Unless I have asked for it, I don’t want your advice.  It’s a pet peeve of mine.  People who drop unsought advice into a conversation.  I am intelligent enough to read instructions, to consider guidelines, to read a recipe and also to think on a subject and hear my own mind.

 

So a board of advisors?  Well, I painted them on wood.  So there is that horrible pun, and also –

 

It’s the faces of people I admire. It’s the faces of people who’s standards I hope to live up to.  I don’t think of them as my imaginary friends, not really, but I do consider them friends in a way.  They are or were real people who did something with their lives, who lived with purpose and with conviction.

You see it is just that; that living with conviction, that reason, that purpose.

The way they worked with prolific abandon or the way they focused their attention so clearly to one end, one outcome; that is the great inspiration for me.

 

Over a year ago, I left the common commercial world and went into the woods, the wilderness.   I went to my own Walden Pond to simplify.

I have been here for a year retraining myself to create and express ideas that come from within.  Here I have found, again, my painting skills.  The brush in my hand, again, feels like part of my hand; My hand which is connected to my brain by way of my heart.

I wanted these faces to gaze upon me while I work.

They are who I look to when I feel that I am stuck. When I cannot say what I want to say, they look at me with the same expressions that I gave them.   I gave them their faces.

Faces which are “hopefully” based enough on their own faces to be recognizable by others.

Not that that really matters though as they are not for sale.  They will never need to speak to anyone but me.

They are mine.

I’m keeping them here on the walls of my studio. The studio that I will have until I die. The studio in the woods by the pond in a little bit of nowhere in Texas, my country retreat.

So I call them my Board of Advisors – their work, their ideals and their wisdom is where I will draw my own path and my own work. I’m not using them as a road map but, I do not want to veer to far from the trails that they blazed.

So here are my people, my advisors, my guides through the future of creating my own world.

 

It began with this man –

 

General Emiliano Zapata.

When I began with Zapata’s portrait it was not because he was born a peasant and fought so fiercely to liberate his people from tyranny.  Although I find that a life lived deserving huge admiration and respect, my portrait was more of an attempt to capture the strength and conviction that I saw in his eyes.  His bold purpose was honestly secondary, for me,  to his conviction.  This photograph which I used is perhaps the most well known of the images of him.  I can assure you that this look of confidence is in his eyes in every recorded image of the man.  I wanted that.  So, as an artist I took it.  It is a way to devour something and to make it part of yourself.  To paint a portrait the subject becomes an intimate, someone you feel you know intimately.  The curve of the mouth and the structure of the eyes.  I wanted Zapata.  I still do but, now I have him hanging on my wall to devour again with thought when ever I need him.

 

There was a break after Zapata.  I took some time and thought about why I felt the need to paint him.  The result was the reasons I have just stated.  Then, I pondered who else I needed and wanted.  As a balance to the fierce warrior, I chose very carefully my next portrait.

 

Mahatma Gandhi

They called him “Bapu” which is a term of endearment that translates into “Papa”  He was my first Papa but, not my last.  I love him.  His wise path of peaceful revolution.  His unaltered focus on bettering the lives of his people.  Why I chose him for my wall of advisors?  Well, I (we all) live in a world of  people who have an antagonistic approach to communication.  It is much easier for so many to tear down rather than to build up.  I have made a conscious choice to build up and create.  I know I will need his guidance in the many years to come in order to find my own wise path.  To be kind without being weak.  To be strong without being destructive.  As an artist, I have already made the choice to create images that do not propel the ideas of despair and destruction.  I am here to celebrate intelligence, kindness, love and hope – also, to NOT be boring.  Challenge Accepted Gandhi.  Challenge Accepted.

 

Then I took a wild veer into an unexpected source of my own creative inspiration –

 

Woody Allen

Woody.  This is admittedly the largest influence on my adult life.  I share with him a passion for New York City that grows more emotional every moment that I spend away from the city.  The understandings of life and philosophy and the poetry in all things great and small is only a sliver of the gorgeous light filled life of creativity that I have been inspired to seek by following the career of this man.  Regrettable Side Note: I do not judge this man based on anything about his personal life because I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HIS PERSONAL LIFE.  I repeat…..I do not know anything about his personal life.  The more I read in the media the less I believe about what I read in the media.  Therefore, shut the hell up about anything that is not his work, ok? as a favor to me?   HIS WORK….blows my mind, repeatedly!  I consider myself lucky to have been alive in the same time as Woody Allen.  To bear witness to the dedication, to the prolific creative voice that belongs to this hard working, clever, funny, intelligent, lyrical poet of a man.  I have met him and have held his hand, and metaphorically speaking, I will never let go and always keep him in mind when it comes to my work.  The first and strongest message his portrait tells me from the wall of my studio is “what are ya’ gonna do?  just keep working.” Like the quote that I chose…there are successes and failures and it’s all part of the same package so keep working.

