Book Report: A Thousand Splendid Suns

 I just finished a wonderful book.  A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, is a novel about two Afghan women.  It covers a period from about 1974 to 2003.  This was the beginning of an incredibly turbulent period in Afghanistan, one that is still ongoing.  It's a period of conflict between traditional ways, changing times, warlords, Soviets, invasions, the Taliban, and Americans, as told through the lives of these two women.  It's not necessarily pretty, but it is inspiring.

Khaled Hosseini is the author of The Kite Runner.  He was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, but has lived in the United States since 1980 and is an American citizen now.  He knows his native country well.  And he  knows how to write.  The people in this story are very real.  I knew people like them during my time in Kandahar.  Actually, I knew people like them in Baghdad as well, and I know people like them right here in western North Carolina.  People are people; it's their situations that are different.  If you're at all interested in Afghanistan, or in people living under extremely tough conditions, read A Thousand Splendid Suns.

K.T. Oslin Passing

 I was all set to make a post about goings-on in the studio until I heard that the singer K.T. Oslin passed away.  What a loss.  I discovered K.T. about the same time lots of other people did: around 1990.  At the time, I was in the early stages of an epic divorce and country music was THE music to listen to.  And K.T. was at the top of her game.

K.T. didn't write the usual first-love songs you hear from popular singers, or songs about her dog or pickup truck or other typical country things.  Her songs are for those of us who are a bit older, who've been around the block a few times, who've won some and lost some, been there and done that, and are still trying to figure it all out.  Songs like "80's Ladies", about three childhood friends growing up: "We've said "I do" and we signed "I don't" and we swore we'd never do that again".  (You really need to see the video on YouTube for this one.)  Or "Mary and Willie", two older single people whose unrealistically high expectations for possible mates ensures they never meet somebody that would be good for them.  And she could be funny: in "Hey Bobby", the protagonist is a young girl who's the one with a car and, with a sly knowing "trust me" purr, suggesting they go for a ride, completely turning the tables on the usual boy/girl storyline. 

Listening to a K.T. Oslin album, you'll hear stories of life's situations that we're all familiar with.  But nobody writes songs about them like her.  Few sing with the kind of personal feelings that she does.  You know she has lived every word of every song she ever wrote.  That's art.  

The paper said she had Parkinson's for the past few years and was in an assisted living facility.  Then she tested positive for COVID last week.  And now a great artist is gone.  So long, K.T., you're missed, but your music is still here, and I'm listening to it.

"Guardians"

Guardians

It's been a bit of a journey, but one of the paintings I mentioned in my last post is finally done. Guardians is the second painting of a new series about a possible future. I'm very disturbed by the division, vitriol, and willful stupidity that is rampant in this country today. I've personally seen what divisions can do to a society: Bosnia's ethnic cleansing, Iraq's division between Shiite and Sunni, and Afghanistan's divisions between the Taliban insurgents and the corrupt government. And I'm imagining what those divisions would look like in this country if we keep going the way we're going. It's not a pretty sight. 

 A big focus for me with this painting, beyond the concept, as in the technical aspects of making the idea work.  I spent a lot of time on the composition, then on the execution in paint: colors, light/dark values, hard and soft edges, cool/warm balance, all with the goal of getting the viewer to see what I wanted them to see, in the order I wanted the different things to be seen.  I think it turned out pretty well.  The subject is certainly not one that people will find beautiful and want to hang over their couch, but that was never the point.  

The next couple of paintings to come out of the studio will be much more cheerful, I promise!

A Work In Progress

 Just because I haven't posted any new work of my own in a while doesn't mean I haven't been busy.  As noted in previous posts, I'm doing a lot of experimenting.  That means a lot of experiments fail and wind up in the trash.  But I'm learning a lot, even from the fails (maybe especially from the fails) and trying to build on that.

At some point, though, you have to stop experimenting and produce something.  I do, anyway.  So there are two paintings underway in the studio right now.  They're very different, which is kinda the way I work.  One painting is a riff on the artist and model.  There's nothing deep or complex there, but I'm trying to apply some lessons learned about putting paint on canvas.  That painting went sideways pretty quickly: I tried too many different new ideas, they collided, and I was about ready to slash it with a knife.  So I covered up a lot of problem areas with white paint and it's actually much more interesting now.  Once the paint dries (white paint takes forEVER to dry), I'll get back to work on it.  Maybe you'll see it here someday.

The other painting is much more complex.  It's part of my series on what could happen if we keep going the way we're going - a cautionary tale, sorta.  It's a wedding, only not like any wedding you've ever seen.  That's all I'll say about the painting's subject for now.  Instead, I'll talk about the process of putting it together.  

I'm using a wedding theme because I've done a lot of wedding paintings for clients and have a ton of reference photos.  I've had a strong idea of what I wanted the painting to say, so I did some very rough sketches to get an idea of the basic composition, including the light/dark areas, the initial focus, and what would be needed to flesh out the story.  Then I went through my stash of images, pulling out one person from this event, another person from that one, a key item from an entirely unrelated photo shoot, and so on.  Then more rough sketches to work through ideas.  I'm pretty crappy at using Photoshop, but eventually I put all these different items into one image.  Then I did a test painting, essentially a sketch in oil paint, and found some things that worked and others that didn't.  More refinement: throw out earlier ideas, bring in new ones, make more sketches.  

One question that I know is going to pop up is, if you're using Photoshop, why make sketches?  Well, because the Photoshop construction doesn't tell you much.  By doing sketches, you see the subtleties of shape, form, light, dark, and subject matter, and you get to understand the total image, and all of its parts, much better.  

I also use sketches in an old-school pre-Photoshop way.  I draw the environment on a large sheet of paper, then cut out the sketches of people and other items from my sketchbook and tape them down on the large sheet.  Then I move them around, put new things in, take other things out and refine the composition.  Should this figure be larger?  What about perspective?  Huh, now I see a line that runs from this woman's arm through that item over there - how to use that?  Should I play up this man's face, or play it down?  I want a particular effect of light here, so how do I get it?  Those are the types of things going through my head.

So, right now, I have worked out the composition for this painting.  I have the environment drawn on the large sheet, refined the drawings of the figures as much as they needed, and have them taped down in exactly the right positions.  Then I laid a sheet of tracing paper on top and drew a grid on it.  It's in the same relative dimension as the canvas is.  That's what you're seeing in the photo.  I'll draw a similar grid on the canvas, then use light charcoal to copy the composition onto the canvas.  And then I'll start painting.  

So that's where we are now.  Obviously, I still have a loooonnnggg way to go, maybe a month or two or three.  And maybe it'll get trashed.  But hey, that's life, huh?

Book Reports

 No, I'm not going to talk about the recent election and unfinished election business.  Too much has been written already.  Instead, I'm going to talk about two books that I just read.  Both are about the Civil War period, and both are very applicable to the country today.

The first is Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  This is a long (750 pages text plus another 130 in tiny-font references) biography of Abraham Lincoln.  It covers his whole life, with particular attention to his candidacy for President and his handling of the office during the worst of the Civil War.  While we're often told that Lincoln was one of the two greatest Presidents ever, we aren't told that much about what he did.  We read the Emancipation Proclamation, his Gettysburg Address, maybe his second Inaugural Address, and then he was assassinated.  Goodwin goes into tremendous detail about the divisions of the 1850's and who Lincoln was.  He was extremely honest, especially for a politician.  He had an unmatched feeling for what the people of the country were feeling, what they would accept, how far he could or could not push things, and when to make a move.  He was against slavery, but even more, he was for holding the country together.  He knew how to take complex ideas and put them into the language that regular people could understand.  He cared incredibly deeply.  And he was a genius at keeping his Cabinet, his "team of rivals", together.  Many of them had actively run for President and been defeated by Lincoln, and some were actively angling to replace him.  And many of them were at each other's throats.  Yet Lincoln saw the value that they could bring to the country.  He was able to assuage their egos enough to keep them in their jobs and working together.  It was a truly masterful performance.

