Army of Dude

I just added a new link. "Army of Dude" is a blog by a soldier currently in Iraq. It's a very powerful and well-written look at the day-to-day life of a soldier on the front line. Some of it's funny, some of it's not. In particular, look at his March 25 entry titled "Brian Chevalier, 1985-2007" for an unvarnished look at what street fighting in Iraq is all about.

Scooter Libby

Yesterday, George Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence. Scooter, you may remember, was Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Scooter was the one who was telling all the Washington reporters that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent, and then he lied about it under oath. He was convicted and the judge threw the book at him. Yesterday, George said the sentence was too much, so he threw out the prison sentence.

So what does it all mean? Well, that's the million-dollar question today, isn't it? Was George playing to the far right-wing base who were raising millions for the "Scooter Libby Defense Funds"? If he was, he didn't make them happy: they wanted a complete pardon. (Note that these were the same ones who were rabidly attacking Bill Clinton for lying under oath. Let's see: Libby outed a covert CIA agent, which effectively ended her career, did untold damage to all intelligence programs she was involved in previously, and possibly got some of her contacts killed. Libby then deliberately misled prosecutors in a successful attempt to divert attention from his bosses who dreamed this whole thing up. Clinton lied about a blow job. Yeah, that sounds about equal, doesn't it?) So with Bush's decision, Libby is still a convicted felon who will be on probation for a while and have to pay a $250,000 fine. Sounds stiff, except that even as a convicted felon, he won't have any problem getting employment from the multitude of right-wingers. I bet we see him at some think-tank soon, or maybe on the board at Halliburton. As for the probation, probation from what? Revealing any more CIA agents' identities? Lying to any more grand juries? Be real. And a $250,000 fine sounds terrible, except that, as noted previously, his "defense funds" have already raised millions. They'll just write a check from one of those funds and Scooter's off the hook. So basically, Libby is free to go write a book, make a lot of money, and have a good life. As George said, anything more is "excessive punishment".

Okay, so the far right wing base isn't happy that Libby didn't get a pardon. The other roughly 85% of America (according to today's CNN polls) isn't happy that he's not going to prison. This 85% of America, by the way, is collectively known as the "left wing" to Limbaugh, Coulter, and the Administration. None of us are happy because Bush has subverted justice yet again.

So if the right wing isn't happy, and the "left wing" isn't happy, who is? Well, Scooter. But he can't vote now, so he won't have any effect on the next election.

I heard some TV pundit saying that Bush might be trying to shore up his legacy. Yes, I can see it now:
"George Bush: Still dumber than a box of rocks."

Kindred Spirits

Last week, a friend of mine told me about a book he'd just spotted. It was a slim volume of paintings and drawings of the war-torn Bosnian landscape. He said the artist was pretty good, a former student of Ben Long's, and her paintings looked a lot like the ones I was doing.

So I found the book on Amazon.com, ordered it, and just finished reading it today. The book is called "Ruined Landscapes: Paintings of the Balkan War Zone". The artist is Laura Buxton and the text was written by Ross Yockey.

I had three reactions in succession while going through the book. The first was "Wow, these are good". The second was "Damn, she's painting my pictures!" And the third was "Damn, she's already painted my pictures, got 'em exhibited, got 'em sold, and published a book about it besides!" Ever had that experience, where you're busting your tail to do something nobody else is doing, only to discover that somebody else has already done it?

There certainly are a lot of similarities. We were both there at pretty much the same time. We both have done paintings of shot-up buildings. We both paint in a loose but realistic manner. The similarities are such that I was left wondering what the hell I could add to what she's already done.

The difference is that she did her paintings on-site, sitting right there looking at the building or bridge or whatever the subject was. I'm doing mine from ten years and half a world away. I'm using old notes, sketchbooks, and really badly exposed photographs as sources. While we're both looking at what war leaves behind, I'm looking at "war" in the abstract sense and she was looking at it in the real world.

When I was studying art with Virginia Derryberry, one of my art teachers at UNCA, her mantra was to "make it personal". It always resulted in a better picture. One of my paintings from that time was a remake of Manet's Olympia. I was working on a series about aging, and wanted to change Manet's nude young woman on a bed, attended by a servant, into an old woman on a hospital bed, attended by a nurse. With Virginia telling me "make it personal", I changed the generic old woman into my mother, who had died of cancer eleven years earlier. Then I changed the generic nurse into me. The painting was a cathartic experience, since I still had some leftover issues from her passing, and the process helped me through them. It also resulted in a better painting. Here 'tis:



In painting these Bosnian pictures, I've been trying to make it personal - they have all been about scenes or experiences that left a strong mark on me. After seeing Laura's book, though, I'm not sure how much else I can say with these landscapes. I still have a few images from that time that I want to get on canvas, but I'm thinking that now I need to work less from past experiences and more with current ones. In other words, sit my butt down in front of real places and real things and real people, and paint them, not some abstract memory.

Actually, I've been kinda thinking along those lines for a while now, but it seems to have taken this book to kick-start it.

Anyway, the artist is Laura Buxton. You can see some of her work at this web site:
http://helene.collon.club.fr/laura/index.htm

Satirical Videos

I found these two videos on truthdig.com just now ... both originally from youtube ... a wonderfully satirical song about George and Dick, and a hilarious spoof about Waterloo. Enjoy!

At The Highest Levels Of Government ...

... people like Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman continue to distinguish themselves.

The Dick has been in the news lately for some of his statements and actions. Not that that's anything new - I mean, we're talking about the man who said "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" (March 16, 2003) and "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." (June 20, 2005). Yes, he has indeed proven to be prescient, hasn't he? Now, regarding global warming, he's denying that humans are responsible for the temperature rise over the past hundred years. (Rolling Stone has an excellent article on it here). And this past week it was revealed that Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years. When challenged, he attempted to eliminate the Information Security Oversight Office entirely. The Dick contends that the Vice President is above the law. I think it's time to recall another Cheney quote: "There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve." And our resolve is that Dick must go home!

The other star of the week is Senator "Smokin' Joe" Lieberman. I think the term must refer to the drugs he's ingesting. Lieberman is advocating air strikes on Iran in retaliation for their providing weapons and support to Iraqi insurgents. Has he been completely shielded from our recent ill-advised military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan? What in the world makes him think that air strikes on Iran will make them stop meddling in Iraq? Somehow I can't see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying "Oh, excuse me, I didn't realize this was so irritating to you. Please forgive me. I'll put a stop to it immediately". Hasn't Smokin' Joe learned that military action (especially in the middle east) begets an even bigger military action in response? The way to get Iran to cooperate is to TALK to them, not shoot them.

It's worthwhile to point out that neither the Dick nor Lieberman ever served in the military. As the Dick famously noted, "I had other priorities in the sixties than military service." (April 5, 1989). Is it a coincidence that the people most in favor of military action never served themselves? I think not.

Another Hot, Hot, Hot Day

This part of the country has been suffering from a drought for maybe four months. Our rainfall for the calendar year is just over half what it should be, and rainfall for the past few months has been maybe 25% or less. My yard has changed from green to a pale crunchy yellow. One benefit: I've only had to mow it twice in the past two months.

But it's hot during the day. My studio has windows that face southwest. BIG windows, seven feet tall and four feet wide, three of 'em. And on days like this, they turn the studio into an oven by about 3 in the afternoon.

