Are we narcissists

As the alder leaves turned fiery red and eventually vanished from the branches, and the silvery frost on my lawn each morning beckoned, the Earth Dog is ready to say Zaijian.  See you in twelve!

I could hear the oink oink from the Earth Pig in the distance, if I try hard enough.  Again I am faced with the proverbial question, what is this pig going to look like.

Artists in general are some of the most dichotomous beings on earth, I think.  We have to be sufficiently opinionated in order to put forth our ideas, yet vulnerable enough to reveal our innermost secrets.  We can't wait to make a statement and yet are ambivalent about the reception.  Of course there is this camp that insists we should have the fortitude to paint whatever we want and in whatever manner, and it is up to the viewer to understand and appreciate our works.  I am sure we can scream and demand and insist, but deep down inside we muse and second guess and long for acceptance. Rejection is a bitter pill to swallow.   Perhaps discontent, and the appetite for vindication, more than anything else, are the real fabric for creativity.   This might sound like an oxymoron but Johnny Carson once said that he is ill at ease at parties.  He would hide behind a curtain if he could.  I believe artists, and people who claim to be artists, are good at fulfilling a role; as Johnny did.  Within the confines of the prescribed role we find courage and confidence.  Outside of the pan, all bets are off.

I believe it is this insecurity that drives us to be control freaks.... sort of; and it is this fear of rejection that plants a deep seed in us, driving us to constantly compose and morph and reveal, always searching.

It is my assertion that creative people are people who can't stand status quo.   Creative people are not satisfied with the real world.   There is the omnipresent urge to alter the perception of what is real.

Why is there a need to paint a sunset ?  Isn't the sunset one of those perfect moments that the Creator forged?  To pose a gliding pelican against the setting yolk, to add a smidgen of crimson to the horizon, or to garnish the sky with lenticular clouds?  Creating "new real" from reality, the painter is not satisfied with the real sunset and creates his/her own.  The artists are suggesting that we look at matters from their point of view, despite the fact that whatever we perceive is still our own, and not that of the artists' myopia.  Yet we artists persevere, trying to change reality as we see it.  Molding our own world, our own reality.

Oh to jog our memory, one might say.  A photo or a painting or a movie clip is nothing more than a suggestion, a stimulus.  Art works are just tools, conduits to call up our own experiences.  We still have to form the image from our head, even while we are looking at a physical object.  Memory is a state of mind.

What are memories?  What are feelings?  Chemicals and electrical impulses in our brains.  When we look at the brain outside of our bodies, it is all but a blob of cold, damp, soft mass and yet we love, hate, empathize, think, create and invent with it.  Yet the topography of our receptor sites and movements of salt ions governed our psyche.  With the advence in AI and VR, could we be far from the future when our brains could be mapped and we could customize our experience?  We could have a virtual rent a movie or go to th  virtual Metropolitan Museum Of Art by tapping our skull with our cell phones!

Of course, when all else fails, there's always the route of chemical augmentation, since the chemical pathway in the brain is well documented.  Either the artist, or the audience may partake in this ritual.  This is the ultimate alteration!  Let's have a rave party.  Drug taking behavior seem prevalent for both performing and visual artists (emphasis on the word seem).  I wonder if there's an association between using chemicals and creativity.  Could this be the magic potion that sublimates what is real, albeit mundane, to something ethereal of our own imagination?  Is this how abstracts work?  Is this how minimalism works?   Berlioz composed the wildly successful Symphonie Fantastique while taking opium drops, albiet for medicinal purpose.  Could that have contributed to the genius of the piece, or was it a product of his manic depressive episodes?

A boutique ice cream business here concocted a turkey ice cream by mixing turkey with ice cream.  Wow that is going outside of the box.  It is now the love of the media and foodies pile on heaps of praises.  Can eccentricity and irrationality become celebrated traits given the right spin? I can only imagine the moment when the first person ever decided to see what fermented milk curd tasted like.   Because this person dared to go where no one has gone before, we are now blessed with Gorgonzola and Roquefort. How desperate must a person be to drink kopi luwak, a coffee brewed from partially digested coffee beans pooped out by felines.  Does exclusivity and being expensive lend credibility?