Compare that situation to today, where our country is again deeply divided.  We're not on the cusp of another civil war, but we need a President to bring us back together.  Instead, we have the most selfish, ego-driven, irrational, and dishonest President ever.  Instead of bringing us together, he's driving us apart for personal political and monetary gain.  He's the anti-Lincoln.  It will take several successors many years to undo the damage inflicted in the past four years, on top of the damage inflicted by partisan press in the decades before.  Do we have a leader of the caliber of Lincoln?  Anywhere?  I don't see it.  But I'll certainly give the Biden/Harris team a chance.

The other book is And the Crows Took Their Eyes, by Vicki Lane.  This is an historical novel based on  events that took place right here in Madison County, North Carolina, in January 1863.  Madison County was split between Unionists and Secessionists.  Many of the Unionists lived in a remote area called Shelton Laurel, while the Secessionists lived in the county seat of Marshall.  After North Carolina seceded, the two sides ratcheted up tensions and attacks, culminating in what is known as the Shelton Laurel Massacre, in which a local Confederate force murdered 13 men and boys.  The book follows five people on both sides of the divide.  Four were based on real people while one was created to tie the narrative together.  Ms. Lane's people speak in the way they would have at the time, whether they were uneducated farmers from the valleys or educated people from town.  She shows how the same event is seen from polar opposite viewpoints, how resentments can fester, how some people can rise above the situation and others fall to their basest instincts.  It's incredibly well-written. 

This book resonated with me for two reasons.  One, it's absolutely applicable to today, when we're so divided and unwilling to reach across to those who believe differently.  Are those on the other side absolutely wrong in their beliefs?  No, they're not.  But we behave as if they are, and if we follow those beliefs to their conclusion, the consequences will be terrible.  A second reason is that some of my great-great-grandparents lived in McNairy County, Tennessee, before, during, and after the Civil War.  McNairy County, like Madison County, was deeply divided.  My family members were very poor farmers on the Confederate side, living on farms outside a small town.  A wealthy Unionist landowner in the town raised a militia that committed a number of atrocities against Confederate sympathizers.  These acts, like the Shelton Laurel Massacre, were so out of bounds that they were condemned by both the Union and Confederate sides.  So this book brings to life the type of situation that my ancestors had to live.

So: here are two books that I strongly recommend.  They're pretty heavin reading.  I think I'm going to pick up a murder mystery next just so I can relax.

Another Pet Portrait

 Last time, I showed you a small painting I did of Soozzee one of our two little Shih Tzus, who passed away about a year and a half ago.  I just did one of her sister, Indy, who passed away just under three years ago.  Both paintings are 16"x12".  

It turned out pretty well, I think.  We'll let these two paintings dry for a bit, then I'll varnish them both and get some frames, and they'll hang here in the house somewhere.  It'll be nice to have portraits of our two daughters always with us.

Pet Portraits

 Say "pet portraits" and I roll my eyes.  Let's just say that I've never had much respect for artworks of animals in general.  Why paint lions or tigers?  About all the dogs and cats I'd seen were over-sentimentalized.  And most of the works have about as much life in them as a doorknob.  So when I stumbled across the work of Jennifer Gennari (on Instagram: @jen_art), it was a surprise.  Here was somebody who took a classical painting approach to her subjects and really made them alive.  These aren't "pet portraits", they're portraits of individuals who happen to be dogs or cats, and they have tremendous personality.  Here's a sample:

 

This is a beautiful painting.  The brushwork is lively and loose, but accurate.  The colors have variety.  The dog has personality.  It's well done in every respect.  And as the former daddy to two Shih Tzus, this particular painting resonated with me for both style and subject. 

As I discussed in a previous post, I'd just done a painting in the style of another artist.  One of the things that I learned was that I didn't want to work in that particular tight style.  Jennifer's painting was much more in the way that I'd rather work.  So rather than copy her painting, I thought I'd try her approach using my own reference photos.  And here's what the result was:

That's my little Soozzee, who passed away about a year and a half ago.  I still miss her, along with her sister who's been gone for almost three years.  (Guess what my next painting will be ...)

So what did I learn here?  A portrait is a portrait, regardless of the subject.  A painting is either good, or it's not, again regardless of the subject.  I really like working in a loose, wet-into-wet manner, where the brushstrokes, corrections, mistakes, and process are visible.  And doing an artwork of a critter can be rewarding.

Looking at Artists: Use of Color

 Scrolling through my Instagram feed today, I came across a post by Teresa Oaxaca.  It's a series of 3 detail shots of a face in one of her new paintings.  Here's the image that I keyed in on:

I have been focusing a lot of my attention on mixing and using rich but subdued colors.  Teresa's not that way at all: she uses rich, saturated colors.  For 99% of artists who try that approach, it results in gaudy messes.  Not for Teresa.  Her colors are vibrant and lively, everywhere.

And it's that "everywhere" that drew my attention.  Let's zoom in even more:

 

Do the blues jump out at you?  They should.  Look along the line between the lighted and the shadowed areas.  This area is called the intermediate zone, transition zone, and a variety of other names.  It's often darker than the shadowed area, which gets reflected light, and it's usually a bit cooler in color temperature.  Here, Teresa doesn't really make it darker.  And she doesn't just make it cooler, either.  She changes the color to a very definite blue.  Look at the lines along the cheek, just above and below the eyebrow, and along the underside of the nose: blue lines!  Now when I've done those areas, I mix some blue into the color, but it's really just been a muted cool dark, and my attention has been more on the warmer reflected light in the shadow zone.  Now I'm going to try some very definite blues for the transition zones.

And the eyes!  Look at that intense dark blue.  It's just as dark as the rest of the eye (which is disturbingly red over to the shadowed side), but the blue just reaches out and smacks you.  That's confidence in your colors.

There are subtle color shifts all over.  The skin color bounces back and forth between a cool red (alizarin with white?) and muted yellow (Indian yellow?).  They're laid next to each other, rather than mixed together, so your eye puts them together to say "flesh color".  

Great stuff.  More things for me to experiment with in the studio!

Studio Experimenting

For the past week or so, I've been experimenting with a different approach and painting technique in the studio.  One of the artists that has caught my eye is Jeremy Lipking.  His paintings have a very quiet feeling to them.  Mine generally do, too, so I wanted to see what I could learn of his approach that might  come over to mine.  

I chose two of Lipking's paintings as inspiration: Canoe and Sagebrush.  

There were lots of things that played into the feeling in both paintings:

- A solitary figure.  Most of his figures are looking away.  This anonymizes them to an extent and the viewers can imagine themselves in the painting's environment. 

- Lots of flat areas of color: the lake in Canoe and the sky in Sagebrush, for example.

- Very sharp edges - the canoe especially, but the blanket and ridgetop in Sagebrush are sharper than they look.

- Use of value contrasts to focus attention.  The figure in the canoe is almost not noticed at first, but the dark canoe against the brilliant light, especially with the sharp edges (even in the reflections) demands your attention.  In Sagebrush, the high value contrast between the light sky and dark head draws your eye immediately.  

- Use of light and dark shapes as compositional elements.  In Canoe, there are essentially two shapes: light and dark, in a horizontal arrangement.  Sagebrush has a wider range of values, but it's basically a T-shape composition, with the blanket against the darker sage, the brilliant red mountain in the distance, and then the light sky with dark head.

- And they're really finely detailed.  These are almost photographically accurate paintings, and when you enlarge the images, you see very fine detail in face, hair, even the texture of the blanket and sage.  