Today, though, is Saturday, and Janis had a big list of things for me to do around the yard. I cut down two trees last weekend, and today I had to chop 'em up into little pieces and get 'em out of there. Then mow, weed the hill, and put in fertilizer spikes for the juniper bushes. By the time I got to the last two items, it was over 90 degrees and I was melting into my boots. Okay, so I'm a wuss. Time to call it a day, pour a big lemonade, and watch NASCAR on TV.

Last night we went to see the latest Terpsicorps performance. Terpsicorps is a dance company based in Asheville. They do two performances a year, one in June and one in August, and bring in professional dancers from around the country. I was never a big fan of dance performances, but one visit to a Terpsicorps show and I was sold. The show last night was no exception: imaginitive, exceptionally well done, and lots of fun.

Now we're off to a birthday party for a friend of ours. Hey, we're the social butterflies these days, aren't we?

Catching Up

It's been a while since I actually wrote anything for this blog. The reason: I've been up to my eyeballs in things to do, of course. But I've finally got a few minutes to bang away at this keyboard.

For several weeks, I was working on a painting for the Long Leaf Opera in Chapel Hill, NC. This was for their world premiere of Strange Fruit, which was based on Lillian Smith's novel of the same name, which in turn took its title from the Billy Holiday song. Strange Fruit tells the story of a doomed interracial love affair in south Georgia in 1920. It's a dark and bloody tale. There is only one sign of hope in the whole story: the baby, born of the black woman and white man, who embodies the potential of all races to come together. The painting was unveiled at a reception at Bill Hester Fine Art in Chapel Hill yesterday (Sunday). The photo below is me with Erina Newkirk (left) and Charles Stanton (right), who played the lead roles in the opera. Erina and Charles sang a duet from the opera, and then Erina sang a solo lullaby directly to the baby in the painting. Erina and Charles have marvelous voices, and hearing them sing gave me chills.

Today I got a call from Bill Hester about the painting. He has an extremely interesting idea about a way it can be used to benefit a specific group. We're going to work on the idea more this week, and once we get something nailed down, I'll give you the details. Suffice it to say for now that I'm really excited!

Last weekend (June 9 & 10) was the Studio Stroll. We made some changes this year that seem to have brought out a lot of new people. I had a lot more visitors to my studio this year than ever before, a great many of them from out of town (or even out of the country!). My paintings generally get a strong (and positive) reaction, but since they're edgy, they get very few sales. I mean, can you imagine somebody actually wanting to part with serious money in order to hang a satirical picture of George Bush over their sofa? Neither can I. But I view these Strolls as an outreach program, to show people that "art" in Asheville doesn't always mean beautiful landscapes or crafts. And in this, I seem to be successful: I'm getting more and more people showing up who are actually looking for me. Quite enjoyable. And, in fact, I really did make a few sales that weekend. So I came away very happy.

Yesterday, Janis and I drove down to Chapel Hill for the reception. We checked into the La Quinta in southeast Durham, just a few miles from the gallery. We like La Quinta's because they take pets and we always travel with our two dogs. This one was no exception: a really nice place, very clean, and staffed by friendly, courteous, and very responsive people. We'll definitely stay there again.

Not so nice was the Red Lobster next door. We went over there to have a quick dinner just after 5 pm. We got up and left, without ever getting our order, almost an hour later. Completely unsatisfactory. It's been many years since we've been in a Red Lobster, and it looks like it'll be many many years before we go back!

Learning Early

Here's my grandson, getting an important lesson from his old man. Damn, I'm proud of him!

The Grandson

Jackson went to his first baseball game yesterday. His team, the San Diego Padres, won. I guess Jacks is their good-luck charm! And take a look at the bottom half of the big screen behind him ... yes, that's Jacks, getting his image beamed to the whole stadium.

Studio Developments

I had a monkey wrench thrown into the development of a new painting this week. Won't go into the details, but it really upset me. In talking it over with several different people, and in mulling it over while walking the dogs (always a very productive time - if not for me, then at least for the dogs), I realized something. I've been making very angry paintings for the past several years. And it comes from a very deep place.

Some of you (from among the three people in the world who read this) are probably saying, "well, DUHH!". My "Bush League" series of paintings are satire. And what is satire if not anger with wit? I knew that going in, but kinda lost sight of it. Actually, I started the series specifically because I was pissed off at Bush and his Republican allies. My previous series of paintings (not on my web site anymore) was an unfocused bit of navel-gazing, and I needed to find a way to tap into something deeper. My anger at Bush was the key. So out came a series of satirical political paintings. After a year or so, I started the "Meditation on War" series. I wanted to work on something less politically partisan but that still tapped into some deep feelings. And most of those deep feelings were anger: at leaders who send young people off to die for no good reason, at events that kill people and destroy cities, at all the waste.

Seems strange coming from a retired naval officer, doesn't it? Well, there it is. I believe in the military. It was a great life for me. But as a great general once said, the purpose of a military is to kill people and break things. Unfortunately, sometimes military force is necessary, like in World War II, Korea, Desert Storm, and Afghanistan. But sometimes that force is used stupidly, like Bush's adventurism in Iraq. And that makes me angry.

I don't know yet how this new (to me) revelation will affect my work. Maybe there won't be anything that would be visible to a neutral viewer. But I'm already looking at my work in a different way. Anger is a great emotion to capture in art. I think in my case it was getting to be too much.

Kakistocracy

We were watching the spelling bee finals on TV tonight and learned a new word. A young girl informed us that a "kakistocracy" is a government by the worst persons possible.

So that's what Bush has been running all this time!

Memorial Day

In memory of all those soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who never came home.

New Painting Revisited

Last month, I posted a picture of a new painting, called "The Soccer Game". I was a bit premature. (My wife says I'm premature in other things, too, but let's not go there). The picture was of five boys playing soccer in front of a war-torn building, and was in the April 17th post if you want to go take a look at it.


I went back and revised it. The reason was that the five boys competed for attention with the bullet-blasted wall, and there wasn't a single center of interest. It was like I couldn't make up my mind: which was more important pictorally, the wall or the kids? So I painted out four of the five boys. Now it feels in harmony. The wall is the dominant feature: it tells the real story of what happened there. The boy is in a supporting role, telling about how life is returning. Actually, the weeds are in a supporting role, too: they say that the fighting has been over for a while.


So here's the new version:

Stupid Criminals Department

I was talking with somebody today about, of all things, credit-card fraud. I don't have a clue how that got started. I was telling the young lady about how our American Express cards were compromised once. She told me that a friend of hers recently had her debit card information stolen. It didn't take the police long to figure out who did it, though: the guy used it to pay his income taxes!

Political Developments

It's been a while since I last posted, and since then there have been a number of interesting political developments that I just have to comment on.

Paul Wolfowitz finally resigned today. Hurray! Here's a guy who was one of the most important people in crafting our insanely stupid war with Iraq. He was rewarded for this unbelievable blunder with the post of President of the World Bank. And promptly showed his true colors by giving his girlfriend a hefty pay raise. So now he's out and whining about it. He ought to consider himself lucky that he's not on trial as a war criminal in the Hague.

