Good Evening my Beautiful Angel,
I just got home from Pearl's a few minutes ago, and I wanted to say hi right away because I've been thinking of you all day and I love you so much. These are good days, my girl, warm, contemplative and wonderful. My building is quiet in the summer, so I can really get into "my world with you", where I can bring us together through thought and desire. Soon we will be together like your friends in today's picture, and we will be smiling and happy too. This is a beautiful feeling tonight, I'm absorbing it as I write and sending it back to you. It's like a current, cycling between us and through us, and really it's a part of us because it emanates from us, one to the other and vice-versa. So, I am gonna go on my walk now, and you will be with me the whole way, and I will be with you, too, where you are. And later I will write some more.
I Love You So, So Much, Elizabeth. :):) xoxoxoxox
9:40pm : Yeah, working on a painting......that is something I'd love to get back to myself. I only ever did it for about two years, back in the mid-90s. No training, I just went for it. That's how things were at the Burton Street house, when I was living with Dave, Dad and Ryan after the earthquake. When that event happened, it was so disorienting and threw things so out of whack that we (and especially me) just reacted with an all out Art Blitz. It started with photography, because I wanted to document what happened. Then one day I came home and Dave had made a couple paintings. He had even made his own frames and stretched his own canvases over them. He learned from another guy we knew named Steve, who was a friend of my Dad's from the VA hospital. So all of a sudden, painting was the thing, and I gave it a go myself. I think I did about 30 of 'em, in various shapes and sizes. We loved all kinds of art, including abstract, and since none of us had any training, that's what we went for. We figured we could do it. I do hate it, though, when you hear people say, about Jackson Pollack or someone like him (someone original, in other words), "Oh, my five year old could do that". It's not true, because there is feeling inside the best abstract art, and it is often complex feeling, and it is there for the same reason a certain guitar note or piano chord has feeling: because the emotion existed inside the musician at the moment he transferred the notes through his instrument. And it's the same deal with a good painter, abstract or otherwise. The painting is a product of transferred emotion.
So, just like you have to "be in the moment" while playing music, so as not to be "phoning it in", you also have to be in the moment when painting, and feeling what you wish to convey. Now, that doesn't mean the painting will be everyone's cup of tea. The painting by Dave that is in the background of a photo I posted last night on Flickr is an example. Up close, it is a very dark and chaotic artwork, full of layers and hidden images. Dave was sometimes a tormented guy, and he would paint over his paintings, sometimes several times. He'd decide he didn't like it, or maybe part of it, and instead of whiting it over and starting anew, he'd just start painting over the top of the finished work. That's what's going on in the painting on my wall in that photo. It is a painted-over painting. A lot of people would not like it, and it certainly is dark in it's energy, especially in person.
But Dave had a good visual sense, and most importantly, he put every bit of emotion into whatever he was working on, no matter the art form.
That's why, when someone says "my five year old could do that", they are wrong. A five year old would not have the emotional development to feel such things, and therefore to convey them. This is not to say that every abstract painter is great, just because they felt something and transferred it to canvas. But when you go to a modern art museum, you can get a feel for the ones that are good, and of course it's all subjective, just like any other matter of personal taste. We liked guys like Pollack, Willem deKooning, Vasily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, and a bunch of others.
For "regular" painting, my favorite artist (and I have mentioned him before) is George Inness, the American landscape master from the late 19th century. I also love JMW Turner, and of course Monet, and Gustav Klimt, and again - a whole bunch of others.
I haven't been to the museum in a while. I need to go! We have the Getty, which is a good one, but I think the L.A. County Museum Of Art is even better. Then we have MOCA, too, the Museum Of Contemporary Art.
So let's go to some museums, and let's paint! We can draw, too. I love to draw.
Hey! That reminds me of something I haven't thought of for ages......hand-tinted photographs! I'm sure you've heard of the technique. The photo has to be black and white, and has to be a print. Then you take these colors (and I can't remember if they were pastel pencils or if they were painted on with a brush), but anyway, you color (hand-tint) the photo yourself. We did that in photo class and it was a blast. I still have a few hand-tint photos and I will have to dig them out. I also really, really hope you get to try a black & white enlarger, and make and develop your own prints. If you ever want to, that is. It is truly a blast to do it, and it's one of the reasons I loved photo class so much.
So, that's a little bit about something else we are gonna do together: paint! And take photos! And go to museums! And make our own little museum out of our own paintings and photos!
I Love You, Elizabeth! (back in a little while, to kiss you before I go to sleep)
11:25pm : Getting near bedtime for me, even later for you. What time do you have to be at work in the morning? Or maybe afternoon, if you are part-time. Ah well, I know at heart you are like me - a Night Person. We like the night because that's when the quiet comes out. Quiet of sound, but also of light, and therefore of shape. Things become less structured, less formed. There is less noise for the visual and aural senses to decode. Quiet brings the mind to life, it's inner workings, which during the day (or much of it anyhow) are dormant, as the surface-level mind deals with all it must react to. But at night the inner mind can venture out and wander. There is no stimuli at night, so things clear up, and life becomes clearer as a result. The day's "news" is put into perspective, and the realization that one lives in an enormous Universe, filled with mystery, gives a person clarity as to what to prioritize.
I love the night.
So, now that it is late, I will kiss you again before I go to sleep. And then I will see you in the morning.
:):)
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