This exercise was "in the spirit of Lipking", not a copy, so I used a photo of one of my favorite models.  It was taken in the studio, but I wanted to put her outside, using a T-shaped composition.  And I borrowed heavily from the Canoe's setting.  Here's how it looked after day 1:

 It's okay, kinda meh.  Alright, a lot meh.  I went back the next day and reworked it:

So what did I do?  I turned her head.  It made it feel a bit more relaxed and it made her a bit more anonymous.  I darkened the hills and reflections significantly, which better matches what really happens around sunset.  I put a lot more yellow into the sky and water to both lighten them up and warm the painting.  I changed the foreground to bring more sky color to the bottom of the painting and to make it feel more real.  I darkened her shadow and worked on the reflections from the robe.  And I reworked the robe for more detail, a warmer color, and slightly darker value to make it stand out against the light from the water.

I learned a lot about Lipking's technique, even though mine comes nowhere close to his.  The sky and water, for example, are built out of lots of small strokes of blue and yellow laid down next to and also dragged over each other.  When two paint colors are thoroughly mixed together, they give one flat color.  When colors are adjacent to each other, your eye does the mixing, but the result is richer.  Kinda like chords in music as compared to single notes.  

Most importantly, though, I learned that I really don't want to put paint on canvas the way he he does.  I like a looser approach, where the individual strokes are obvious from well back.  I get more energy that way.  But the compositional items, like values and colors?  Yeah.  I can use those.

Life and the Studio

 There's so much happening, so fast, these days.  I've felt so overwhelmed with things to comment about that I haven't commented at all.  Which is probably a good thing.  Frankly, though I'm getting more and more worried about the future of our county.

A few years ago, a friend asked if I was an optimist or a pessimist.  I said that I'm a short-term optimist and a long-term pessimist.  In the short term, humanity has a remarkable ability to muddle through.  Crises come and go, things look dire, and then we move on.  But in the long term, the outlook is really grim.  We're using resources many times faster than the earth can replenish them.  Climate change is raising sea levels, reducing wildlife, reducing crop-production land, and changing weather patterns.  At a time when we need united national and international efforts, we're more polarized and divided than I can remember in my lifetime.  And all the trends are in the wrong directions.  

Until recently, I thought that the tipping point would come a few decades down the road.  Now I think we might actually be in it.  Climate change is burning down the West Coast and hitting the Gulf and East Coast with more storms than ever, one after another.  It's warming the Arctic, which is thawing the permafrost, which is releasing more methane than ever, which is significantly worse as a greenhouse gas.  The world's population is still expanding.  The World Wildlife Federation this week announced that 68% of the world's wildlife has disappeared since 1970.  And if you wear a mask in this country, you're a damned Democrat, and if you don't, you're a damned Republican.  And Trump is destroying what little unity is left.

No good news there.  And I don't know what I can do about any of it except take care of myself and Janis.

So, yeah, writing about my activities in the studio seems so out of it.  But it's my refuge of sanity.  Even when I was creating my last two paintings, Say Their Names and Portland 2020, which are both political pieces, they were still cathartic.  Now, though, I'm working on two new ones that have no politics in them at all.  Time to clear my brain.  Yes, I'll post them here when I can.  No, you can't see them now.

So stay safe, try to keep calm, and take care of yourself.

"Portland 2020"

Portland 2020

Oil on canvas, 45"x45"

In my last post, I mentioned a painting that was underway that would address the issue of federal agents, dressed and equipped like combat soldiers, being deployed to deal with Black Lives Matter protesters.  That painting is now completed.

I was against the very idea of deploying these soldiers from the very beginning.  In America, we don't use soldiers against our own people.  Only dictatorships and failed states do that.  The cities didn't want them, but the federal government sent them anyway.  Some argue that they're not soldiers.  But anybody that's wearing Army uniforms, with Army helmets, Army body armor, Army equipment, and Army weapons, is a soldier.

What set me off was the incident in Portland when a Navy vet walked up to a group of these soldiers to talk with them.  While he was doing that, one of them suddenly began beating him with a baton, and another pepper-sprayed him.  This was a totally unprovoked attack by US federal goons.  We don't do that here in this country.  Yet ... these assholes did.

As an artist, this painting is my response to to the Portland attack and similar incidents around the country.  And if these federal agents come to my town, I'll be down there to protest them.

Behind the Canvas

I recently completed the painting “Say Their Names”, which consists of portraits of 13 unarmed black men, women, and children who were killed by police or vigilantes.  This was the first political painting that I’ve done in maybe 15 years.  And I have another political painting on my easel right now.  So what brought this on?

Well, this is a very political time right now.  The country is divided over pretty much everything: right/left, Democrat/Republican, mask/no mask, reopen schools/keep kids home, deficits are bad/deficits are good, you name it.  So people have to take a stand on something every time we turn around.  But one thing that is lost in all the shouting is that the stands we’re being asked to take are never as simple as they appear.

In “Say Their Names”, I am explicitly taking a stand in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.  I think this is important.  For all my life, and for well beyond that, blacks have suffered under prejudices that should never have existed in a country founded on “all men are created equal”.  Blacks have never been treated as equal.  They are disproportionately in poverty, subject to less support in education, have higher unemployment, are discriminated against in employment, have worse medical care if they have it at all, are pulled over by police at higher rates, and are killed by police and vigilantes at much higher rates than whites.  This is intolerable.  It must change.  This is what the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s was all about and it still has not been resolved.  I think the BLM movement and general unrest of the past couple of months may finally be moving the needle a bit in the right direction.  My painting is a way of supporting that effort.

Some people respond to "Black Lives Matter" with “All Lives Matter” or similar phrases.  They miss the point.  Of course, all lives matter.  But when some lives don’t matter as much as others, it’s time to focus on correcting that imbalance. 

And you can say “Black Lives Matter” while still supporting the police.  Yes, there is prejudice and racism built into our society, meaning it’s built into police forces everywhere.  But I firmly believe that the vast majority of our police officers are truly committed to doing the best they can for the citizens they deal with, no matter the race.  It’s only a small minority of officers who are causing the problems.  That small minority should be corrected, or rooted out and dismissed.  The rest of the officers deserve our utmost respect and admiration.  These are people who go to work every day and never know when the shit is going to hit the fan.  They could get killed in a traffic stop for a broken taillight, or gunned down when responding to a fight between a husband and wife.  They put their lives on the line for us every day and deserve our support.

So when I hear the cries to “defund the police”, that ticks me off.  That’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard in a long time, including in the time of Donald Trump.  Our police don’t need to be defunded at all; if anything, they need more resources.  But the resources and police forces need to be better aligned to the missions that they’re having to deal with.  A husband-wife fight doesn’t necessarily need a police officer, it may need a social worker.  So maybe police forces need to shift some resources from violent responses to softer people skills.  But at the same time, these different types of responses need to be tightly integrated.  Situations can go from talking it out to shooting it out in a flash, so we need to have the ability to have a variety of responses available at all times.  You can’t do that if the police departments are defunded. 

One response that has been utilized quite a bit over the past month or two is that of sending “federal agents” into the streets of our cities, regardless of whether the cities want them or not.  I put the term in quotes because these are NOT police officers.  Anybody who’s wearing an Army camouflage uniform, Army helmet, Army boots, Army body armor, and using Army weapons, is not a police officer.  They’re soldiers.  Only dictatorships use soldiers against their own people.  The United States is not a dictatorship, but many of our highest ranking government officials are behaving as if it is.  I remember the Kent State shootings of 1970, when armed National Guard troops fired on a large group of protesting students, killing four and wounding nine.  That was wrong then, and the approach is wrong now.  I will fight any attempt to deploy armed soldiers in my city.  Meanwhile, this issue is the subject of the painting that’s on my easel right now.