We are advancing into the field of Artificial Intelligence at a fierce pace.  We make robots that can think and feel and emote; just like ourselves.  Is this the final frontier for our creative minds?  We want to create a copy of ourselves and we want the credit for coding our creations.  Recently an AI generated piece of art was auctioned off at Christie for over $400,000.  Is that a validation of the image, the programmer, or the person who shelled out that huge sum of money.  How about paintings done by animals?  Paintings done by elephants and monkeys have been tauted as artworks.  If we put aside the fact that these are animal productions, do these "art works" harbor any intrinsic values?

Frankly I believe artists are narcissists, to a more or lesser degree.  We go to great lengths to make our views known, no matter how trite or infantile or meaningless. We paint, we perform, we take pictures, sculpt, weave, fire, and in my case, blog. Thank heavens for my soap box.

Please excuse my ranting with my sometimes sacrilegious, often mis-guided, but never nefarious statements.  These are actually questions that I ask of myself, and of others and the answers are as many and as varied as grains of sand at the Sahara Desert.   And just like the dunes in Sahara, they shift with the winds.  I could never get a straight answer.

Such behaviors beg the question, is this narcissism?  Are artists narcissists?

Artists are rewarded by putting their names on a piece of work, having their brand appear in trade magazines, gallery catalogues and museum brochures.  After all this is what the society deem as a proof of success, affirming the talents and efforts of said artists and bestow upon them a decorum of  validations, sometimes tethered to a ridiculously huge sum of moola.  Often times when these "proper" channels are not available, the creative mind still seek identity and glory by graffiti.  This is perhaps the most spontaneous, self-gratifying kind of self-expression.

I chanced upon a synagogue which walls are tagged with graffiti. No I am not talking about railroad cars or grain silos.

 What is unusual about this place is that the synagogue even erected a plywood faux wall and labelled it "Open Wall" to allow ( and perhaps promote? ) this form of expression.  It could be that the establishment saw the need for dialogue and promote its own relevancy by providing such a forum for expression.  Or it could be that by providing a legitimate venue for such behavior of expression that the synagogue would be less of a victim of defaced walls.  If you can't beat them, join them.  Regardless, people still deface the walls.

Is this a creative mind?  Narcissistic behavior?  Or plain insolence?  Is this art?  What is art?  What if these were done by Salvador Dali, would his fame change the perception of graffiti?


Time to step down from my rostrum and get on with my pigs.

First I must study them...... get the nuance of the animal....I can't remember ever painting a pig!

Sketch away!

oink  oink  oink

Quorum gets framed

I've been glancing at my Quorum piece for a while now hoping to receive some vibes as to what kind of alteration I could make to render the painting more interesting.  Sadly my antenna picked up no such signals.  Does that mean my journey with this piece ends right here?

Fortunately no!  I've also been eyeing this frame that I picked up rather inexpensively.  This must be an abandoned order from a custom frame shop, but looks perfectly fine to me.  I've been hoarding it just for an occasion like this.

I have something to tinker with now.  I think I can trim my Quorum piece to fit this frame.  I am going to mount my Xuan onto canvas first.  I really enjoy the texture of the canvas showing through paper.

Normally I would build my canvas frame but I recall a foul experience when the canvas frame twisted after the mounting process.  Since this is a rather large painting, I decided to take the safe route.  I bought a piece of  two-ply wood veneer and tailor fit it to my frame.

Then I applied exterior wood glue to the veneer

My OCD is coming through a tad.  I was being a bit pedantic and presumed that this is the perfect way of assuring even dispersion and good bonding.  To my horror the glue did not spread well at all.

And it is drying fast after being spread thin.  I haphazardly dabbed all I could and turned the veneer over onto a piece of canvas.

I folded up the edges, pinned them in and put weight on the veneer to prevent it from curling as the glue set.