Alberto Gonzalez is holding on to his job for the time being. George Bush is standing by his man in true Bush fashion: no matter how incompetent his appointee is, and how flagrant his abuses, George can't admit he chose the wrong guy for the job. "You're doing a heckuva job, Gonzo!" Bush is probably the only man in Washington more incompetent than Gonzalez at the moment. (Some would say Cheney is, but I think Cheney is criminally inept, not incompetent.) We need to keep the pressure on for Gonzo's resignation. He needs to become a civilian, just like the eight attorneys he fired for political reasons.

I just read where James Dobson is threatening to sit out the next election if Rudy Giuliani is the Republican nominee. That's wonderful news for the Democrats. Dobson is the founder and co-chair of the Focus on the Family right-wing religious group. He endorsed Bush in 2004, which helped Bush retain his throne. Given the fact that the Iraq war was already a major catastrophe by then, and that Bush was clearly a dweeb of the first order, that doesn't say a whole lot about Dobson, now, does it? So if the Republicans nominate a moderate, then Dobson will take his voters and go home. Great! Go!! Please, just go!! Now!!!

The Democrats and Republicans are still playing chicken with the Iraq funding bill. I suppose it had to come sometime, as Bush just cannot have a blank check forever. But the way this is playing out is a disaster. I saw this sort of thing happen before, and as a military guy who had to make do with inadequate funding while the elephants danced in Washington, I experienced the negative effect that these shenanigans have. Congress needs to provide all the support that General Petraeus (the guy in charge of the war) asks for. Petraeus is a straight shooter and will tell us if the surge is working or not.

I'm extremely worried about a possible war with Iran. Bush doesn't seem to know how to talk with people who aren't fully on his side - he's a divider, not a uniter - and Iran hasn't been fully on "our" side since George was doing heavy drugs. But now Bush has created all the elements of another Tonkin Gulf fiasco (this was the incident where the North Vietnamese were reported to have attacked a couple of our destroyers, causing us to go into a full-scale war there ... and the event never really happened). And all we need now is some trigger-happy Iranian border guard to fire a pistol at an American ship and we've got another stupid war on our hands. During the Cold War, neither the US nor the Soviet Union really wanted a war, so they set up hot lines and other means of communication to make sure one didn't happen. George has refused to do any of that. He seems to be itching for yet another war.

Not all of my rants are negative. I think that Robert Gates has been doing a great job as Secretary of Defense. Now, granted, the bar was set exceptionally low by his predecessor (some would say it was set in negative territory), but Gates has proven himself willing and able to make difficult decisions, move fast when necessary, and work well with the military leaders. General Petraeus has been great in probably the worst job in the military right now. And Admiral Fallon, the guy in charge of Central Command, is proving himself to be more than up to his impossible task. The fact that we're not at war with Iran (yet) is due more to Admiral Fallon than that idiot in the White House.

Awright, awright, I'll shut up now. Maybe next time I'll talk about something more positive than politics. This stuff just gets my dander up, that's all.

Artistic Influences

I'm gonna take a break from my political ranting and talk about some of my artistic influences instead (okay, I hear all that cheering, knock it off already). I was asked the other day about where my influences came from, and why I paint the kind of things I do.


My earliest influence was Norman Rockwell. As a kid, I thought he was the best artist who ever lived. He could tell a story that you would understand right away, and all the people and objects were depicted with such realism that you could almost feel them. I wanted to do that kind of painting when I grew up. But when I did grow up, I realized Rockwell's limitations. He was a sentimental illustrator - his images were sappy, idealized versions of a bygone America that never really existed. He almost never engaged in any subject with any meat to it, and even when he did, there wasn't much to it. For example, he did a painting about freedom of speech. An important topic and technically well done, but in his version, it just showed a guy standing up and talking, with other people respectfully listening. There's no emotional involvement by the viewer, no tension, no conflict. Pretty dull.

Another early influence was Edward Hopper. His paintings had a lonely feel to them. I think a lot of people can relate to that, particularly teenagers like me, who felt like nobody in the world understood them. (Now I know that's just a normal part of being a teenager, but then it was a major trauma). When I first saw this painting, Early Sunday Morning, it about blew me away. Here was a painting that had a palpable feel to it. It's about people, but there aren't any people visible - just the traces of things they touched. It's a narrative that isn't completely spelled out, that requires the viewer to fill in a lot of it. And each viewer will come up with a different story. Of course, as a teen, I went completely overboard, and thought Hopper was the greatest painter who ever lived. But later, when I really studied his paintings, I found out that he, too, had limitations. Hopper's paintings missed the mark more often than they hit it. Some paintings were unbelieveably strong, while others were just poorly done. Still, his work resonated with me.

Later, I discovered Thomas Hart Benton. Now Benton is often derided these days as little more than an illustrator or genre painter, but an artist can learn a lot from studying his paintings. Benton really knew how to construct a painting. This one is titled The Sources of Country Music. It's a very dynamic composition. Everything is tied into everything else. It swoops and swirls, and your eye moves around it easily in a smooth rhythm. If you imagine leaving a trail of paint behind your eye movement, you'll recognize the painting style of one of Benton's most famous students: Jackson Pollack. Benton told illustrative stories, Pollack worked with paint, but the structure and movement in both is very similar.

While a student at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, I discovered two painters who had a big effect on me. One was Alice Neel, the other Lucien Freud. Both focus on the figure and both let the individuality of their subjects shine through.


Neel uses a very loose approach, starting with an underdrawing (often in ultramarine blue!) and then building up from that. She doesn't worry too much about fine finish: she's after the ephemera of personality and the moment. Neel's subjects are real people, not idealized or generic.



Lucien Freud's work is much more finished. Like Neel, you can see the results of the process: thick paint, brushstrokes, changes, decisions made and unmade. I get the feeling that Freud is more concerned about his own thoughts and feelings than he is about his subject's, but his subjects are still very real people. For a long time I consciously copied many aspects of his style; actually, I think that now I may be going back toward it again. For me, it's vital that a painting look like a painting, with brush strokes and paint in themselves being as important as the thing they depict. If you're going to hide the painting process and try for a photorealistic image, you may as well just take your photo to WalMart and blow it up.






A more contemporary artist who has had a significant influence on me is Jerome Witkin. He works with serious subjects: rape, the Holocaust, religion, the Kennedy assassination, and more. His paintings have all the structure of Benton's work, but in a more subtle yet solid manner. His people are normal people caught up in events outside their control. The paintings are stories that don't tell you everything. I really respond to Witkin's work on a gut level. A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to spend three days working with him in his studio and learned a tremendous amount. He's a wonderful artist and a supremely kind and gracious individual.




Last, a problematic artist is Odd Nerdrum. His paintings have an "ohmigawd" element to them. Nerdrum paints like Rembrandt, but his subjects come from deep in the psyche. Lately I've been studying his paintings as closely as I can from a big thick brick of a book, looking at how he builds them up. Nerdrum uses layers on layers, dragging paint over the top, scraping it down, and eventually creates a deep image that's rich in texture. I've been trying to learn the technique, but it seems to bog me down - in focusing on surface texture, I'm losing the "moment" that Neel and Freud are so good at capturing. My paintings are starting to look static and almost overworked. For some of them, the "static" element is fine - these are the paintings of the destruction in Bosnia, which are quiet and contemplative, and which seem to suit this style. I can't seem to get it to work with figures. I don't know yet if I'll stay with this, or go back to the looser style.

This note has gone on long enough. I wanted to get this down before the thoughts left me, and now my brain is empty.