So I’m taking a stand in support of Black Lives Matter with my painting “Say Their Names”.  But there are many other aspects to that support that are not covered by just those three words.  And I’m taking a stand against soldiers in American streets with my new painting.  But there are many other aspects of that stance that are not covered in just a few words.

Take a stand.  But don’t let the sound bites define you.

Say Their Names

Say Their Names

Oil on canvas, 36"x48"

"Say Their Names" is finally done.  This painting is of 13 blacks who were killed by police or vigilantes.  All were unarmed.  One of them was killed after this painting was already well under way.  This useless killing is the antithesis of what the United States is all about and it must stop. 

In the back row, left to right:

• George Floyd, 36, was killed by police officer Derek Chauvin.  Chauvin and his partners were investigating a complaint that Floyd had passed a counterfeit $20 bill.  Chauvin had a previous bad history with Floyd dating back to their time when both worked as bouncers at a bar.  Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly eight minutes, choking him to death.  
• Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was jogging near his home in Georgia.  He was chased down by three white vigilantes and shot.  Local police refused to arrest them.  It wasn't until a video of the encounter was released to a news station and an international outcry forced the state to step in.  The vigilantes, Travis and Gregory McMichael, along with Roddie Bryan (who made the video) were arrested two and a half months after the event for felony murder and other charges.  
• Rekia Boyd, 22, was killed by a Chicago police officer, Dante Servin, who was responding to a noise complaint in a park.  Rekia and three others were partying.  One of them pulled out a cell phone.  Servin claimed he thought it was a gun and he fired, striking Rekia in the head.  Servin was eventually charged with involuntary manslaughter but the case was dismissed by a judge.  Subsequently, Servin was forced out of the police department and the city paid $4.5M in damages to Rekia's family.
• Sean Reed, 21, had been in the US Air Force before returning home to Indianapolis.  He was observed to be driving recklessly and led police on a vehicle and foot chase.  Reed was live-streaming the event on Facebook Live to a large audience.  Police tased him and then shot him 13 times.  One was heard on the livestream to say "It looks like a closed casket, homie."  The police officers were placed on administrative leave.

Middle row, left to right:

• Eric Garner, 43, was approached by New York city police and accused of selling single cigarettes from a package without tax stamps.  The situation escalated and one officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put Garner in a prohibited choke hold.  Garner said "I can't breathe" 11 times before losing consciousness.  He lay on the sidewalk an additional seven minutes without medical attention while the officers waited for an ambulance.  Garner was declared dead at the hospital.  A grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo.  Eventually, public pressure forced the city to fire Pantaleo five years later and reach a $5.9M settlement with Garner's family. 
• Freddie Gray, 25, was arrested by Baltimore police during a neighborhood counter-drug campaign for carrying a knife.  The knife was legal under Maryland law.  Gray was loaded into the back of a police van without being strapped in, then given a "rough ride".  When the ride ended, Gray was in a coma with his spinal cord 80% severed at the neck.  He died a week later.  Some of the officers were tried, none were found guilty of any charges, and many charges were dropped.
• Walter Scott, 50, a US Coast Guard veteran, was stopped for a broken tail light by Michael Slager, a North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer.  A confrontation ensued and Slagle tased Scott.  Scott ran from the scene and Slagle shot him in the back five times.  Slagle was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
• Yvette Smith, 47, called 911 for help in de-escalating a confrontation between two men that involved a gun.  After police officers arrived, the situation calmed.  A police officer, Daniel Willis, called for Smith to come outside.  When she did, he shot her twice with his personal AR-15.  Willis was fired and charged with murder, but was acquitted.  The county settled a civil lawsuit for $1.2M.

Lower left:

• Dontre Hamilton, 31, had a history of mental health issues.  He was sleeping in a Milwaukee park when he was approached twice by two police officers who found nothing wrong.  Shortly afterward, another police officer, Christopher Manney, approached Hamilton.  A scuffle ensued, Hamilton got control of Manney's baton, and Manney shot Hamilton 14 times.  Manney was fired but never charged.  A civil suit resulted in a $2.3M settlement.
• Breonna Taylor, 26, was an Emergency Medical Technician in Louisville, Kentucky.  She was sleeping at home when police executed an unannounced, no-knock search warrant targeted against two men who knew Taylor but did not live there.  Taylor's boyfriend thought the police were intruders and fired once.  The officers fired over 20 times, hitting Taylor eight times.  One of the officers was fired and the police chief was fired after a black business owner was killed by police.  Other investigations are ongoing.
• Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7, was killed by Detroit police when they raided her home, looking for a murder suspect.  The officer, Joseph Weekley, was charged with involuntary manslaughter.  Two trials ended in mistrials and charges were dismissed before a third trial.  Weekley is still on duty.  A civil lawsuit is in progress.

Lower right: 

• Elijah McClain, 23, was walking home from the store in Aurora, Colorado, when he was stopped by police.  They had received a call about a "suspicious person" and Elijah was wearing a ski mask.  Police wrestled him to the ground, handcuffed him, and put him into a chokehold.   Elijah repeatedly said that he couldn't breathe.  When paramedics arrived, they injected him with ketamine, a sedative.  He went into cardiac arrest and died three days later.  Three of the officers have been fired and one more has resigned.  No action has been taken against the paramedics.  
• Tamir Rice, 12, was playing in a park in Cleveland with an Airsoft pistol, a highly accurate toy gun.  Police officers arrived and, thinking it was a real pistol, immediately shot him twice.  The officers faced no charges, although Cleveland later settled a civil lawsuit for $6M.

Quick Update

I haven't made any posts in over a month now.  Had some health issues that gave me a couple of scares, but they're over with and all's good here now.  Well, getting a lot better, anyway.

I've got several projects in progress in the studio.  One is a painting related to the Black Lives Matter movement.  It's coming along slower than I want, primarily because I haven't been able to work on it as much as it needs.  But it's looking promising.  No, I won't share images right now, but if you want to see some, go take a look at my studio Facebook page, where there are some teasers.

Even though the BLM one isn't done yet, I started a new painting related to the Portland protests/riots and the deployment of "federal agents", all of whom look remarkably like combat soldiers without any identifying tags.  A video of them beating the crap out of a former Navy officer, a Naval Academy grad, made me blow my top.  He went up to talk with them and they beat him with truncheons, broke his arm, and sprayed him with pepper spray.  He wasn't fighting, wasn't looting, wasn't burning, just went up to talk.  These unidentified thugs have taken protesters off the street, often just releasing them later somewhere else.  This is too much like the Nazi Brownshirts, like the "disappeared" in Argentina in the 70's, or the same thing during military junta in Chile in the early 70's, or normal ways of working in China, Russia, Syria, or other dictatorships.  Or you could compare it to the beatings at the Edmund Pettus Bridge that galvanized the Civil Rights movement.  Only dictators, or wanna-be dictators, behave like this.  So, yes, this particular event has really gotten under my skin and I'm going to fight it as an artist: with paintings.

Unless they come to Asheville.  I'll be out there on the lines to protest.  This must stop.  Now.

The Confederate Battle Flag

The Marines and NASCAR made the news this past week when they banned the Confederate flag at all Marine bases and NASCAR events.  Both came down hard on the idea that the flag is a symbol of white supremacy, black oppression, slavery, and racial divisiveness.  In my opinion, the actions are absolutely right and the rationale spot-on.  It was long overdue.

I say this as a guy who was raised in the South in the mid-20th century.  I learned to think that blacks were not the equal of whites.  I thought that a "Rebel" exemplified independence, individualism, pride, a reverence for a code of honor, and a refusal to kowtow to authority.  This was reinforced by movies and TV shows that played up those characteristics with their white heroes.  Blacks were relegated to supporting roles, if they were even present at all. And the Rebel Flag was something to be proud of.  Heritage, you know.