After the glue is thoroughly dried in a couple of days, I trimmed the excess canvas to the edge of the veneer.

The painting was wetted down with water to relax the fibers

The paper was allowed to air dry to the point when it is considered moist.  This is when all the fibers had relaxed and the paper had regained its tensile strength back so it would not tear as easily during the mounting process.  A dilute solution of starch was used, such that the Xuan could float on the starch a bit and I could brush out any creases and air bubbles.  The lowering of the painting onto the canvas is a two person job and demands a steady hand and nerve of steel.  Disaster beckons if the paper does not align with the canvas, especially with a long piece like this one.  Notice the more saturated tone from the wet paper.

I am thrilled to see the added texture imparted by the canvas to this painting

The taut Xuan paper looked like fabric now

The dried surface lost a little of saturation when dried.  This could be restored by applying gel on the painting to reclaim the vividness and the depth of the color.

Finally, my Quorum gets framed (this picture was taken under halogen track lights, thus the warm color)

The Verdict

I've submitted 3 of my black and white renditions to a juried event.

After I tendered my digital images of the works, I started to make frames for them; fully expecting acceptance of my labor of love.  If anybody wants to know what optimism means, go no further.

The work with the two Canada geese spending some quiet time amongst water reed is given the title "Encounter".  The painting was done with Chinese ink on Xuan, subsequently mounted on canvas.
I made a custom frame with poplar and painted it black.

The painting of the single white rose is named "Emote".  The painting was done on Xuan and mounted on a pane of clear plastic.  A custom poplar frame was made with a groove to accommodate the plastic pane.  I was looking for the "float" effect.

I had previously done two pieces of banyan roots and I chose the more complex one to be mounted
the traditional Xuan on Xuan fashion.  I bought a cheap poster frame and trimmed my own mat to display this work.  "Finding My Roots" is the title.

The results are in.

Only one piece is juried in.

"Emote" did not pass muster.

Nor did "Finding My Roots"

So much for optimism.

Presenting: Emote

Now that the painting is finished, it's time to present it properly.  I'm going to facilitate that by using my homegrown Sulio Xuan Ban method.  This is the process where I affix my Xuan onto a piece of clear plastic or acrylic board, such that the finished product presents itself like a float when displayed on a wall.  This method of mounting also lends itself to special lighting effects, which I will delve into at the end of this blog.

Traditional Chinese brush paintings on Xuan is mounted on another backing piece of Xuan, to give it rigidity and proper white balance.  For my process of mounting on clear acrylic board this backing piece is mounted on the back of the board.  I basically trim out a piece of blank Xuan using the same dimensions as the painting, and mark the position on the protective sheathing of the acrylic board.
The fixative is an iron-on silicone sheet made for dry mounting.

the silicone sheet is trimmed to the same exact dimension as the backing Xuan

the backing on the silicone sheet is peeled off after initial ironing

Breaking up trapped air bubbles using a pin or thumb tack.  This is a critical step because these air pockets prevent proper adhesion of the silicone to the acrylic board.  If this is not done properly, then whatever we try to fix on top of the silicone will show air pockets too.

The blank sheet of Xuan is ironed on after mitigating all the bubbles

Once the backing Xuan is in place, I flipped the acrylic board over and repeat the same process with the actual painting on the top side, using the position of the backing as my guide for proper placement of the painting

The ironing process with the painting has to be slow and methodical, taking care to spread and iron out the creases.

When additional air pockets are encountered, break them with a pin and pass the iron over the area again.

I decided to be a little less meticulous with ironing the petals.  I found the little imperfections described their textures rather well.  I thus left minute creases and folds at strategic locations on the leaves and flower petals.

The finished sandwich of painting-acrylic board-backing is ready to be inserted into the custom frame that I built for this painting

The finished product as it hangs on the wall

I am quite partial to the effect of the clear border around the painting itself.  It is much less confining than a traditional frame, and yet looks finished and expensive.  It is a lot of additional work but at the end of the day I'm quite happy with it.

I found a painting of a rose I did some 15 years ago and it is interesting to look at it now and reminisce a little.  I think I have matured.