Odd Technology

We have a small portable DVD player. Little bitty thing, smaller than a laptop computer. It works well, but the screen has to be in exactly the right position to be seen clearly, and if you're more than about two feet away, you won't be able to see anything. But the thing that gets me is that all the controls that mean anything are on a remote control that's about the size of a credit card. So my question is, if you can't see the screen if you're more than two feet away, why in hell do you need a remote control??

George Tenet

George Tenet, the former head of the CIA, has a new book coming out, and he's making the rounds of the talk shows to plug it. Tonight he was on 60 Minutes. As a retired Navy cryptologist, I'm very interested in things like that and made it a point to watch.

Tenet made a very passionate case that the CIA was wrongly accused of producing inaccurate intelligence that led to the current war. He made a strong case that war with Iraq was in the planning stages since at least Sept 12, 2001, and that the Bush administration (not Bush himself, evidently) used him as a scapegoat when their war started going wrong. Tenet was pretty convincing.

But there's another side of the story. CNN has published a letter that was written and signed by six former CIA officials that takes Tenet to task for the inaccuracies in his book. Specifically:
- Tenet was "a willing participant in a poorly considered policy to start an unnecessary war";
- Tenet signed a National Intelligence Estimate (this is the Big Thing: an official pronouncement of the best thinking in the entire national intelligence system) that was in line with groundless statements by Dick Cheney and at odds with existing CIA intelligence;
- Tenet testified before Congress that Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda even though the CIA had hard evidence that they didn't;
- Tenet helped the Administration bully analysts into saying the things that supported the Administration's preconceived ideas;
- And a lot more. Most entertainingly, it calls Tenet "the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community--a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality."

You can read the full text of the letter here. It's well worth the time.

The Politics of Iraq

This week, the media has been all abuzz about the supplemental spending bill that funds the Iraq war but sets a timeline for pulling out, and Bush's promise to veto it. Actually, I think both sides are on the wrong track.

First, Congress should not set in stone a withdrawal date, particularly since it just unanimously confirmed General Petraeus to go clean the place up. The General is a smart man and a straight shooter (unlike the Republican administration in general). The troops he's getting aren't all there yet, and he's right to ask for time to do the job. When he says he'll know by mid August whether the buildup is working or not, and will tell Congress his views regardless of political pressures, I believe him. If the Dems are really serious about this, they wouldn't set a withdrawal timeline until after General Petraeus says that the buildup isn't working.

But no, the Democratic leadership is hell-bent on pulling out, regardless. Actually, Congress under the Democrats is no better at passing clean laws than Congress under the Republicans. The Dems promised to clean up the pork, but this bill is just loaded with it. Oink, oink: the sound a Senator or Congressman makes, regardless of political affiliation.

On the other side, we have a chickenshit chickenhawk for President. Here's a guy who skipped out on his own military service, surrounded by lots of other guys who skipped out on THEIR military service, who has no problem whatsoever in sending our young men and women off to be killed or hideously maimed in a really stupid stupid stupid war. When he says he "carefully considered" whether to invade Iraq, he's lying through his teeth. The bastard knew long before he was even elected that he would invade Iraq, he was just looking for some kind of excuse. He didn't need, and didn't want, any evidence one way or the other. This draft dodger still talks about "victory" in Iraq, even though even General Petraeus acknowledges that we can't "win" this war. It's not our decision. We "won" the military conflict by defeating the Iraqi army. Everything since then is a civil war and we can't impose our will by military force. All we can do is give the corrupt Iraqi government some time to get their collective act together and start acting like a government. If they don't step up to the plate, we can't "win" Bush's war even if we had a million troops in country.

Don't even get me started on Cheney.

So why do I still support the buildup? The "Pottery Barn" rule: we broke it, we should try to fix it. There is still a tiny chance that the incompetent crooks in the Iraqi government might start acting like statesmen instead of a cabal of organized crime families. So I say, give 'em till the middle of August. If they aren't seriously doing their job by then, pull our troops out as fast as humanly possible. And none of this "gradual redeployment" bullshit, either. We're in, or we're out.

Sleepytime

So, yes, I'm a grandfather now, and yes, I have a collection of about 80 photos from the tyke's first week on earth. Most will sit in the photo folder and be coo'd over by Janis. This one, though, I had to share. (The photo is by the mom, Julie Kane, so if you're going to copy it and use it somewhere else, please give her the photo credit!)

New Painting

I've finished a new painting. This one is titled "The Soccer Game" (oil on canvas, 24" x 30"). It's based on my experiences in Sarajevo in 1996. I saw kids resuming their lives as kids, playing soccer and other games, in the shadow of buildings destroyed in the fighting. It's my homage to kids who are caught in the middle of wars everywhere.

We're Grandparents!

Jackson Charles Kane (aka "Jacks") was born tonight just after 9 pm EST. He weighed in at 8 lbs 13 oz. His daddy had the cell phone on, so Janis and I got to hear his first cry. He's got a good set of lungs, too! And with the miracles of modern camera cell phones, this photo was taken just moments after his arrival, transmitted across the country, forwarded to our home computer, then uploaded to a server in God knows where, so everybody in the world can share in the miracle!

Jacks already has a large selection of stuffed animals to cuddle up to, courtesy Janis (aka "Granny Ro". Something tells me his collection is going to grow in the very near future ...

I never had kids of my own, so I'm jumping straight into grandpappyhood. It's quite the thrill.

Hypocrisy and the Imus Scandal

Don Imus got fired yesterday for his racist and stupid comments on the Rutgers womens' basketball team. After a week or so of his groveling before the whole world, CBS dumped him.

Frankly, I'm pissed off. I never liked Imus and think shows like his are stupid. But when you spend several hours every day talking unscripted before a huge audience, and your job is to push the envelope, sometimes you're going to step over the line. Imus certainly did in this case. And he did the right thing: he immediately and profusely apologized. Today the Rutgers team accepted his apology. CBS and NBC had previously announced a two-week suspension. Sounds like the case should be closed.

But NOOOOO!! The "Reverend" Al Sharpton and the "Reverend" Jesse Jackson raised holy hell. These two guys behaved in a totally un-Christianlike manner. Whatever happened to the concept of forgiveness? Instead of acting according to their alleged faith, they acted more like wolves on the scent of blood. They literally hounded the networks into firing Imus. Seemed like every time I turned on the news, there were Sharpton and Jackson, solemnly making statements about how offensive it all was.

Just a few minutes ago, I came out of the post office. There was a black guy in a car on the street playing some rap music on his stereo. The windows were literally rattling for yards around (scared the hell out of my dogs, too) while every other word out of the performer's mouth was "niggah", "bitch", and "ho". THAT is offensive, my friends. I don't want to listen to crap like that, and Imus can lose his job for using terms like those, but rappers get rich off the same damn words.

So Jesse and Al, where the hell is your solemn anger over the offensiveness of black rap music? If it's offensive for Imus to use those terms, it's offensive for rappers, too. "Niggah" is "niggah", I don't care whose mouth it comes out of. And if you say otherwise, you're a bald-faced lying hypocrite.

Priorities in the News?

For the past couple of days, it seems like all I hear from the news channels are stories about (1) Anna Nicole Smith and (2) Don Imus. This is ridiculous! Is a bimbo with big tits, no brain, and loose morals, and a shock jock who said (gasp) something shocking really more important than Iraq, Iran, Darfur, or global warming? Apparently so. I took the dogs for a walk this morning, and when I left, CNN was talking about Anna Nicole. When I came back 20 minutes later, CNN was talking about (you guessed it) Anna Nicole. The next story was Don Imus. The next sound was a "click" as I turned the TV off ... it was better than throwing a brick through the screen, at any rate.