My attitudes began to change while in high school.  I had a job one summer where I worked in a small plant alongside quite a few black men.  I discovered that, even though these guys may not have much education, that didn't mean they weren't smart.  They taught me how to do my job, and then how to do it better.  In the process, they taught me that those at the top (in this case, some college-educated white guys) don't always know the best way to do things.  And they opened my eyes to some of the unfortunate assumptions I had about blacks.  That began a change in my thought processes about race that continues to this day.

I've been working on my family history for a long time.  A few years ago, I discovered that two of my great-great-grandfathers, three of their brothers, and one of their cousins all fought in the Confederate Army.  Another, one of my great-great-great grandfathers, made saddles for the Confederate cavalry.  None of them were wealthy: they were all small farmers eking out a living.  None owned slaves.  But all were apparently very tough, capable, resourceful, and fought like hell.  They all came back from the war, although almost all suffered badly from wounds, disease, starvation, imprisonment in a POW camp, or various combinations.  They returned home to a South that had been devastated.  They survived there, but didn't prosper. 

So, when I see a Confederate battle flag, I see a flag that my ancestors fought for.  I think of men who did the job they thought they had to do, did it well, and survived some unbelievably bad times by toughness, tenacity, and giving it their all.  I wouldn't be here if they didn't.

But that doesn't mean the Confederate flag is something to celebrate today.  This was the flag of states that wanted to perpetuate and expand the enslavement of black people.  That was the sole purpose of the war.  It wasn't to "resist Northern aggression", it wasn't for "state's rights", it wasn't for any of those other reasons.  It all goes back to slavery.  And that is totally counter to the Declaration of Independence's phrase "all men are created equal".  So, while I can honor the personal characteristics of my ancestors, I can't honor the cause for which they fought.

And not only does the Confederate flag say "slavery", it also says "treason".  This is a flag of those that actively fought against the United States.  To fly a Confederate flag says "I honor those who killed American soldiers".  You can't fly a Confederate flag to honor that legacy and still call yourself a patriotic American.  It's one or the other.

And last week, the Marine Corps and NASCAR both came to the same conclusion.  It's about time.  Let's put the Confederate flags into museums where they belong.  And leave them there.

Social Insanity

This country seems to have lost its mind.  All kinds of stresses are causing all kinds of bad behavior, all over the country, and they're feeding off each other.
- Police in Minneapolis kill a black man during an arrest.
- Rioting follows over several days and people destroy their own neighborhoods.
- More police in Minneapolis arrest a black CNN reporter while he's on the air, leaving his white team members alone at first.  They were arrested later.

That's just one stresser in the past several days.  Others have been building over months or years.
- A black woman is shot and killed by a police SWAT team while she's sleeping in her own apartment.  The cops went to the wrong address.
- A black man is killed while jogging.  The white attackers thought he was a burglar.
- A white woman in Central Park goes nuts and calls 911 over a black man who asked her to put her dog on a leash. 
- A white office worker calls 911 on two black men in an office building gym.  The two were authorized to use the gym.

And these are just a few of the most recent racist events regarding blacks.  There's so much more going on, all at once.
- People are being assaulted for wearing a mask.
- People are being assaulted for NOT wearing a mask.
- Hundreds of people jammed a pool party in the Ozarks in total disregard of their health.
- Thousands of people jammed beaches over Memorial Day weekend.
- Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately getting Covid, mostly due to environments and cultural habits that promote the spread of the virus.
- White protestors wearing body armor and carrying AR-15s invaded state government buildings to push for ending the coronavirus lockdowns.  (Imagine the outcry if they were black or Hispanic.)
- Angry people asserting that their rights to do whatever they want have precedence over everybody else's rights to stay safe and healthy.
- Angry people are blaming it all on the Democrats.
- Angry people are blaming it all on the Republicans.
- Angry people are blaming it all on China.

There are lots of very angry people these days and we're taking it out on each other in very destructive ways.

And where's the leadership to counter this?  Where's the leadership to calm things down, bring people together, find common ground, and develop some answers?  If you're looking to Donald Trump, you're looking in the wrong place.  He's fanning the flames.  Sowing division and distrust is how he ran his TV show, how he got elected, and how he runs the country.

If you're looking to news media, you're looking in the wrong place.  We used to have Walter Cronkite, whose calm approach made you feel like we would get through whatever the crisis of the day was.  And we did.  Now, the media flames passions on all sides.  "If it bleeds, it leads."  That's how you get ratings, baby.

If you're looking to social media, you're looking in the wrong place.  All I see there is anger.  Lots and lots of anger.  Little in the way of possible answers.  Or, if you look at my own posts, mostly levity as a relief valve for all the pent-up anxiety that's being spread.

The situation today reminds me very much of the late 60's and early 70's.  Then we had race riots, anti-war demonstrations, the Chicago national convention riots, a pandemic that killed over 100,000 just in the US (the Hong Kong flu in '68-69), armed white vigilantes, the Black Panthers, political assassinations, an unnecessary war, the Kent State massacre, high-level corruption, and a criminal President.  There was a lot of talk about "revolution" and even the Beatles sang about it.  It took a lot of work by a whole lot of people at all levels to bring the nation back to an even keel, make changes (never enough), and restore some semblance of normality.

I don't see many leaders with a Big Name stepping up.  What I do see are lots of us little people doing what we can.  The doctors and nurses who volunteered to go to New York to help with the pandemic response, for example.  The thousands of police officers around the country who are doing what they can to counter the image put forth by the four Minneapolis cops.  The workers in my local grocery store who wear their masks and wipe down their checkout station in between every customer.

We got through it in the 60's and 70's and we can get through this if we want to.  It will take a willingness to quit demonizing those who disagree with you, to listen to other people's concerns, examine our own prejudices, and be more considerate.  It will also take a sea change in Washington.  We need a new set of politicians (they're not "leaders") to work together.  And we need to pay less attention to the opinion-makers and talking heads who sow dissension, and more to each other.

Coronavirus Lockdown

The coronavirus has really locked things down around this house.  We're keeping a low profile, doing stuff in our own private places (house, yard, studio), and venturing out as little as possible.  That part is fairly easy to accept: there's a deadly virus out there, so minimize your chances of catching it.  And we're pretty quiet and private people, anyway.

What's been much more stressful is the massive stupidity that is even more widespread than the virus.  Way too many people are way too eager to get back to "normality" RIGHT NOW, and to hell with any virus.  "It's just the flu, and anyway, it's a Democratic hoax, and by the way I HAVE A RIGHT TO TAKE MY AR-15 ANYWHERE".  The past two months, and especially the past four weeks, have shown that the spirit of the Greatest Generation is long gone.  People are way more concerned with their own petty wants, have no trust for people who actually know things about viruses and epidemiology, and are perfectly happy to fuck the rest of the world over so they can have a good time.  The just-completed Memorial Day weekend was full of examples, with people jamming beaches, restaurants, bars, pools, churches, parks, stores, you name it.  I expect we'll see many of them jamming ICU's before long.  I'll have no sympathy whatsoever for them, but I will have sympathy for those people that they spread the virus to.  And I'm doing everything I can to NOT be one of those people.

Keeping busy isn't a problem here.  I had a proposal-writing project that required a lot of time and effort.  Springtime demands lots of work in the yard and we've had way more rain than normal, meaning the grass and weeds are growing way faster than normal.  And my Alfa is in the garage with a big chunk of the interior removed so I can do some work on it.

In the studio, I've been reading, watching art videos and online demos, and experimenting with new-to-me techniques.  Most have gone right into the trash can.  Two paintings are nearing completion after being in progress for seemingly forever.  Both are small and I keep thinking they really should be bigger, as in 30x40 or 36x48, meaning I'd have to start over again.  Shouldn't take "forever" since the small ones are working out most of the issues with composition, color, and technique, but still, that's a lot of work.  And I have a couple of other ideas pending for new paintings anyway.

