right.”

Not “go win.”

Not “go dominate.”

Go be beautiful.

To me, that means choosing openness over defensiveness. It means seeing strength in diversity rather than feeling threatened by it. It means understanding that shared power isn’t loss, it’s expansion.

I post “GO BE BEAUTIFUL” often. Some people probably think it’s just a feel-good slogan. It isn’t. It was born from discomfort. From humility. From realizing I didn’t have to be centered to be valuable.

We live in a moment when the temptation is to harden. But I’ve been in a room where something better happened.

So when I say GO BE BEAUTIFUL, I mean: stay open. Stay curious. Share the weight. See the humanity in the room, especially when it doesn’t look like you.

That’s where the lightness is.

GO BE BEAUTIFUL

Art Created by the Sun!

The Poor Farm Studios LLC solar array

Powering the Poor Farm with the Sun

About a year ago, the Poor Farm Studios went solar. We’re not totally off-grid — that’s just not possible for a place like ours — but a large portion of our electricity now comes straight from the sun. Our 10-kWh solar array sits out in the orchard, soaking up light and quietly feeding clean energy into the daily rhythm of the Poor Farm.

We also installed a battery backup system that keeps the essentials running when the power goes out — things like the well pump and sump system that keep our water flowing and our basement dry. It’s a reassuring bit of independence when storms roll through southern Minnesota.

Electric Everything

Over the past year, we’ve been steadily shifting all of our systems and appliances to electric power. Our clothes dryer and water heater are now electric, and two of our four heating units use efficient heat-pump technology. Each upgrade is a small but meaningful move toward a future that feels lighter — both on our planet and on our power bill.

This transition has also made us more aware of the flow of energy through our daily life. Every flicked light switch or morning cup of coffee now carries a quiet reminder: the sun helped make this possible.

Art Created by Solar Power

At Poor Farm Studios, creativity has always been rooted in place — in the land, the weather, the changing light. Now, that connection extends to the energy that powers our work. The paintings, drawings, and community events that happen here are, quite literally, art created by solar power.

For us, it’s both practical and symbolic. Harnessing sunlight to power our creative life feels like an act of gratitude — and a gesture toward the future. It’s a reminder that sustainability and imagination can thrive together, grounded in the same soil, nourished by the same light that fills the orchard.

We are grateful to the Mankato Solar Store for the design and installation of our system. Check them out… https://mankatosolarstore.com/

Back of our solar array with the fields

Art and Politics

Manet

Goya

Art, Politics, and the Question of Engagement

I’m sitting here thinking about politics and art — my art, to be specific. I have questions. I’ve always been a politically engaged person. I read the papers, listen to the news, have opinions, and share them liberally. But when it comes to my art — my paintings and drawings — I sometimes feel quite apolitical. As if I’m not addressing the issues directly. As if I’m not using my skills to confront what I believe is one of the major problems in our society right now: the growing disruption between people — between us, you and me — and our ability to change the world and make it better through the political process.

So one question I have for myself is:
Is my art an escapist activity?

Am I making my work to provide an escape for both myself and those who view it? For me, this is a disturbing possibility. The idea that art could serve as a tool to avoid reality is the complete opposite of what I want my work to do — or to be. I want my work to open up my viewers’ worldview, to broaden their perspective, to help them consider things they may never have considered about this world. That is a radical aspiration.

I’ve always felt that the defining line between art and not-art is subversion. Does the work one is looking at or experiencing subvert the subject — or ask questions about it? That questioning can be as simple as: “Can a rose be green?” “Can a cat have a dog’s body?” “Can paint be appreciated as just paint?”

It can also be something far more radical, like Goya’s The Third of May, 1808 — a direct and visceral depiction of the execution of a group of men.

I’m suggesting that this entire spectrum — from the color of a rose to the portrayal of a military execution — is equally political. It contains a particular truth of experience that, especially in this moment, feels radical.