I mentioned at the beginning that my Sulio Xuan Ban set up lends itself quite nicely to special lighting effects.  Here is an example of placing a light source behind the painting.  I am of course exploiting the translucent property of the Xuan.   This could be placed on an occasional table with a mood light behind it.  I can visualize the drama it could create in a study or a foyer.

Emote, cont'd

Having increased the dark tone on the small, ancillary rose I proceeded to add more light values to the main rose.  My objective was to manufacture a certain degree of realism on this two dimensional medium.  Again judicious use of ink was the mantra.

I also refined and vine and bud on the bottom of the painting.

As I had mentioned, I was caught up a bid with the venerated traditions of either Gongbi or Xieyi styles of rendering until I decided to say "screw that";  but I still need some credible and efficacious
way of defining forms and details.  After much trepidation I settled on the principle of contrasts.  I used black or no lines at all to define light areas.   I traced thin black outlines amongst the white petals so one could tell them apart, with the help of light shading of course.  These black lines would be written using center tip,  transitioned to side tip when I needed to add thickness to the line, as when I was trying to depict the edge of a petal.. I used a thin sliver of void to define a dark form against  a dark background.   Thus when I was adding to the dark values of the backdrop I took special care to allow unpainted borders to form around the leaves.

The effect was actually quite stunning.  I could really grasp the high contrast effect I was aiming for.
Xuan being an absorbent piece of paper could really play havoc with a wet brush.  To minimize any unwanted bleeding out of my brush strokes I drafted my hair dryer blower into service.  The trick was to blow dry my brushstrokes before they had the time to bleed and migrate.  For the most part I was able to preserve that pristine little white lines around the dark leaves and stems.

Armed with this new narcissistic excitement I worked on the dark leaves some more to give them more structure and detail

I had thought about stopping right here.  But then I thought the two tones of black in the backdrop was too exaggerated so I decided for a smoother transition.

There was this one petal in the flower and its profile was standing straight up, thus presenting itself as a thin white line.  Visually speaking it created quite a challenge to give it a body.  I tried to create an interesting black line with varying thickness to describe the undulation but needed to add to its white value.  How to make a void more "white" was my dilemma.  The easiest way would be to paint those areas with either titanium white or white gouache but that would totally destroy that je ne sais quoi quality of a translucent Xuan.  Perhaps I could illustrate my case as when we could see internal organs on a small guppy fry or a small shrimp; it's a delicate sight to behold.  That same sight gave me the idea of painting the white gouache on the back side of the translucent Xuan.  Now that area appeared "whiter" when viewed from the top side, and yet showed no trace of pigments on the paper.  Unadulterated innocence!

                                                     viewed from the back side of the paper

Stamping my seals presented a problem since the backdrop is deep black.  I cheated by stamping the normal way, then selectively painted in the seal with vermilion and titanium white for lettering.  I smudged up the chops ever so slightly to give them that weathered look.  It added character ( pun ).

Finally the finished piece

Yes, I quite like it;  especially when viewed from a distance under illuimnation.   I really enjoyed the treatment of the white edges, as if the plant was back lit.    It does have that pop without being harsh.  It does impart a special feeling, sentiment;  to me anyways.

I am emoting.

Emote

I was at the mercy of a pair of crutches for a little while because I was on a ladder trying to lop off  tree branches with my power saw, and somehow gravity got a hold of me.  I was knowingly being  callous with myself.  I was in over my head.

Between feeling stupid about my insolence and the pain of my tibiotalar ligaments, I was conjuring up this image of a painting of a flower.  A large, specimen like presentation of a flower.

I wanted the painting to be of high contrast, sort of making a in-your-face statement; and yet not harsh to look at.  I was vacillating between a peony or a rose.  I settled for the rose because it has fewer petals ( thus less work? ) and it is universally accepted as the symbol of love and gratitude.