So: I'm off to the studio this afternoon.  Or the garage.  Whatever.

Kent State - 50 Years Later

The Kent State student massacre was 50 years ago today.  At the time, it was one of the worst events in a series of social conflicts that had been going on for years.  For me, it marked the point at which I began to realize that my values were different from many around me.

Quick recap: the late 60's saw increasing disruption over the Vietnam War and race relations.  There had been the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King a couple of years previously.  Race riots had torn up cities across the country.  The Vietnam war was getting bigger, the draft was underway, and a great many people didn't see any reason why we were involved there at all.  There were increasing numbers of anti-war protests at colleges all over the country. 

In May, 1970, I was finishing my junior year in high school.  My parents and most everybody I knew were staunch Republicans.  I supported the war without really thinking about it because everybody else did.  One guy from my neighborhood got commissioned in the Army, went to Vietnam, and was back in just a couple of months, minus one eye.  Everybody thought he did his duty.

Then the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a protest at Kent State University.  They killed four students and wounded nine.  Their claim, at the time, was that the students were throwing rocks and bricks at them and the Guardsmen were afraid for their lives.

I was horrified at this.  I couldn't believe that a troop of soldiers, armed with rifles and tear gas, would be afraid of students.  To me, it was murder, pure and simple.

And this is where I ran smack into the wall of my conservative environment.  My parents didn't have much sympathy for the students.  My high school friends had none.  "Serves 'em right.  They asked for it.  Damn longhairs."  I couldn't believe it.  They were just students.  But they weren't just students to most of those around me.  They weren't people at all.

I read everything I could on the event - Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, a few others.  It became clear that the initial reports of rock-throwing and "threatening" students were wrong.  They were unarmed.  Of the four dead, two weren't even protesting, they were just watching in the background, and one was a ROTC student.  It just reinforced my sense that it was murder.  But nobody else in my family or circle of friends saw it that way.  Meanwhile, more mass protests and riots erupted across the country, over both the war and the Kent State shootings.  I wasn't interested in protesting or rioting because I still supported the war, but thought the over-reaction of the Guard was totally wrong.

Over the next few years, some members of the Guard faced criminal charges that were dismissed.  Then they faced civil charges that were also dismissed.  It made me sick.

Still does.

Copying a Painting

Sometimes, when things aren't going quite right, for whatever reason, I'll stop what I'm doing and copy somebody else's painting.  It's proven to be a good way to re-set my inner painting mojo.  Recently, I spent three weeks out of the studio due to everything surrounding the coronavirus lockdown.  Three weeks is enough time to get rusty.  When I got back to the studio, my first project was to finish up a painting from several weeks earlier.  I think it turned out pretty awful.  Then I tried to finish up another painting and wound up scrubbing everything new off of it.  Then I tried working on yet a third painting and didn't get anywhere.  Okay, time to re-set.

As I've noted on here several times before, I've been looking at the Swedish artist Nick Alm.  I don't really care for the subject matter of his paintings, which tend to be a bunch of young Swedes getting drunk in cafes.  I'm not young or Swedish, and I haven't been drunk in a cafe in quite a few decades.  What I'm fascinated by is Alm's technical capability.  There are two parts to this: his compositions, and his skill with putting paint on canvas.

I've talked about his compositions in another post.  My "third painting" mentioned above is actually an attempt to use insights from studying his compositions in a painting of my own.  It's been underway for, oh, six months, and is nowhere near done.  But this time, I'm not looking at composition, I'm looking specifically at how he puts paint on canvas.  And, for that, I copy.

I was looking at paint application because I just couldn't get into the groove of mixing paint, using the brush effectively, and getting the effect I wanted.  Everything seemed to be over-saturated, too contrasty, and too hard-edged.  Alm's paintings, by contrast, have muted colors that are still rich, much softer contrasts, and more subtle gradations between colors, shapes, and objects.  I dug through Mr. Google to find some information about his technical approach and eventually found some good info that I could use to get started.

So here's the image that I chose to copy.  It's actually a detail of a much larger painting.

What drew me to this?  The muted skin tones, transitions between one area and the next, soft edges, blending, accuracy of drawing, lots of stuff.  Look at how his shirt and her top are really just one large white shape, look at how his arm blends into her chest, how her throat blends into the shadow and then into his jaw, and how the light is depicted around her eye and down her cheek, for example.

For this exercise, I used a very limited palette, which is based on the colors he uses.  It consisted of Venetian red (an earthy but strong color), Transparent Gold Ochre (a slightly clearer version of Yellow Ochre), Mars Black (really a very very dark blue), and Flake White (a lead-based white).  That's it.  And here's how it turned out:

Maybe I shouldn't have shown you the image I was copying ...

I can whine that the colors from my iPhone photo aren't accurate and a few other things, but hey, it's just an exercise and I don't have Alm's painting skills.  It was really worthwhile to look at each area carefully to see what the colors are, how they're blended or not, where the strong edges are, how he did the shadows, and so on.  So while my copy is kinda ugly, it was still a very valuable learning experience.

So what's next?  Well, my ambition is bigger than my capabilities.   I'm looking at taking the painting that's been in progress for six months and starting over on a much larger scale.  I'll use the lessons learned from the first version, and from this exercise, in building the bigger one.  I'm probably in over my head, but as an artist friends says, "it's just a painting". 

Scanning Old Family Photos

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the things I've been doing lately is scanning old family photos.  This is an outgrowth of my interest in genealogy.  I've been working on my family history for many decades now.  I wound up with my parents' photos, yearbooks, and other memorabilia, and my cousins have sent me some stuff that they had, and pretty soon there was a huge collection scattered in various places around the house.  With the coronavirus lockdown, this is the perfect time to sort through all the stuff, scan some photos, save some, and trash a lot.

So what do I look for in keeping and/or scanning old photos?  There's gotta be some sort of catch.  Some of these photos go back to maybe 1850, and when you have one photo of an ancestor, there's your built-in catch.  One side of my family began taking photos more and more frequently starting in the early 1900's.  This was about the time that Kodak began producing the Brownie cameras and photography became available to regular people.  My grandparents, and then my parents, were just like every other set of parents since then: their kids are the cutest things to ever walk the face of the earth, and their every action must be recorded for posterity.  That's an attitude that results in lots and lots and LOTS of variations of the same picture.  Not only that, but people in the 1920's and 30's liked to ham it up for the camera just like people today do.  They didn't do selfies, but they did the same kind of silly poses you see today on Instagram.  People don't really change that much.  Another favorite photographic activity is "photographing the family vacation".  A picture of Yosemite from 1950 looks just like a picture of Yosemite from 2019: somebody smiling at the camera with Half Dome in the background.  And, as every person who has tried to capture an amazing landscape on film has learned the hard way, big landscape experiences are rarely impressive when compressed onto slides or 5x7 prints.

Most of us take photos as mementos of our own experiences.  We can flip back through them and remember what we were doing, who we were doing it with, and laugh or cry, all based on our own memories.  But those memories don't translate to other people.  I don't have my parents' memories, so a photo they may have taken, laughing it up with a group of friends, doesn't mean anything to me.  Not unless it shows me something special about my parents.  So what I'm doing, really, is combing through the photos with the idea that future generations of our families (both on my mom's and my dad's sides) can have an idea of who these people were.  They don't need to see ALL the photos to do that.