When I’m in my studio, working away on things, I am lost in what I would call my “real reality.” So another question arises:
Is losing myself in the making of my art indulgent?

I don’t think it is. I believe that when any human labors to represent the humanity of their experience, they are engaging in a profoundly unselfish act. It is our capitalist system that defines this sort of activity as indulgent — as something not worthwhile.

In fact, in my opinion, getting lost in art-making is a form of highly charged political activism. It is both a protest and a gesture against a society that represses individuality and self-autonomy.

When I think about it that way, I realize my paintings aren’t an escape at all. They are a way of paying attention — of insisting that observation, imagination, and empathy still matter. Maybe the quiet act of painting is itself a political gesture: a refusal to surrender to cynicism, noise, or despair. Through color, shape, and mark, I’m asking both myself and others to stay awake to the world — to keep believing that beauty and awareness can still change it.

Disruption

Iona, Scotland

On Disruption and Painting

Travel often disrupts my flow of thought and my connection to painting. When I’m away from the studio, I feel a rupture between myself and the subject, the canvas, and the process itself. That break can be unsettling. It pulls me out of rhythm, and I sometimes struggle to find my way back in. But I’ve come to recognize that this very disruption is not a problem — it’s essential.

When I traveled to Scotland last year, I felt this disruption vividly. In Edinburgh and Glasgow, the energy of the cities was electric, dense, and layered in history. Then, arriving on Iona, everything shifted — the sea, the wind, the sheer presence of stone and sky. It was profound, and it forced a shift in my perceptions; my very balance was thrown off. Instead of resisting, I let that disorientation seep into my sketchbooks and watercolors. The change in light, the scale of the land, even the rhythm of walking across the island broke open new ways of seeing.

Over time, I’ve realized that painting itself is a practice of disruption. The surface of the canvas is never neutral; its size, shape, and presence physically alter how I move and think. Even small shifts — a new format, a different scale, or a strange color relationship — can jolt me out of my comfort zone. I welcome those moments. They remind me that art is not about settling into flow but about being surprised, interrupted, even knocked off balance.

I don’t seek disruption for its own sake, but because it opens space for discovery. Each interruption, whether caused by travel, materials, or my own restless thought process, creates the possibility of finding something unexpected. For me, the most interesting paintings are born from those breaks in continuity — from the places where what I thought I knew gives way to what I didn’t expect.

Painting, in the end, is less about preserving the flow than about disrupting it. And in those disruptions, I create something new. Allow disruptions to subvert your reality.

Soul of Green

Do I have a soul? I don’t know, it’s not something I worry about too much. But if I did have a soul it would look like this. It would be in this place.

I’m 68 years old and still trying to figure things out.

When I was 18 years old I decided I was going to be an artist, a painter. Even though that was 50 years ago, I’m still trying to learn how I respond to the world. Generally my work is based on the landscape. What I realized is that I have two basic approaches to the landscape. The first is wholly imaginary, image #1. The second approach is based on sitting down and responding to what I see, image #2. There are times when the two approaches blur together or share common boundaries but yet there continues to be this division between the two approaches.

My work based on observation does not attempt to render or even be all that accurate, however the space has a logical progression based on the scene. The color choices also have a logic based on what I am looking at. Although I tend to “amp up” the colors.

The work that is based on the imaginary tends to have a narrative, a kind of story, that drives the image along. These works are also much more process oriented, I’m playing around with materials and mixing up the space. I often think of them as old medieval paintings where different times, places and spaces exist within the same image.

Ultimately both approaches emphasize formal invention and an expressive tone that moves them away from being locked into landscape or scene painting. The goal of all of my work is to subvert expectations and offer a bit of a surprise to the viewer.

Sailing To Wonderment (still in progress)

2025

Mixed water-based media

Birch Trees and Jack Pines

2025

Watercolor

The end of the year, the beginning of the year, the bullfight

Wilbur and I started the New Year in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

It’s a gorgeous old city full of US citizens, us gringos. That is a complex thing for me but I was totally taken with this place and all the people in it. Thus, I add to the “gringofication”. The textures, the smells, the energy, the love…the deep spirituality, so rich and abundant, completely intoxicating.