I thought news channels were for news. If I wanted the dirt on celebrities, I'd watch E! or read People or something.

Children of Men

We watched the movie "Children of Men" this past weekend. It was a supremely powerful movie. There was a lot that we missed, though, so on Sunday I watched it again. This time I caught a lot of things that had blown by me the first time, and everything hung together. In fact, I thought it was even more powerful the second time around.

"Children of Men" is an apocalyptic movie set in 2027. All women on earth have been sterile for about 18 years, and nobody knows why. Civilization has collapsed everywhere, with only Britain still maintaining the facade. A man in London is thrust against his will into helping a refugee woman escape to something called the "Human Project" ... nobody really knows what it is, except that it's something far off, mysterious, and the only hope. As it turns out, this refugee woman is pregnant - the first pregnancy in almost two decades. The two are caught between the government and a rebel force, both of which would use the pregnancy for their own ends.

"Children of Men" is exceptionally well made, beautifully shot, powerfully scripted, and extremely intense. It was well worth two viewings this past weekend and I'd see it again in a heartbeat.

If It's April, It Must Be ... Snowing?

Just a few days ago, we were having record high temperatures. I was grumbling that I'd have to spend all day Saturday (today) mowing the lawn. Yessir, that's the way it was just a few days ago.

Woke up this morning to almost 3" of snow on the ground.

Guess I don't need to mow the lawn today.

Pelosi's Visit to Syria

It's a sad state of affairs when the Speaker of the House is doing more to promote peace in the Middle East than the President is. Nancy Pelosi is doing what the Bush administration should've done years ago: open a dialogue with Syria. As Lee Hamilton noted, if you've got a problem with somebody, you talk with them and try to find a solution. No talk, no solution.

Actually, Bush is "all talk, no solution". But that's because he's only talking to his right-wing base, not to anybody who really matters.

My Dogs Are Smart

Yesterday, I was down in Hendersonville. I was in the gallery talking to the owner, while my two dogs kept watch over the place. My dogs are little Shih Tzu's. They're sweet little girls, but they normally don't like other dogs at all. Right outside the gallery, however, there was a German Shepard. It was sitting by the bench while its owner was playing a guitar and singing. For some reason, my two dogs were perfectly cool with this. They just sat there and looked out the window and completely ignored the German Shepard.

But when a Fox News van drove by, they went nuts! They did not like it, and they wanted it gone, NOW!

So, evidently, my dogs are smarter than several million supposedly intelligent Americans. Good on 'em!

B.B. King

Janis and I went to see B.B. King the other night. He's on tour for about the gazillionth time. It's always a treat to see a living legend, and BB's one of the best. He's 81, as he told us several times, with a body that doesn't work at all like it used to. Still, he could belt out some hard-ass blues with a voice that's as rich and strong as it ever was. His guitar playing is phenomenal - it seems so effortless, but that's what comes from 70 years of practice. Combine the voice and guitar, and you have music that is incredibly rich and deep.

BB is obviously having the time of his life. What a kind and gracious man, very gentle, but still with the fire in his belly .... just not as wild a fire as it once was.

Go see him if you can. While you can.

Studio News

This past weekend I had a long road trip. I drove down to the Durham/Chapel Hill/Raleigh area on Friday. On Saturday, I checked out the art galleries to see if any might be interested in carrying my work. Then it was on to Fayetteville for the opening of their juried art show, which has one of my paintings. Finally, it was another long trip home on Sunday.

As it turned out, the weekend was a big success. On Saturday I went to four galleries and found one that wants to work with me. It's Bill Hester Fine Art, located on the main drag in downtown Chapel Hill, right by the university. Bill's an interesting guy, with some very definite ideas about art which he isn't the least bit shy about sharing with you. But he's also a very straightforward businessman, which counts for a lot in my book, especially after some of the gallery owners I've dealt with over the years. Anyway, I'm very excited about working with him. Bill wants to start with six of my paintings, three from the "Meditation on War" series and three from the "Old Times" series. He'll get 'em at the end of the month.

After visiting with Bill, I headed down to Fayetteville. The Museum's show is a big event in the NC art world. They had nearly 300 entries, selected 46, and my painting "Lament" was awarded Second Place in the show.

So all in all, the weekend was a success. Now it's Wednesday and I'm almost back to a normal schedule. I'm getting the six paintings ready to go to Chapel Hill, and meanwhile have two more on the easel. Too much to do, of course, but hey, I'm pretty happy!

Spring Has Sprung

The title line comes from a poem that I saw when I was a kid:

Spring has sprung,
the grass has riz.
I wonder where
the flowers is?

Well, it certainly has sprung. The weather has been warm. Tonight I saw a couple of frogs hopping across the road. The weeds in my yard are starting to sprout. Fruit trees are starting to bloom, birds are pooping on my truck, and hundreds of jihadi bugs are suicide-bombing my windshield.

I love it!

I'm not a fan of cold weather. Haven't been since I was in the third or fourth grade. Cold weather is like death. But spring, ahh, spring is great! The earth starts stirring again. Things that looked dead are suddenly alive. It's warm enough for me to break out the shorts and sandals again. My dogs (finally) want to go outside again and maybe chase the cows through the forest. (My dogs are two 13-pound Shih Tzu's ... the site of them chasing a herd of 2000-pound cows through the woods is quite startling).

Okay, so it's gonna be a bit colder for the next couple of days. Big deal, spring is just about here, and I'm happy!

At least until I have to start mowing the lawn again ...

Alberto Gonzales Should Be Fired

There's a lot of news coming out of the Justice Department over the past few days and none of it is good. For starters, there are the eight federal attorneys who were fired last fall. The reasons are still a bit murky at this point, but it's clear that this was a political move. That is actually legal, since the attorneys serve "at the pleasure of the President". But legal isn't always right, and some of the moves were clearly payback for doing their jobs too zealously. An example is the attorney who successfully prosecuted Republican representative "Duke" Cunningham, who was convicted of bribery last year. The eight firings got the attention of Congress, and Tuesday all eight testified before a Senate committee. Then the Justice Department, which had threatened retaliation if the eight testified, made good on their threat, and publicly embarrassed each of the attorneys with personal details as the ostensible reasons for their firing.

And if that wasn't bad enough, today comes news that the FBI has grossly abused their snooping powers under the Patriot Act. They've collected far more personal information than they've previously admitted, they routinely collect information without any oversight whatsoever, and more than half of their snoops have been against American citizens. These are the very things that Gonzales assured Congress (during the Patriot Act hearings last year) weren't being done.

So now we have an Attorney General who uses his office for partisan political maneuvers, intimidates federal attorneys, abuses the authority granted by Congress, and lies about what he and his people are doing. Am I surprised? Actually, I've just been waiting for this to happen. When Bush & Co. were brow-beating Congress into giving them extraordinary powers, it was clearly just a matter of time before the public found out what was really going on. Every time an administration thinks it's above the law, they prove that they should never be. As Nixon found out, for example. Now the chickens have come home to roost.

Gonzales has blown what little credibility he had as an Attorney General. He should be fired. Immediately.

