From March Studio
Notes
March
27, 2007.
Oakland, night.
Starting
#11, March 2007.
Trying to re-create the collages of 1963-66... I cannot in my voice
now built from all my life before, tell the story of of my life then.
What is my voice now? “To every age its
art, to every art its freedom.”—was the late 19th Century cry
of youth against the stultification of age. This art now for me is the cry
for freedom for an art for my age now. Looking back, the 1958-66 work was
the foundation for the arch of the bridge of my life. This art now,
however much I may not like it, is the other end of the arch leading to
the land unknown at the end of life.
I will make the wall that is our lives… old
walls tell always the old story—
a man fucks, builds a world for the children and then moves aside for
tomorrow…
The painting shows the wall, the ever
streaming of the blood, and the doorway to beyond. The doorway has my sign
in it moving far away from us.
#11, March
2007 is The Garden Gate at Stra,
forty years later.
The Garden Gate at Stra, ca.1965
Collage, 18 x 18 inches.
Collection Oakland Museuem
March 28, 2007.
Oakland, morning.
Still working on #11,
March 2007. Well, what was beautiful last night the morning
reveals to have been only an infatuation. What will come today remains to
be seen.
Night.
There is an old radiance within
which we live.
Very
late night (actually 1:00 am, March 29)
Only a glance before sleep…
Oh, shit, Fred, it won’t work. All lost, all lost.
It’s a face I can’t get rid of—the eye, the mouth.
I don’t like him at all.
March 29, 2007.
Oakland, early morning.
Still working on #11,
March 2007.
Turn it upside down, get rid of the face.
Late
afternoon.
Mine is an art about living—the
story of my life. Yes, every artist’s art is that either by unconscious or
indirection or both (Vincent: “Like every work of art, a self-portrait”),
but my art is up front with the story
even when it's unconscious to me.
Night.
There is a void at the bottom.
Put in the old sun.
Goddamn, the face is back—mouth, eye and mind.
End of
night.
After watching television—what
is the point of it all; what is, indeed, the point of it all?
*
Well, that’s it for #11, March 2007.
It’s not what you want but what you get.
#11,
March 2007--first state,
March 30, 2007.
Oakland, late night.
Maybe now. When you don’t know
what you want, you don’t know how to get it and, you don’t get anything
you want. Tell me, painting, reveal to me that I love you you are
what I want.
*
Going now to bed.
Standing on the edge of…
?
What is the point of
it all?
#11, March 2007—final state.