We went to a bullfight, the end of 2022. I’ve always been curious about them. I will say that my curiosity was more than satisfied. I’m still processing the experience. It was brutal, a display of bloodletting and torture that I certainly have never witnessed before. It started as a beautiful celebratory event. Costumes, pageantry people cheering and talking. It was so very clear that this was something that people loved and even took pride in. There was a band playing some “oompa” sort of tunes. Then it started.

We sat through a total of five “fights”. There were moments of grace and even beauty as the matador and the bull did their death dance. However, as is well known, the outcome is never in doubt. For me this fact overshadowed any sort of aesthetic appreciation. We just couldn’t make it through the final one, so we left.

This isn’t a football game where the winner and loser is in doubt. Here we know who the loser is. It was grim but I have to admit, initially, fascinating. As it all wore on it got more and more depressing. Not just for us but I could feel the crowd get less enthusiastic. People were distracted, the original celebratory vibe had turned into a grim death watch. The matadors costumes, at the beginning all sparkly, became stained with dirt and blood. The crowd had thinned out, the people walking out with us were quiet, there was none of the celebration and joy one felt on entering the stadium.

It’s said that the bullfight is a metaphor for life. Picasso used it as one for the artistic life, the act of creation, creating art from death. The “little death”, “la petite mort,” often associated with an artist giving their all to create what they are compelled to create. Hemingway used it as a metaphor for masculinity and the struggle to be free and then of course death. I don’t know about these metaphors we need new ones. Metaphors that celebrate our love, our planet and our joy of being alive. Yeah, I am a wild-eyed optimist!

We left the stadium fraught. I kept thinking how we are evolving away from such bloodletting, but not really. I thought of the war in Ukraine, all the genocides still happening. The young men and women killed by our policing system. The slaughterhouses that feed us the sanitized version of what we just witnessed. Wilbur, walking slowly, declaring “toxic masculinity”…she is right.

But then we ARE evolving away from this. Wilbur and I always say to ourselves that the arc of change is different for other people and places, we are changing but change isn’t the same for everyone. My 2023 resolution is to continue to question my own framework of thought. To try and see the way my privilege has formed my thinking. How I am that matador pathetically strutting and preening, facing the illusion of his death. I am also the bull, blood glistening down my body standing confused while pointlessly clinging to life. My resolution is to stay awake to life, to be a friend to death and to question why we have to struggle at all to understand either.

Rudy and Me

A reprise of a blog I wrote for the RACA magazine

With a hard thunk the trailer hitch drops on the ball. I slap the hitch lock down and the Spirit of RACA is securely attached to my truck. I am hauling paintings for the next exhibit of my work in Minneapolis and this is the routine.

When he was a young man, my maternal grandfather, Jackson Rudolf Ratcliff, made his living hauling grain and selling farm machinery. I imagine him pulling trailers, loading trucks, moving stuff down gravel roads past the rows of fields. Rudy would look at the green and dream his American dream. I haul my art around, down gravel roads past rows of fields. Each time I load up my truck or my trailer, I think of my Grandfather driving trucks pulling trailers through the Midwest.  