The Walter Reed Scandal

Today, every news channel is covering the ongoing Walter Reed scandal 24/7. This is the one in which wounded soldiers were stuffed away in decrepit housing and forced to find their own way through the bureaucratic maze. Two generals and the Army Chief of Staff have been fired, and rightfully so. They were in charge, it happened on their watch, and they bear responsibility. Congress is falling all over itself to see how many investigations it can launch.

But Congress bears some responsibility, too. The reason: Base Realingment and Closure Commission, or BRAC. Congress created BRAC to do what it wasn't capable of doing: making decisions about which bases to close. A few years ago, BRAC decided that Walter Reed should be closed and its functions merged into Bethesda Naval Hospital. That made sense except for an ugly little thing called "war", which left Walter Reed struggling along on crutches. The hospital was unable to keep up with the workload and unable to get resources from the Army and Congress. Since it was slated to close, the brass and Congress reasoned, why spend money on infrastructure upkeep? So our wounded vets were told to tough it out in dank mold-ridden buildings. Donald Rumsfeld would probably have approved.

So the Army, the Bush administration, and Congress bear responsibility for the squalid conditions.

But it's the Army that's responsible for the deplorable bureaucratic jungle they created. Having worked in bureaucracies, I know it's easy for them to spin out of control and take on lives of their own, where "procedures" trump "people". But it doesn't have to happen. A number of years ago, the military was awash in something called "total quality", or TQ for short. TQ focused on procedure to determine better ways of doing business. I thought the way the military implemented it was a pain in the keister, but it had a lot of value.

Apparently, the Army doesn't care about quality any more. Nor its people.

You don't like it? Fill out this complaint form in triplicate, email it to the Lost Cause Department, and somebody will get back to you. Maybe.

Ann Coulter

Ann's at it again. Now she has called John Edwards a "faggot". The woman is the worst kind of leech: she makes her fame and fortune by saying the nastiest things about other people. There are lots of terms for people like her. Bloodsucker. Blonde trash. That unidentified slimy shit left on your shoe when you walk on all those worms washed up after a rainstorm. Yeah, that's her. A couple of years ago, after she called veterans like me "traitors" for opposing the war (ummm, Ann, exactly how much time did you spend in the service of your country? Oh, right: none.), I painted a picture about her entitled "Ann's Slander". It's just as appropriate today. And it'll probably be just as appropriate in ten years.

The Web Has A Life Of Its Own

Just about all of us have had an experience with something going out in email, or being posted on the web, and having it take on a life of its own. (If you haven't, you will ... or maybe you just don't know about it yet!) I just had it reinforced.

A week ago, I sent out an email that announced some news from my art studio. It was pretty benign: I'm going to have paintings in three juried shows over the next two months, plus two solo shows this fall. So I wrote up a nice little blurb and sent it out to people on my email list. And promptly forgot about it.

So just a few minutes ago, I googled myself to see what, if anything, was new in my world. I found out that the local newspaper (Asheville Citizen-Times) ran my email as a news article almost verbatim. Pretty cool! And then I found that there were at least twelve other sites (count 'em, 12) that had the Citizen-Times article on their pages as well! Some of them seemed to make sense: they're local news sites or something. Others, I can't figure out what the hell they are. And some look downright strange. It was a strange experience to read my own newsgram on somebody else's really weird site. (By "weird", I don't mean goth or anything like that. I just mean that there doesn't seem to be any rationale behind the site at all. Just a collection of random bits of information and links.)

I also found several recent notices that a show of my prints is going on at a local business. What's really interesting is that the show never happened. When I went to install it, I found out that the company had gone out of business. So I took my prints and went home, considering myself extremely fortunate to have found out before the works were hung. A notice of the show's cancellation went out to local newspapers, but it doesn't seem to matter to these web sites. According to them, my prints are still hanging there, months after the place closed up.

So be careful what you post - it just might come back to haunt you!

The Cult of Celebrity

I was watching CBS's Sunday Morning today. It's a wonderful show, slow-paced, that takes a deeper look at things than is typical of television. Since tonight is the Academy Awards, the show focused on the theme of the Oscars.

One selection in particular got me to thinking. It was about how celebrity is being packaged and marketed. A new fragrance, for example, would have a difficult future on its own, but if a Big Name lends his/her name to it, it'll probably be an instant success. Puff Daddy or P Diddley or whatever the hell his name is this week was cited as an example.

Yes, celebrities have always been used to market stuff, but now it seems they're taking over the whole process. Instead of hawking somebody else's wares, they're making and hawking the stuff themselves. And getting insanely rich in the process.

Which gets me to the core issue. Why do we think something that's marketed by a famous personality is better than something marketed by somebody else? Just because a guy is pretty good at acting in movies doesn't mean he knows squat about designing jeans. Or anything else. But we accept the idea that this guy is cool and stylish and we want to be like him and so we buy stuff with his name on it, even if the other brand is made better and fits better. Still, it's no big deal, right?

Well, yes, it is. It's much the same, really, as Wal-Mart and Target and K-Mart crowding out the mom-and-pop stores across the country (ooops, I mean, across the world). It's Big Corporations elbowing out the little guys, even if the little guys have better products. I think people just go with the Big Name because it makes their decision-making much easier. Instead of trying on several different brands of jeans to see which ones fit best and are made best, they'll buy the ones that have the Famous Person's name. Instant cachet and much simpler, too.

This has been going on for years in the retail and corporate worlds, and I can't say it's all a bad thing. For example, I like books, and a typical Borders has a much better selection than a typical mom & pop bookstore. But that's a qualitative difference. Marketing based on just celebrity names is what irks me.

Celebrity marketing extends beyond retail into art. Remember when John Lennon's drawings were exhibited, celebrated, and sold several years ago? His music was great, but his drawings were only marginal. Great talent in one area doesn't necessarily translate to great talent in another. Still, these works took in a lot of money simply because of the Lennon name. And a lot of that money might have gone to living artists who are, in fact, much better visual artists than Lennon ever was.

That, to me, is the problem: People buying Big Names just because of the name, while ignoring the Little Names who may, in fact, be more capable and deserving.

My examples so far have been of Big Names moving into areas outside their expertise. Actually, it happens within their areas of expertise as well. Last time I went to New York, for example, I went to a lot of galleries. I saw some work by some of the current hot artists, work that was selling way way way into the six digits or more. And almost every bit of it left me cold, even work by artists I'd admired in the magazines. In person, these works seemed sloppy, or calculated, or didn't have anything to say, or whatever. One famous artist's work was rather obviously painted from projected photographs.

On the flip side, I saw work by artists that I'd never heard of that just knocked me out. Whether in subject matter, or technique, or composition, whatever the case, it was the work by the no-names that bowled me over.

So my point is this: why all this fuss over the Big Names when there are so many good Little Names around? Especially when the Little Names are often even better? Is a major league baseball game really that much better than a minor league one? Is Britney Spears really a better singer than someone in your local bar? Is an Oscar-nominated actor really better than a guy in an off-Broadway production?

I think there's no doubt that for somebody to get to be a Big Name in their profession, they're almost always pretty good. But that recognition shouldn't transfer to other areas unless they prove their abilities there, too. In the meantime, there are a lot of Little Names out there who are just as good, if not better, than the Big Names.

And I think that a lot of the Big Names know it.