Should I employ the Gongbi style where everything is outlined and scribed or the Xieyi style, where brushstrokes define form and space?  Since my vision was to create a high contrast painting with ink, then the petals would have to assume a rather dark value to relieve from the white paper.  A dark rose somehow would not seem appealing.  Keeping the background very dark could certainly make the rose stand out, but that meant the petals have to be mostly white ( or mostly void spaces ).   It would thus be difficult to delineate the individual petals.  I could use titanium white or white gouache to paint the petals, but then I would lose the ambience of the translucent voids imparted by the Xuan.
Thus the Gongbi method seemed inevitable; or so I thought.

I was still living in my rigid cell of definitions of Gongbi and Xieyi and Chinese Brush and whatever that I lost sight of the main reason for painting;  revealing, expressing.  Those shackles had to go.

Thank god for the World Cup. It kept my mind occupied, although the notion of high contrast rose painting kept churning away in my subconscious.

Then came the news of the miracle rescue of the Thai youth football team from the cave.  The broadcast media was filled with breaking news reports.  One of the anchor woman from the peacock network unfortunately showed how little she really cared, or how she pretended to care.  It had been widely known and heart gripping for so many days, that 12 young boys and their adult coach was trapped.  The British diver who discovered them and asked how many were in the cave, upon hearing the answer, he said " Thirteen?  Brilliant!"  Yet this anchor woman while showcasing her talent on another talk show in a July 11 broadcast,  had to chime in with her own remarks.  She kept referring to 13 little boys, 13 little souls.   And when empathizing with the news of the Thai Navy Seal who lost his life during this ordeal, this anchor woman said that navy seal lost his life to save 14 people.

Really?  While the whole world was rejoicing that 13 lives were saved and this host of a national syndicated TV station couldn't even get the numbers right as to how many people were trapped in the cave?  Now that's cold, and pretentious.  How could she be so detached from one of the biggest news story that every TV station was reporting on? Was she just reading the news and not felt the gravity of all the emotions involved?   Did she not care?  Was she just a TV personality; window dressing?  Surely this could not have been a brain fart.  She cared more about which way to turn to the camera to show off her best side rather than to the humdrum details of the news that she was reporting.  Or could it be that this happened not in a Western civilization, and a world thousands of miles away from her.?

 I almost wanted to send that TV station a comment about this faux pas.   In my anguish, I hobbled to my painting table and started my rose painting; the one that had been gestating for a little while.

I was emoting!   I was feeling a different kind of pain.   I needed this little spark to set me off.

I wanted to keep my background black,  that meant white petals.  Keeping in mind the necessity of contrast, I used very light ink to brush in the petals.  Not all of them, but the strategic ones that I thought was vital in giving structure to the flower.

The composition of the painting would have the subject assuming a diagonal attitude, with the white rose as the focal point.  Borrowing the theory of Ying and Yang,  solid vs vague, dense vs sparse etc, the meat of the painting is in the upper half, thus the lower half is the meek.  To add interest to the apparent austerity here, I painted in nondescript bud and vines as garnishing.  I painted them as voids to contrast with the background.

I debated on whether to finish the black background first or to paint the flower and leaves first.  My initial impulse was to paint the background first.  I was rushing to be immersed in the high contrast environment.  I was seeking instant gratification.  But then the left hemisphere of my brain took over and advised me not to.  The all black backdrop could lure me into being heavy handed with my dark values on the rose petals, as if to compete with the blackness.

I started to work on the leaves and other parts of the plant,  all the while reminding myself to be patient and discret and that the flower will pop once the background is filled in.

I left myself with a lot of wiggle room.  My values were quite tentative, heavy on the light side.  I could always make something darker, but not the other way around.  After the rough sketch, I decided to fill in the background.

The saturation faded quite a bid after the ink dried.  It required a lot of trial and error to accumulate the knowledge of how to gauge or anticipate the tone after drying.

I knew I would eventually increase the saturation of the black, for now I would work on the smaller rose on top.  This rose needed to assume a rather dark value.  This rose was cast the role of  subordinate to the bigger rose.  It needed to stay in the backdrop.

.....to be continued.........