I watch the cycles of farming. The tilling, planting, tending, the harvest; all in a fixed pattern tied to the rhythms of nature. As the years go by, I sense a similar rhythm in my studio work. The winter has me hunkered down, focusing on death. The spring brings green and growth, expansion and life. Summer has a languid Italian feel, and then fall dries out, getting crackly.Our farm neighbors know I make paintings. They see me out in the yard or walking around the roads looking at things. I draw or paint outside and I like to imagine that they think I am odd. Yet probably they are just thinking, “look at him paint.” Maybe being an artist in the country has a bland normalcy—I like that. They see me load my paintings. I see them, their pickups loaded with bags of grain, refilling their planters.  They plant their seeds. Perched at the edge of my window, I witness long green lines emerge from the dark earth. Initially thin and faint, they’ll soon bellow green, fecund, loamy and wet. I know that these seeds are quite calculated, the products of selective breeding and chemistry. But the green—the green has always been there.   The color of spring green is luminous and infinite. It is a color that exists in dreams and the hallucinations of the mystics. It is the color of the sacred robe. In the green of spring—that vibrant and unnatural green, soft and harsh, a color of immense promise—we are all compromised.Always there is a bit of release when I load up the trailer with my labors from the past six months. I am sending my work out into the world. Are my paintings seeds? Or are my paintings the plants? Maybe they are the fruit. Or maybe they are the death before the spring. I don’t know.  I do know that, like the green specks pushing through the mud, they have to be made.

The wind tosses some dust into the air.  My grandfather, long gone, hauled grain and farm machinery. I haul art. Our gravel roads are the same. We both ponder a past rich with memory. We both consider a future full of hope and love. The cycles of RACA continue. 

That’s my Gramps hauling some sort of farm implement

Hey!!! Thanks for it all

Hi everyone!!!

Retiring is such a weird word. To retire, to be retired, re tired???

Yes, after 32.5 years of teaching painting, drawing and the occasional art foundations class I’m hanging that part of my life up. Wilbur and the kids often heard me proclaim it to be an ideal job. It was. I could never have imagined a better one. For the majority of my academic career I was encouraged by colleagues and administration to do what Joseph Campbell proclaimed as the secret to a happy life, “Follow your bliss!” I did this every step of the way all the time, even when I was chair.

Here’s the catch with that idea though. To “follow ones bliss” you also have to bring everyone along with you! I mean what is bliss if everyone else is miserable???

Of course it didn’t always work. One of the things I’ve learned about teaching art is that you can only invite people along. They still have to do the hard work that any meaningful journey entails.

But I tried.

My favorite part of teaching was watching the light go off in a students head. I could always see it in their face and feel it emanate from their body. I loved that. I also LOVED bothering students. I loved being irritating and getting obsessed with uncomfortable questions. I’ll miss that the most.

To all of my former students that happen to read this. Thank you. I know that a majority of you probably never touched a brush again. I didn’t want to make you a painter, or even an artist. I only wanted to invite you along on the particular quirky path that a life well lived traverses.

If you HAVE found yourself continuing to paint I wish you well. Understand that I have nothing invested in your vision. I only opened the door a crack, you had to push it hard and stumble through. You did it all yourself and you owe me nothing. Well done!

Here is my prayer for you. I hope your voice is strong, your vision clear and your hand is steady.

The Ghosts That Love Me

Brian, As usual, I ask, where did the real inspiration get generated?

Hey Paul...gosh that's always such a hard question for me. This time I'll try to weave an answer. 

I think both of us might have received our art training at a time when the idea of inspiration was suspicious.  At least it was for me.  Inspiration was viewed as an idea that was rooted in irrationality.  Yet as I've gotten older and slowly sorted things out I've come to think that inspiration is a real thing.  I started thinking this way about twenty years ago after reading the book of Agnes Martin's lectures.  She kept using the word.  I kept thinking about it.  I realized that there is a kind of instantaneous inspiration.  That's rare for me.  I have moments of insight and those can bring about some sort of new understanding of my work.  Other times inspiration is a slow methodical unraveling and reweaving together of previous memories, thoughts, work, muscle memory, that moment and stuff like that.  I addressed this a bit more in a previous blog, I’ll link to that one.

Mythic Garden of the Future

2021

Brian Frink

This particular drawing you asked about was inspired by:

Ashile Gorky

Specifically his Garden in Sochi and Liver is the Cocks Comb paintings. I've been thinking a lot about these paintings lately.  I don't know why, although when I think about it I've been thinking about them for a long time.  So….my own landscape I'm in, the trees and gardens around the Poor Farm.  