Nixon vs. Bush

I just watched a History Channel show about Richard Nixon. It brought back a lot of memories that I'd completely forgotten. I guess time will do that to you. The first time I could vote in a presidential election was in 1972, and having been raised in a Republican household, I voted for Nixon. I remember wondering what all the fuss was about something called "Watergate". I remember learning that the President really was a crook. And I remember watching Nixon's resignation speech on TV as if it was yesterday.

I see a lot of bumper stickers these days that say things like "Bush: Worst President Ever". Umm, no. Nixon was. George is pretty bad, but he's not in Nixon's league. Nixon was both brilliant and sick, driven and insecure, incredibly accomplished and an incredible failure. Bush is just a sloppy failure.

PlameGate

The news from "Scooter" Libby's trial is disgusting. As of today, it's been confirmed that Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Richard Armitage, plus as-yet-unidentified others, were spreading the word in 2003 that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. Since she was an undercover agent, that makes Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Armitage, plus the others, criminals. Where is the outrage?

The Fox-news-fans of the right try to excuse the action, saying that since she was not in a covert position at the time, she wasn't undercover. That's bull. Once undercover, ALWAYS undercover. Once her identity was in the press, it's known that governments who had anything to do with her, in any role, at any time, took a look at that time period and reviewed what she did, where she did it, and (most importantly), who she dealt with. The CIA won't comment on how many contacts have been rounded up, but I bet there were quite a few. And how many of those contacts lost their lives because of it?

So these a**holes in the highest level of the Bush administration deliberately compromised CIA assets, and probably got people killed, all in a vindictive effort to get back at somebody who was telling the truth.

Yeah, boy, that's some mighty fine leadership we have in the White House.

IG Report

Heard the news today about the Pentagon's Inspector General report on pre-war intelligence. They slammed an office run by a guy named David Feith, who was then the Pentagon's policy director, saying that he "took 'inappropriate' actions in advancing conclusions on al Qaeda connections not backed up by the nation's intelligence agencies" (quote from CNN). In other words, he distorted intelligence reports to make 'em say things they were never meant to say. Like that there was a link between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.

I've been saying since day one that there was no link. I was a Navy cryptologic officer until late 1999, and I read the intel boards every day. And it was clear even then that there was no love lost between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Bin Laden was (is) a religious zealot intent on destroying everything that conflicts with his version of reality. And Hussein was just a thug, a Tony Soprano in charge of a whole country. Aside from the fact that they both lived in the same general area of the world, and they both were in conflict with us, there wasn't anything - any thing - to bring 'em together.

So it was clear to me that Bush and his cronies were either listening only to the neocon wackos like Feith, or they were neocon wackos themselves, and in either case, the truth about Iraq was getting trashed in order to rush this nation to war. The Republican-led Congress couldn't beat the drums loudly enough and the right wing in general couldn't call dissenters "traitors" fast enough. And when it was clear that the whole Iraq war was a sham built on shams, they sat on their asses and did nothing but cover it up. And cover up their own culpability.

Thank God that's changing. We need more investigations into how this great nation was royally screwed by Bush & Co. Those who were responsible for key screwups need to be held accountable. Like Scooter Libby, who's about to get prison time for his role in covering up his role in outing an undercover CIA officer. There are a lot of others who should be in line right behind him.

The point isn't vengeance. The point is to remind those in power, and those who put them there, that with power comes the responsibility to use it WISELY, not in pursuit of a radical ideology. It's this blind pursuit of the radical neocon pipe dream that has killed so many of our soldiers, spent so much of our capital, and split our nation.

Keep it in perspective ...

This is typically depressing time of year. It's icy cold outside, and I have to spend many days out of the studio and in front of this computer working on my taxes. Tedious work and it's always a downer to see that cash in doesn't match cash out. So down in the dumps I go.

Then I see a report on CNN about an astronaut who just wrecked her life and the lives of many people around her. She tossed a promising career into the trash can in a big, big, nationally embarrassing way. And suddenly my problems are tiny by comparison.

Taxes? Hmph! I can handle that!

"Victory" in Iraq?

It really gets my goat when I hear somebody on TV talking about "victory" in Iraq. Inevitably it's some Republican or other right-winger arguing a case for increased military activity. It's clear to me that they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Let's take a look at what "victory" means. My American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "final and complete defeat of the enemy in a military engagement." Now how does that apply to Iraq? Well, we achieved "victory" in 2003! We completely defeated Saddam's forces. Then we went from a military operation into something else. The problem was, we kept looking to our military to do all the things that somebody else should've been doing, like building a new Iraqi government, providing security, rebuilding infrastructure. They didn't do it, our military CAN'T do it, and Iraq is a hell-hole because of it.

"Victory" implies an organized, identifiable enemy. The people tearing Iraq apart are not a cohesive, organized group, and even Iraqis can't tell who's on what side. So who the hell are we fighting? And how the hell are we going to achieve "victory"? And just what IS "victory", anyway?

No, we can't achieve "victory" in Iraq. Maybe we can help quiet things down in Baghdad long enough for the insanely corrupt pig-headed criminals and warlords (otherwise known as the "Iraqi government") to get a hold on things. Maybe. It's a long shot. I still think that we need to try this one last time. If the Iraqi's fail, then it's time to cut our losses and leave.

But "victory"? That term can not apply here.

The Creative Process

This is the second try for this post ... I was almost done with it the first time, went to "preview", then hit the wrong button to back out and lost 20 minutes of thought ... I haaaate it when that happens!

Anyway, here goes. I've had several unrelated conversations lately with other artists about our creative processes. Funny how the same subject crops up repeatedly in a short period of time, isn't it? We were comparing notes about how we create our artworks. And we all do it in very different ways.

This is one of my newest paintings, Pleasantville. I was looking through an old family photo album some months ago and came across a picture of my family taken in 1964. For some reason it resonated with me ... didn't know why then nor now, but it did. A few days later, I had a vision of a painting based on that photo, only everybody would be wearing flak jackets and holding M16's. The painting developed over a period of several months, but the end result is essentially the same vision I had back at the very beginning. (So in case you're wondering: yes, that geeky kid on the left is me).

This is a classic example of how my paintings develop. I usually work on a series of related paintings; for the past two years I've been working on a series of political satire paintings, and for the past year I've also been working on one about war. This series gives my subconscious a framework to play with. Then I dump a lot of stuff into the framework: old photos, advertisements, news reports, conversations, "old master" artworks, you name it. And something magic happens. Somehow, all this stuff gets churned around and percolated or whatever metaphor you want to use, and then suddenly I have an image of a painting. It may take a short period of time or it may take weeks or months, but my subconcious always comes through. It's then up to my conscious mind to develop it into a full-blown painting.

I never really thought much about my subconscious before I became an artist. I would "trust my gut" on occasion, but didn't really put a lot of value on it. It was only later that I began to really appreciate what was going on in that vast black cavern. The art curriculum at UNC Asheville got me started on journaling, which has proven to be one of my most valuable tools. I don't use it as a diary; rather, I use it as a tool to get my conscious mind the hell out of the way, so I can have a direct dialog with that black cavern. When working on a painting, for example, I'll sit in front of it and stare, and let my pen record what's going on in my head. I can't direct my pen, I treat it like a tape recorder or something: just record what's there, don't interpret. This lets my subconscious (my "gut") do the talking. It'll tell me what needs to be fixed, what's working, where my attention needs to go next, and so forth. It's really amazing how well it works.