 

Speaking of working –

Pablo Picasso

 

I didn’t go into my own artwork with the obligatory hero worship of Pablo Picasso.  As a matter of fact, I held my pithy disregard of him as a badge of honor.  I was young, so very young.  Then, around 2002 or maybe 2003 The Guggenheim held a show that was entirely the work of Picasso. I went and had what can only be called a religious experience.  I don’t usually have religious experiences.  Not outside of the bedroom anyways…but, the Picasso show was a sort of restart button on my art career.  If you know the Guggenheim, you’ll understand the design and the way they used it for the Picasso show.  It was a show that would have pleased Frank Lloyd Wright as EXACTLY what works with his building.   The spiral design of the building set the stage for a mesmerizing and hypnotic show.  At the entry they gave you his very earliest work and as you walked up the gentle slope to the various levels you progressed along Picasso’s art career and could see him growing as an artist.  I had never thought of him that way, nor experienced his art in that way. By the time I reached the top of the museum I had fallen deeply and powerfully in love with Pablo Picasso.  I walked thru that show 4 times that day and came back twice more.  I believe in Pablo Picasso.  I could start a church based on this man and only preach the gospel according to Pablo…we would all have a lot of sex and drink a lot of wine…then wake up early to work without distraction.

and also – I am a woman, if you hadn’t noticed –

Georgia O’keeffe

 

 

I was beginning to feel like I was only painting men.  When in earnestness I have been inspired by many many women.  When considering who’s faces I wanted to look at for guidance in the studio, however, there was only one woman who’s opinion mattered to me and that was Georgia O’keeffe.  Did you know she lived in Texas at one time.  Hated it.  She loved men and traveled with them and was inspired by them but she did not owe her career to any one but herself.  Not even really Steiglitz as it turns out.   She was a fantastically singular individual who began her career in advertising and in New York and left to go to the country.  Left to go to Texas.  Left Texas to go back to New York and then went further out into the wilderness to find her own life alone.  She saw things her own way and created an entire ourvre of work based on her own style.  Now, no one can ever again paint a flower, EVER without being compared to her.  The simplicity of her line and the depth of her focus have set her apart as an artist.  Also, as a woman she was so very unaware of her own beauty because as an artist it doesn’t matter.  I find photos of her very beautiful but, I have used this stern serious image of her because it suits my purposes.  She hangs in my studio making me take my self seriously.  I have her hanging right next to Woody Allen, by the way.

 

 

And last but not least

 

Ernest Hemingway

 

This man, his life and his work and his style.  He is noted for his economical style of writing.  A style that is for lack of a better word, ernest.  The true simplicity that cuts to the core of your heart and leaves you feeling the beat and rhythm of the story just as you would your own breath.  That is the mark of genius.  That is what I expect myself to do with my painting.  I will continue to try until the day I die to make art that reaches people in this way.  He was maybe not always right but, he was always honest.  I had many many pictures of Hemingway to choose from.  His life was so very well documented.  There are photos of young and handsome Hemingway in suit in Paris.  A romantic adventurer.  The Hemingway with the rifle in Africa.  The Hemingway with a swordfish in Cuba and Key West.  The affable bearded Hemingway who we lovingly called “Pappa”.  But, I chose this Hemingway for my wall.  The steady gaze from the unsteady Hemingway.  He is in his late 40’s here (as am I at the time of painting this portrait)  He is bloated which I attribute to to much drinking.  He is in a transition from reckless adventurer to “Pappa” but, he doesn’t know it.  It is after “For whom the bell tolls” and before “The old man and the sea”  He has written and has yet to write great works of literature.  I can only imagine that at the time this image made it to a camera he was living under the unbearable burden of “being” Ernest Hemingway.  He managed to carry on and write in spite of his own reputation.  I find that especially admirable.  Also, as I stated above, I am also in my late 40s.  I ponder it much as a late adolescence.  An awkward phase in life when you are no longer young and you are not yet old.  It is a very tender time when a person could so easily give up and get fat…give into the disappointment of life not being what you expected it to be.  Or you can choose the other path – which is to say

“The world breaks everyone and afterward, some are strong at the broken places” Ernest Hemingway also said that.