Ashille Gorky

The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb, 1944

Albright-Knox Museum

David Bowie  

He has a song on his Aladdin Sane album; I'm playing it right now.  There's a particular lyric, "perhaps the strange ones in the dome" has always stuck with me.  I mean I first heard this when I was fourteen years old and it's always floated around and that’s a long time.  When I was working on this drawing that lyric came up again.  This also connects me to different work I've done in the past.  The lyric is from his song Drive-In Saturday.  It has a weird sci-fi vibe that attracts me.  It also has a great sense of optimism about the future. Like the future is going to be cool but really different, so don’t worry.  I haven’t taken the time to figure the song out; I just listen to it and let meaning be. If you look at the lower part of my drawing you will see some architecture type shapes. These are my strangers in the dome.  

 The drawing was self-generated

I don't think of inspiration as a priori, it always comes with the work.  Wilbur and I left for a weekend retreat in the woods last weekend.  Before leaving I stuck a piece of paper to my drawing table.  When I came home it was the first thing I saw so I started drawing.  Something about the weekend informed the beginning…but they were just scribbles, lines moving along the surface of the paper.  No image in mind.  Then the images started to form.  The garden was first, the moon happened later.  I chose the color pencil because my hand felt like using it.  Then the drawing slowly evolved from that start. There is also just the pure sensuality of drawing. I take great pleasure in that feeling.

Rothko

So this one is a real mystery to me but I've been thinking about Mark Rothko a lot.  There's that painting, an early one, Untitled.  It is another one that keeps floating up in my head.  

Mark Rothko

Untiled 1944

I'm in an artistic crisis

I am.  There's a lot of changes and transistions occurring in my life.  So I'm flailing around a bit.  The funny thing for me is that when I'm in a crisis I tend to work more and I roam around a lot.  Maybe I'm always in a crisis!  I usually kind of enjoy it though.  A good crisis of identity and search for some sort of meaning and purpose creates some fertile soil.  

That was way more than I suppose you expected

Lol…sorry.  I can get very obsessed and your question inspired me.  

The interesting thing for me regarding the two paintings I cited is that they are transitional paintings, especially the Rothko.  So I'm reaching back thinking about other transitions and changes.  Maybe it's the pandemic too.  I keep thinking about what I want to leave behind and bring forward.  I also keep thinking about the famous quote from Guston, here it is…

Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out. (Philip Guston)

I'm a total fan boy of Guston.  I love his paintings but I think this is a total dumb quote.  I've quoted it a zillion times to students and stuff, but I'm really starting to think this is a bunch of hogwash.  Why? It is the layers of complexity that are the really interesting things. All that stuff bumping into me.

I tend to wallow in my memories.  I love the crowd in my brain and I accept their guidance counsel and influence.  

They are the ghosts that love me.  

Almost The End

How I feel most of the time

Almost done with my grading. What a weird semester. I felt like I was part computer technician, You Tube video person and finally a professor. The part that I love about teaching studio art was pretty much totally gone. That is the improvisational day-to-day inventions in class and the personal interactions with students. 

I have a general art making and teaching philosophy that has guided both for my 32 years of teaching. There is a core belief that's pretty much the same and then there is a constantly shifting practice based on new information. I won't go into what they are because in truth they are very difficult, if not nearly impossible, to articulate with words. I mean I can...I have when needed but so often it reads like meaningless gibberish. 

This semester of teaching online challenged those precepts big time. I think it was a good thing though. It’s my last year of teaching, I retire at the end of next semester. In a lot of ways, designing my classes for online teaching turned into a retrospective tour of those 32 years. I ended up going through each day of a semester, deconstructing, reconstructing, examining and reinventing all of the assignments I had taken for granted for so many years. In many ways it was a beautiful gift to be able to do this.  

I was also living my art ideals in real time.  Allowing for new experiences, questioning old habits and processes and living in the moment, welcoming the creative muse into my teaching. 