So I look for photos that tell us something.  On my great-grandparents' 50th anniversary, three generations got together and took a whole bunch of photos.  I scanned two of them, tossed some that were poorly exposed or taken at a wrong time, and kept a very few others that might be of some interest further down the line.  The ones I scanned show the great-grandparents just a few years before they died, my grandparents and a couple of their brothers and sisters as mature adults, and my dad and his sisters just entering adulthood and full of life and energy.  So those are important.  Another set of photos came from a day when my mom and her friends, all aged maybe 15, got hold of a camera and had a field day with it.  Of those pictures, only one is worth scanning for historical purposes.  I kept several more because, in flipping through them, you get a sense of a bunch of teenage girls at play.  And there are two from that day that I would like to use to make a painting.  The exposure and compositions were terrible, which in this case made them wonderfully mysterious.

But enough words.  You came here because you wanted to see old family photos, right?  Here are five to kinda show what I was getting at.

This picture of one of my great-great grandfathers was taken in about 1870.  I have a couple of other family photos that are even earlier, but can't quite determine the year.  It's always good to get a visual on one of your ancestors.  All photos back then were stiff and posed, so you can't tell much about his personality, but at least we have an idea of what he looked like.

 Great time at the beach, circa 1918!  My grandparents are in this picture.  Change the outfits and this could be on any beach today.

 My mom was a real live wire.  Her brother was more reserved, but she could get him to open up and goof around.

 My dad was a Navy pilot in World War II, flying the B-24 (the Navy called it a PB4Y-1).  This was on their base shortly after the end of the war.

This group of cousins was all dressed up for Easter church.  Let's just say we dress a little differently these days.

Keeping Busy in Lockdown

The coronavirus is just getting worse all over the world.  North Carolina has been under a shelter-in-place order for a couple of weeks now.  I'd say compliance is spotty.  Lots of people around here have been listening to too much of Trump and Fox News.  I've heard them saying that it's a Democratic hoax, that it's just a version of the flu, and other bullshit.
- A friend of mine, wearing gloves and a mask, stopped at a small local place to pick up some supplies.  It's owned/run by an elderly guy who wasn't wearing a mask or gloves, nor taking any other precautions.  He laughed off the threat and said he was just following Trump's recommendations.
- There's a fundamentalist church next to my neighborhood.  Last week, they had shifted to drive-in services.  The congregation stayed in their cars while the preacher set up a PA system under the portico.  That was pretty good, although it meant that everybody in the neighborhood had to hear the sermon whether we wanted to or not.  This week?  Back into the sanctuary for Palm Sunday.  Wrong answer, dude.

There still aren't many confirmed cases in this area.  I live in Madison County and there are none reported here.  Buncombe County, where Asheville is, has 31, and one death.  Henderson County, south of Asheville, has 50 cases, about half of which are in an assisted-living home.  However, the lack of confirmed cases doesn't mean much since there aren't enough test kits to go around.  People are only getting tested when doctors need to confirm it, meaning when they're already in the hospital.  So the virus is circulating here.

And we're really limiting activities that involve going somewhere.  The grocery store is maybe once a week now and we'd like to extend that.  We've been doing the post office almost every day, since we don't have home delivery, but I'm going to cut back on that.  I do go to the dump every day it's open because (a) we don't have trash pickup here and (b) taking trash to the dump doesn't involve getting in close contact with anybody.  And that's about it.

I have not been to the studio for about 10 days now and don't know when I'll get to go again.  Even though nobody else is in the studio with me, I would still have to go in and out of public spaces in order to get to the studio.  So, for now, I'm staying home.

And what are we doing here to keep busy?  Glad you asked!

Seems like the primary project is yard work.  Spring has sprung.  The weeds have already started to grow and the grass is just getting started.  We've already mowed the front yard twice.  I'm trying to get rid of all the damn moles that have overtaken the yard.  One of my coronacardio workouts is to go around stomping their tunnels flat.  Then I come back a day or two later and see where they're sprouting up again, and stomp those harder and flatter.  We've been cleaning up sticks, digging up bushes, spreading fertilizer, and all sorts of other (NOT) fun things.  At least we're out in the fresh air and sun!

J has been doing even more house cleanup.  I mean, when is she not doing it?  I guess it's the spring-clean thing.  We need to do a major overhaul on the garage sometime soon.  Not looking forward to that.

I've been working on three projects of my own.  One is getting the Alfa ready to rock.  I've been making new door panels because the old ones were really sad.  Haven't quite got them to where they should be, but they look better than what was in there.  Gotta change the oil and top up the transmission since it leaks too much, and there are several more projects waiting in line after that.

Another project is family history.  This is a never-ending jigsaw puzzle.  At the moment, I'm writing up storylines for different family branches, taking all the data collected over the years and turning it into stories.  Of course, in doing that, it raises more questions that we need data to answer, but it gives a much clearer idea of who these ancestors of mine were.

And one more project is scanning old family photos.  I've got some that go back to around 1850, with a LOT after about 1940.  No, I don't scan them all, there are way too many.  I scan the ones that I think have some sort of merit - a good look at an individual, a shot of a house that someone lived in, maybe a photo of a wedding or other key event.  I'm keeping some of the photos after scanning, but a lot are going in the trash.  I dumped all the slides, for example.  Slides tend to discolor with age, so while I could color-correct some with Photoshop, many are just way too far gone.

So that's what we're doing in lockdown.  We're busy doing all the things we said we'd do when we got time. 

Corona Virus: In the Beginning

In just three or four short weeks, the corona virus has gone from zero to out of control.  To be perfectly selfish, I'm happy I'm semi-retired and live in a rural area in the North Carolina mountains.  Yes, the wife and I are over 65, so we're in the high-risk category.  But self-quarantine is not too difficult to do here.  We don't have to go anywhere much, just the dump, post office, and grocery store.  I go down to Asheville to work in my studio, and I'm alone there.  My life drawing sessions are cancelled for the duration.  My proposal-writing work is always done from home.  So we're in fairly good shape.

As mentioned in the last post, I got a scare during my time at Muscatatuck a couple of weeks ago.  Three people got very sick.  Turned out they had the flu, rather than Covid-19, but the scare was real.  As I write this, the Defense Department has not cancelled next month's training.  I expect they will, but just in case, I notified them that I will not be at next month's training.  I love doing that work and believe it's important.  But while important, the training is not critical to our students' missions, it just helps them do their jobs (all supporting military bases and operations) better.  On the other hand, coming down with Covid-19 could kill me or my wife.  That's not a risk I'm willing to take.  And if that means I don't get called back to do the training anymore, so be it.

In this area of North Carolina, there aren't many cases yet, but they're growing every day.  Asheville has 12 cases at the moment and it's clear that the virus is spreading through the community.  What that seems to mean is that some/many people are asymptomatic and are passing the virus without actually getting sick themselves.  The only way to know for sure how broadly it has spread around the community is to test everybody, and that, of course, won't happen.  Our governor has closed all public schools and taken some other measures.  Buncombe County (where Asheville is) and Asheville itself have implemented some more.  I live in Madison County, north of Asheville.  We don't have any known cases yet, but our county manager has requested everybody implement shelter-at-home procedures.  That's a smart call.  I manage the art gallery at Mars Hill University, and the school is basically closed, with students doing their classes online.  We closed the gallery and have no idea when we might be able to have a show again. 

Meanwhile, New York is getting hit hard and the federal government in Washington is proving to be incapable of handling the crisis.  Trump downplayed it for weeks, then grudgingly accepted that it was dangerous.  But his words and actions have been totally irresponsible.  His touting of unproven capabilities for a lupus drug to counter the corona virus has led people to hoard the drug at home, meaning the real lupus patients can't get it, and nobody knows if the drug does anything to the coronavirus anyway!  And one man has died because he took something with a similar name and it killed him.  Meanwhile, none of the federal agencies, all "led" by people who are trying to prove they're loyal to Trump rather than accomplish their jobs, are getting much of anything done.  The real leader in the country is Governor Cuomo of New York.  He's doing news conferences every day, telling New Yorkers the straight scoop, implementing the measures he can, and trying to get the equipment and supplies needed to fight the virus.  With little/no help from the feds, I might add.  And today, Trump said he wants to have the US open for business again by Easter, which is two and a half weeks away.  What a dumbass.  That will just lead to more sick people, more overloaded hospitals, and more deaths.

