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Over the years I've pained in many different situations. I dropped out of college in 1967 -- it was the thing to do at the time -- and moved back to Indiana from Chicago to live with my parents on the farm on which I'd grown up. They weren't at all happy with my decision to quit school, work on the farm and paint in my spare time, but they did let me turn what was referred to by the family as "the old kitchen" into a studio. The farm house I grew up in was built in 1867 and designed around a triangular 'core' with three fireplaces. What was used as the kitchen, oddly enough, was a room that wasn't a part of the main structure, but a slant-roofed one story structure with windows on three sides. By the time I was born (1948) the whole house had been remodelled, including a kitchen with running water and a bathroom -- something it hadn't had when my parents originally bought the house. The "old kitchen" became a sort of catch-all room. The wringer washing machine was there as was dad's gun collection -- among many other things including a wood burning cook stove that was no longer used for anything but heating up water for the laundry. By 1967 all that was gone and the room didn't have much of any use so I cleaned it out, painted it pure white (it had been this hideous green color) and push-pined reproductions of paintings I admired all over the walls. My family thought I was a bit insane and they weren't completely wrong but that is beside the point. The light was very good -- and it was certainly a help. Still, there were times due to my chores when I had to paint at night. A few times I even tried painting by candle light and coal oil lamp -- just to see what would have been like for the old masters. (If you've never tried painting a still-life by the equivalent of torch light, you must -- it is like stepping back in time. Suddenly those deep green shadows make perfect sense.)
Over the years I've painted in a small room with only one window -- only one wall would work; an attack with almost no natural light at all (I hated it); a basement (hardly any better); a 'gazebo' like atrium that I covered with translucent corrugated roofing material and covered in plastic (like one might use for a drop cloth); a two-car garage where there was only natural light when I left the garage door open which didn't work because it opened right out onto the street and everyone that walked by wanted to look at what I was doing; another large room with windows on three sides but, alas, covered wall to wall with carpet (which I had to keep protected as I was renting); and finally -- the place where I am now and where I've lived for the last 21 years of my life: My live-work studio. I was 38 years old when I moved in here and I'm now pushing Sixty. There are many things about it I do not like -- it is noisy: literally right next to the BART tracks, a freeway and the main thoroughfare to the Port of Oakland. It is in an industrial part of town -- which does have its own hard-edge charm but it is hardly what anyone would call either 'pretty' or a 'neighborhood'. There may be many reasons why I've stayed here so long but one of the primary ones, and the one that moved me in here in the first place is the light. There are NO WINDOWS. None. However, there are two huge old sky lights -- each of them six by ten feet. I wish the ceiling were another foot or so higher -- it is only 13 feet -- but it works.
I knew the moment I walked into the space that I wanted it and I have to say I have sacrificed a lot to have it and keep it for as long as I have. I'm not a big money earner and never have been. It was a very big deal for me to decide that I was willing to live differently because of my art. A writer can take a pencil and note-book -- or these days a lap top -- just about anywhere. But a painter needs many more costly things. She needs space -- and lots of it if she is going to paint big. She needs light and lots of it and the right kind. She needs money to buy the materials which ain't cheep and, most of all, she needs time. Time is the most costly thing of all especially given that most of the time spent does not pay off (for most of us) in money. Although I've always sold a few paintings -- and recently more so now than ever -- the fact is, my art does not support me. I support it and always have.
Not bragging but I consider myself a reasonably accomplished painter. I'm not a "great" artist but I'm reasonably competent. (That is in my on opinion, others may vary.) I've never had a one-man show of my work, however, not even once. Nevertheless, my work has been exhibited in the Oakland Museum and, long ago, I was part of a two-man show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 'Artists' (rental) Gallery in Fort Masson. Over the years I've sold a lot of work and, pretty much on my own, developed a few collectors -- but I've never been a part of the more established gallery art scene. There are many reasons for this -- and my temperament plays a big part in it. My roots are working class and I am largely self-taught -- although you might not know that necessarily looking at my work. Since I don't paint only in one style (although everything I paint is very abstract, for the most part), I've found that the different kinds of things I do appeal to different types of people. Some of my work I complete astonishingly quickly -- and I always have an abundance of works in progress even though sometimes I go for months without painting a lick. Then again, some paintings I work on, literally, for years. I have one beautiful canvas that is about six by ten feet that I worked on off-and-on for ten years before it finally resolved -- completely unexpectedly and in one night. I sat down in my directors chair, lit a cigarette and cursed out loud because I knew that I could never again do what I'd finally succeeded in doing. Oh, of course I could and have completed other very good paintings since -- but what I mean is something more specific. I could never duplicate THAT painting, ever, or even one that looked even remotely like it. I know this for a fact as I've tried. Maybe one has to keep trying for ten years and I'm no longer willing to do that, I don't know. But the simple fact is that whatever happened that night happened so quickly and so effortlessly -- one might even say so accidentally -- that I could not follow it sufficiently to make it a part of my repetoir.
My god, it is 2:30 in the morning.
What the hell am I doing!
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