I’ve always felt it my responsibility to turn a classroom into an environment that formed creativity not just discussed it.  This requires a terrifying level of vulnerability from the person in charge of the classroom….me.  Asking fundamental questions that go so far as subverting my own authority and knowledge is what I’m talking about.  Welcoming my students along on my journey of self-discovery along with all the successes and failures, questions and frustrations.  

 I’ve never once felt I was a teacher.  Never.  That is because I questioned my own knowledge in real time, in front of my students. What I am is an artist struggling with their art in the deepest ways possible.  Then I talk about that, I attempted to exemplify and model that behavior.  At times the classroom felt chaotic and out of control.  There were many times over the years when students were frustrated that I wouldn’t tell them “what to do”.  A lot of times when I ignored someone because they needed to figure it out on their own.  Other times I would babble on for hours, I can preach the gospel of painting!  

The pandemic with the resulting online teaching tossed much of this up in the air.  I could never see what the students were doing.  It’s like art making was turned into bits and bytes of information.  It was impossible to be vulnerable before my students.  Well, I did try with my You Tube videos.  But I don’t think they could smell my fear, they couldn’t really see me shake. 

Now I’m grading them all.  I am, of course, being generous.  Did they learn as much?  No, I don’t think they did.  Or maybe that’s the wrong question.  Did they learn?  I think they did, I also think they learned something different than all the other students in my previous sixty-four semesters.  An overworked word, resilience, they learned that.  I think, I hope, they learned the connection between the life they live and the art they make.   That difficult to teach connection between their sense of who they are, the moment and their art.  Sometimes I think of that as desire, other times fear, then most of the time it’s a feeling that is all about, yes…. vulnerability.  Letting go and opening up to extraordinary and magical things.  Maybe that’s what they learned, I hope so because it really is all I’ve ever tried to teach.  

A Letter to My Students 2

Yves Klein

Leap Into the Void

1960

Hi Class,

How are you all doing today?  I know it's Wednesday and I'm breaking my studio time to check in and chat a bit.  Happy to do that!!

I've posted up a new assignment that some of you may find a bit "confusing".  I want to assure you that that is the point.  Up to now I've been spelling things out...as best is possible.  Most of our assignments have been pretty directed with explanations and demos.  I've been slowly shifting to a more self directed phase of class.  Meaning it is up to you, sort of.  

Or more up to you.  The whole point is to be creative right?  That's what we will be doing, being creative.  Of course like any kind of freedom it comes with a bit of consternation.  That would be not having directions that are clear.  It's really odd but we LOVE directions! We LOVE being told what to do and how to do it.  BUT think about this question for a moment:

How can you develop creativity, a creative mindset, if that's all you do?  Expecting to be told what to do and how to do it. 

It's a conundrum to be sure.  

To be creative invites risk.  Risk contains the unknown, you have to take a chance.  What is at risk?  Failure.  We all want predictable clear outcomes that are positive.  However to be creative, to engage in creative thinking you have to take a risk.  

One other thing....

Risk also has another, kind of unexpected, side to it.  That would be vulnerability.  To risk is to be vulnerable and embrace failure.  Think about it as telling someone that you love them for the first time.  I mean when you really feel it.  You have to risk, be vulnerable and accept failure, rejection.... OR success!  That person loves you back.  

Fun isn't it?

But this is the core of art.  Vulnerability, risk, rejection, failure, rejection, success.  

I'll still be doing some demo videos, I'm working on a color pastel demo for you.  However my videos will mostly be technique ones and not illustrations on how to do the assignment.  

So when you start working on the new assignments, look at them a bit differently.  Think about risk and creativity.  Think a bit "backwards" about them.  Step out and take a risk, don't worry I'll be your net.  I'll catch you and applaud the risk you took.  Then I'll watch you soar!  

I’m now going to quote Annie Dillard. This is from her amazing book (which means READ IT) Pilbrim at Tinker Creek. For me this quote sums up the nature of risk.

Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock-more than a maple- a universe. This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Thanks and carry on...stalk the gaps…risk everything.