So I'm doing what I can, which is to sit tight and have as little direct contact with other people as possible.  Not only am I trying not to get the virus from others, I'm trying to not pass it on if it's already in me.  I'm washing my hands, carrying disinfectant wipes around with me, using those blue medical gloves, and staying away from people.  And I'm afraid we'll have to be doing this for a year or more, until a vaccine is available.

A truism from the Lord of the Rings:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Afghanistan Training

I spent the last week at the Muscatatuck (pronounced "mus-CAT-a-tuck") Urban Training Center, helping to train another group of Defense Department civilians who are heading to Afghanistan for a year.  I'm doing this every month now.  For me, it's the unicorn of day jobs: it's an important mission, it's something that I can do pretty well, it's a helluva lot of fun, and I get to work with some wonderful people.

To answer your first question first, yes, we're still sending civilians to Afghanistan.  These are the people who run much of the day-to-day operations at the bases so that the soldiers can concentrate on doing their mission outside the wire.  These civilians do the financial management, manage contracts, run the dining facility, manage the gyms and physical training facilities, take care of personnel records, manage the local hires (yes, we hire a lot of Afghans), maintain the vehicles, keep the HVAC up and running, you name it.  Most of the civilians will interact with Afghans frequently, if not continuously.  The training we do at Muscatatuck gives them important insights into how to bridge the cultural differences so that they can accomplish their jobs from day 1.

Our training is immersive.  The students are effectively already working on a base in Afghanistan and they have to go outside the wire with their military security personnel and meet with various Afghans on a variety of issues.  And these are real Afghans, too.  Each of our training events builds on previous ones, so things get more complicated the further along they get. 

I had a great team of students.  I'm using the word "team" advisedly, because that's the way they operated: as a team.  Every one of them got to lead the team on a training event, but every one of them also needed help from the rest of the team as each of the events went on.  They would jump into a discussion whenever they had something to contribute, and on occasion they pulled their team leader back from the brink when he/she was about to go off in the wrong direction.  It was wonderful to see.

I've been doing this training for quite a few years now and have gotten to know our Afghans pretty well.  And the more I work with them, the more I see just how good they really are.  Most have been doing this training longer than I have - many were here when I came through the course in 2011.  They know the issues that need to be worked, and they know how to direct the conversation.  And they know how the events can go completely sideways, and when that happens, they know when to let it go and when to rein it in.  Every time we do this training, I see them showing more nuances and aspects that I hadn't seen before. We are very, very fortunate to have these men and women to train our people heading downrange.

The corona virus was turning into a Big Thing this week and we had a scare when three people got really sick.  Turned out they all had the flu, rather than Covid-19, but it was still serious.  Our training might get shut down for a couple of months if the scare continues.

Destroying Artworks

Yesterday, I was working away in the studio on several different projects.  One of them was trying to decide what to do about one particular artwork.  It was a charcoal and pastel portrait that has been sitting there for a few weeks.  I didn't like it.  It was overworked, had a somewhat awkward composition, and had been a fight since the very beginning.  The young woman who was the subject had liked it.  So, rather than trash the artwork right away, it sat in a corner for a while.  Maybe I'd give it to her.  Maybe I shouldn't.  I kept kicking the decision down the road.

I trashed it yesterday.

That's not the first time.  Actually, I trash a fairly large proportion of my works, maybe 50%.  Which brings up the question, why?  Why throw away something that has a lot of time and effort put into it, especially when somebody appreciates it?  Why throw away so much work?

Well, I look at something and ask myself, would I be willing to exhibit that work?  Exhibiting something means that I'm comfortable with putting my name on an artwork and telling the world, "this is what I can do".  If it doesn't meet that standard, there are two choices: change it or destroy it.  Otherwise, it's just another substandard thing that's cluttering up my studio, and trust me, I have enough things cluttering up my studio right now.  Hell, I could put on three simultaneous shows of my own work at any one time.  So adding stuff that I wouldn't want others to see is not something I want to do.

Regarding changing an artwork, yes, I do that sometimes.  Usually it fails, but  it works out occasionally.  A successful change requires me to get into the right mindset.  It sounds corny, but I have to be "one with the painting", meaning the painting and my brain have to be in synch.  If not, it'll be a failure.  The painting also has to have an underlying composition that works and a subject that's interesting.  Just like you can't fix a house with a bad foundation, you can't fix a painting that has a bad composition.

And if I decide a painting has failed?  Two options.  One, sand it down and then slap a coat of oil primer on it.  That gives me a new blank canvas.  Or, if I've already done that a time or two and have decided that this particular canvas is jinxed, it goes into the trash.

And, as for that young woman who liked the artwork that I later destroyed, well, sorry.  Even if I gave it to her, I'd know that there was a substandard piece of art out there with my name on it.  That's intolerable. 

And, yeah, I'll probably give her one of the other artworks where she's the subject ...

Artists I Like

You know how you can go a long time without doing any housecleaning?  Well, over the past few days I've been housecleaning my studio.  Literally.  My dust bunnies were more like dust buffalo.  Damn things were chasing me around the room.  So I got busy and have been cleaning up, throwing old stuff out, dusting (cough cough), and discovering things I'd totally forgotten were there.  I still have another day or two of work, but the studio is feeling much better.

Just now, I realized that I haven't done any housecleaning on this blog site for quite a while.  I went through my "artists I like" section and discovered that several of the links were no longer good or hadn't been updated in a few years.  So I tossed those out.  And, since I'm always searching for new artists, the ones I'm looking at now are not the ones I was looking at X years ago, the last time I updated this section.  So I added some new artists to the list.  Here are some words on who the new ones are and why I like 'em.

Adam Miller is a really skillful and talented painter.  Not only can he paint some wonderful figures, but he puts them into situations where they are actually saying something.  I've been thinking about how to do that with my own work, and then ran into Adam's paintings, and now have some new thoughts burbling away in the back of my brain.  Actually, one of my new paintings was already influenced by his work, but you wouldn't know it unless you listened to a way-too-long description from me.

C.W. Mundy is an American old-school painter.  He paints people, portraits, landscapes, seascapes, still lifes, you name it.  Cutting-edge he is not, but damn, he's good.  I've copied a couple of his paintings in an effort to learn something from him.  I did learn something - I learned that I really have to up my game.

I've written about Nick Alm in previous posts here, here, and here.  He's a Norwegian figurative artist.  While his subject matter (a bunch of young Norwegians getting drunk in cafes) doesn't resonate with me, how he puts his paintings together does.  They are far more structured than you might think at first glance - they're really based on abstract compositions that are made up of people.  This painting, for example, is a large V-shape that focuses attention on the young lady sitting on the table, and fades off to the right, and is bounded by a hard vertical on the left.  I have tried a few times to create a painting with this approach and have failed.  Another effort is on my easel right now.  One of these days, maybe the light will come on and I'll know what I'm doing.  Or not.

Jerome Witkin has been one of my very favorite artists since I was studying art at UNCA back in the early aughts. He's not afraid to tackle heavy topics, like the Holocaust, nor deeply personal subjects.  He can tell a story in an incredibly powerful way.  And, as I know from personal experience, he's the nicest guy in the world.  While his work has been very influential to me, I discovered that I cannot structure and paint like he does.  His paintings are small stage settings that are carefully constructed with an eye toward overall composition, color, movement, and narrative.  I have done a couple of model-in-the-studio paintings that follow his example, but beyond that, his approach doesn't work with my brain.  No matter - he's one of the best painters in America today, so enjoy him.