Brian

Seeking A Metaphor

I think in metaphors, well we all do. I also look for them. For me I’m far more interested in what the metaphor is than anything else. Of course, this might sound weird, but a lot of the time I’m super confused about them. It’s like I can think of it then it slips away. Strange. Still, I can look up the definition, that’s easy. But then thinking of it in the world of images is so much more complex.

Ok just ruminating now. I came up north this week looking for things, or something or anything.

Usually I just look at the water. I did that...but this time I turned my back on the water. The hill was there. I started to think of hills, what is a hill, why is a hill not a mountain. A hill is nearly invisible. Then I saw the shadows rising up on the hill. Shadows are interesting to me because they are projections, illusions, ephemeral, shifting, hard to see, hard to define. I learned this from one of my favorite artists, Jasper Johns. His work has always used shadows in ways that are obvious and subtle.

These shadows are the sun, behind me. In a sense the sun projects me into the image. Suddenly the shadow is my future. It’s climbing up another hill, it is only here for a moment but in that moment it projects life and energy, constantly changing.

Hill 2020

A Letter to My Students

Hi all,

I'm sending this message out to you all as a general one.  It is not to a specific person, so please don't read into it in that way.  Apply what I am saying to yourself as you see it is needed.  

We are close or at midterms, I've lost track.  It gets lonely down here in the art lair and I lose track of time.  

But I know we are close.  Most of you have been keeping up with things really well and I appreciate that.  Some of you have been having a hard time getting things going and I also appreciate that.  It is a difficult time and trying to do your artwork through this online thing is difficult.  It's hard to motivate and it's easy to let things slip.  I understand that.  

The rhythm of attending class helps get one into the habit of making things and producing what you need to produce to progress.  We really don't have that with the online class.  However, what you do have is the flexibility to work at your own pace and take real ownership in what you create.  I think that is cool.  I love that.  Because eventually you will be out in the world, responsible to no one but yourself. Those of you that want to follow an art path, that path of being an artist, will HAVE to learn to self-motivate.  To create your own assignments, to not rely on doing what you are told, to push yourself, to hold yourself accountable and all of that stuff…right?  So this online format is perfect for that.  

You are kind of more of your own boss…kind of.  I still have to give you a grade at the end of this semester.  I hate that because it is not the artist's way, but it IS the way of the system we are working in.  

Note to reader the following is a free form screed….  

What is the artist's way?  I'm glad you asked.  It is understanding that to get better with your art it is 100% up to you.  It is understanding that sometimes to get better you have to get a whole lot worse.  It is understanding that you have to both be hard on yourself but also cut yourself a lot of slack be gentle to yourself.  It's understanding that the inner critic just the inner jerk that you shouldn't listen to.  It is understanding that you do have an inner asshole that makes you strong and forthright with your art.   The artist's way is accepting change.  It is recognizing that what you think is the only way to do something, is not the only way to do something at all.  It is that you don't have talent.  It is understanding that you do have talent but for now, or forever, it does not matter.  It is understanding that lazy artists rely on talent.  It is realizing that you will be totally different in a year, deal with that fear.  It is also realizing that your grade does not matter.  

 OK!  I got that out of my system…lol.  

I am a very easy grader.  I'll just say that up front.  I am.  I am because I seriously don't care about grades as they pertain to art.  AND grades are more reflective of your behavior than anything you actually do.  This is how we have all been conditioned.  

I will also be far more generous with grades because of the crazy online thing.  I assure you that I will.  It cuts you some slack, but it also cuts me some.  I'm floundering in the dark with this.  

I also hate the whole "hard ass art teacher" routine.  You know, the super critical, nazi art teacher that puts everyone down.  School of hard knocks…blah blah blah.  I hate that stereotype.  I am a supportive, encouraging and generous teacher.  I do not believe in harsh criticism especially if it is without a constructive subtext.   Yeah, I can get taken advantage of and I always know but I don't care.  You only hurt yourself.  

This is all my long winded way of saying that if you have not moved forward much on this class and you are feeling down, just get going…there is still time!  OR if you feel like you can't, it is time to withdraw.  What I want you to avoid is trying to do everything in the last two weeks.  I really dislike being put in that position and it usually ends up poorly.  Ie…I will flunk you. 

Well, I don't know what else to say.  You are all great, I love being your teacher and I hope this motivates those of you that need it.  For those of you that don't I hope it was an entertaining read!  ;)

If you need to chat I'm am very happy to set up a Zoom meet.  

Much love,

Brian

Making Paintings Has Been Hard For Me Lately

Making paintings has been hard for me lately.

Maybe it is the election.

Maybe it is my online teaching.

Maybe it is my forthcoming transition from academic artist to just an artist.

Maybe it is the dead flowers.

Maybe it is the stupid f’n election.

Maybe it is my quest for poetry.

Maybe it is my suspicion of nothingness.

Maybe it is that what I see is so blindly beautiful that I can hardly stand it.

Maybe it is death.

Maybe it is life.

Maybe it is the dead flowers.

Maybe it is the dirt on the floor.

Maybe it is in the water.

Maybe it is that bizarre dream where I didn’t have any hands.

Maybe it is something that I never admit.

Maybe it is the fear of painting.

Maybe it is the fear of not painting.

Maybe it is that little familiar feeling of worthlessness.

Maybe it is the Goddess that screams at me.

Maybe it is the Goddess that soothes me.

Maybe it is the f’n election.

Maybe it is the tax man.

Maybe it is something that I nevernevernevernever admit to anyone.

Maybe it is something I am declaring right now.

Maybe it is the color orange, or blue, or green, or red, or purple.

Maybe it is all those elusive colors that will forever confuse me.

Maybe it is love.

Maybe it is hate.

Maybe it is that FUCKING rag over in the corner that hasn’t moved in five years.

Maybe it is there for a reason.

Maybe it is the painting that I can’t seem to finish.

Maybe it is the painting that I will never do, no matter how hard I try to do it.

Maybe it is the painting that sits there staring back at me laughing.

Maybe it is that brilliant dream of youth.

Maybe it is the problem of my death.

Maybe it is the dust motes that never seem to go anywhere.

Maybe it is miracles.

Maybe it is beauty. Maybe it is ugly.

Maybe.

I’ll go paint now.

My Letter to a Student

Excellent!  I'm really happy that RR resonated with you.  It was a bit of an intuitive leap for me to recommend him to you.  However you brought out his political activism via his art, a logical relationship to what you stated you are doing.  Good job in observing that.  He's one of my absolute most favorite artists ever.  I've seen three or four (maybe more) retrospectives of his art.  The first one was way back when I was in high school, so his work sits deeply in my mind.  I think it has to do with his fluidity, he is constantly in motion, trying things, digging the process and not really caring if things are consistent.  He also exemplifies the idea that art is an idea first...a thing second.  It's a post Duchamp perspective that he carried forward creating wiggle room "out of Duchamp" for all of us makers of things.  A very important contribution to visual art.  

His work is ramshackled, funky while still being incredibly smart.  One of my professors always used the word "presence" to describe a strong work.  "That work of art has presence".  That's RR, it's like his work is some sort of aesthetic black hole sucking all perspectives into its poetically driven vibe.  Such great stuff.  

I was in a gallery in New York years ago.  Back then a person could wander around in the back rooms looking at stuff.  I was doing this and a small sunset painting, well it was more than that, but it was exactly that...a sunset.  It couldn't have been more than 9x12" in size, just a little thing.  I looked at it and it sucked me in, totally blew me away.  Yup...it was a little Rauschenberg...never have seen anything like it, It had presence.  

An important part of being a good painter is learning YOUR way so well (I do not mean style, style is anathema to a true artist) that your work is stamped with your presence, it is your humaness, your humanity and self shines through the bullshit.  That's how it works.  

B