A friend of mine does some beautiful abstract paintings. Her method is entirely different. She starts a painting with almost random strokes: a little of this here, some of that there, maybe a slash going that way. Then she works with it to bring some things out, push others back, add, eliminate, move, until something tells her it's done. It's very intuitive. I can't work that way. I've tried, and it just isn't me. I'm a much more linear kind of guy and need a fairly specific idea to work with. By the same token, no way in hell could she do the kind of paintings I do.

One thing we both have experienced, though, relates to something Jackson Pollock once said about his process. "When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well." This applies to me, too, even though my work is far removed from his. Paintings are like children: you can only control them for a while, but sooner or later they begin to assert themselves and tell you what it is they want. Sometimes you have an easy give and take with them, sometimes you fight 'em to the bitter end, but you damn well better listen, or you'll wind up with a mess.

Chavez and Venezuela

In the past couple of days, the Venezuelan government granted Hugo Chavez the power to rule by decree. I (almost) can't believe that this is happening. The only other government that I'm aware of that voluntarily gave a man the power to rule by decree was Germany in the late '30's. How in the world can a group of elected leaders say to their people "We're so stupid and so incompetent that we're just going to give away YOUR power to a raving lunatic. Have a nice day!" Jeez, you'd think they'd have some bigger cojones than that. Even the guys who lost out to Hussein, Castro, and Kim Il-Jung did so at the point of a gun. But no, these losers in Venezuela just gave it away.

I see a trend here: the more oil a country has, the more wacko its leaders are ... unfortunately, that means that the people of the oil-rich country are usually abysmally poor because their wacko leaders are busily siphoning off all the riches. Chavez included.

Have a nice day, Venezuela.

Observation

Am I the only one to note that the Defense Department is now headed by a former top CIA guy, and the CIA is about to be headed by a former top military guy? And both were key figures in the regime of George Senior.

Actually, to go on record, I think the nomination of ADM McConnell to head the CIA is a good choice. I was at NSA during McConnell's tenure as Director and he was very good. He had a clear vision of where NSA needed to go, he communicated well with people at every level of the organization, and he wasn't afraid to knock heads when necessary. He's not a political animal, although he certainly understands how to use politics when necessary. He's stepping into one of the hardest jobs in government right now, but I think he'll do well. We ALL need him to do well.

Bush's Iraq Strategy

I've been speaking as loudly as I can for the past three years about the stupidity of George Bush and his neocon friends. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was one of the dumbest things that any President has ever done. Bush lied about his reasons for going to war and the Republican party has goose-stepped in unison behind him. But it has finally become clear to all, even Bush, that the strategy of "stay the course" is a complete failure. So this past week, he unveiled his new strategy for Iraq. And it comes as a huge suprise to all that know me - hell, even to ME - that I actually support the plan.

The reason is that, finally, Bush has articulated a clear and possibly achievable goal: calming down Baghdad long enough for the Iraqi leaders to get their acts together and start acting like a real government. And he's committed an increased number of troops to the mission. It's not the numbers that the experts have called for, but they're at least concentrated on one area and mission, not just thrown into the same old quagmire.

I don't think this plan has even a 50-50 chance of succeeding. It depends on too many things that can go seriously wrong:
- The Iraqi government starting to do its job.
- A reduction in the corruption that's siphoned off billions of OUR dollars.
- The Iraqi military and (especially) the police becoming at least marginally effective.
- The Sunni and Shi'ite militias stepping back from their levels of violence.
- Iran and Syria not stirring the pot too much.
- No more American scandals like Abu Ghraib or Haditha.
- George Bush staying focused on the problem.

All that being said, I think this plan does have a small chance of moving the country forward, which is something that neither Bush's previous strategy nor the Iraq Study Group's plan featured.

Bush talks about this being a long-term commitment. I don't think so. We'll know in six months whether progress is really being made. If Baghdad's quieter by late June, and if the Iraqi government is making progress towards a real solution, then we might see light at the end of the tunnel. If not, then it's time to call a failed nation a failed nation and to do what's necessary to protect our own soldiers, people, and interests.

As it is, my patience is about gone. I've had it with the whole thing. I say give Bush and Maliki one last chance to pull something together. If they screw it up again, then get our troops the hell out of the way.

Thoughts on Iraq

Sometime in the next few days, George Bush is going to lay out his “new direction” for Iraq. He got the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group a month ago and has been considering his options since then. I want to get my thoughts out on record before George does.

First, some background. Back in ’02, when talk of attacking Iraq first surfaced, I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt. I retired from the Navy as a cryptologist in ’99, and at that time I knew that Saddam was pretty much contained. He was a pain in the ass, but he wasn’t hurting anybody outside Iraq, and he certainly wasn’t a threat to us. Bush kept talking about the “threat” Hussein posed, and with such experienced advisors as Cheney and Rumsfeld, I figured that something new in Iraq must have come up since my retirement. As time went on, however, it became clear that there wasn’t anything new: it was the same old stuff, just repackaged with a few exclamation points thrown in to make it sound urgent. So I came down hard against the war in Iraq.

One other thing: I believed Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. Bush cited that as the “grave danger” that Hussein posed; I viewed it as a “so what”. As long as we stayed out of Iraq, our soldiers wouldn’t have to deal with them. There are lots of bad guys around the world that have bad weapons and it’s not our responsibility to go around invading them because of it. So I was angry that Bush was going to throw our troops into a chem/bio war for no reason.

Fortunately, there weren’t chem/bio/nuke weapons of any sort. Instead, there was something that was worse: strong Iraqi sectarian animosities that were contained under Hussein’s brutal rule, and absolutely no American plan for what would happen after Hussein’s overthrow. This combination has led to steadily increasing levels of violence and to the current state of low-level civil war. For three years, Bush has pretended that the situation in Iraq has been going well … maybe okay … so it’s really going well except for the damn media … umm, it’s making progress … except that progress is slower than expected … until nobody believes him anymore.

Now the situation is this:
- Iraq has a government that is essentially useless, powerless, corrupt, and incompetent.
- Various sectarian forces have stepped into the power vacuum and are escalating the “ethnic cleansing”.
- Our military is playing a game of “whack-a-mole” and is not making any real progress.
- Our military is the only real US player in the country. There’s almost no State Department representation, little/no economic or political or any other kind of help. It’s just boots on the ground.
- Our military is way overstretched, with some troops currently on their third tour in as many years. Our senior generals are saying that they’re nearly at the breaking point.
- The blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group has noted that the situation in Iraq can only be solved by Iraqis, not forced by the US.
- The Iraq Study Group recommended gradual disengagement of US military forces and increased negotiation with Syria and Iran, who are stirring the pot in Iraq.

It appears that George didn’t like the ISG’s report. So he started talking to others. And from press reports, it appears that the only people he’s listening to are the neoconservatives, who are arguing for a buildup of forces. To me, the neoconservatives have less than zero credibility: they’re a bunch of liars who got us into this mess in the first place. But neocons like to talk about “victory”, and George likes “victory”, even if he doesn’t know what it is nor how to achieve it.

Now for my viewpoint. I have been looking for a rational plan from SOMEbody in power for over three years now. I believe that we have an obligation to the world to bring stability to Iraq. It’s the old Pottery Barn rule: we broke it, we should fix it. But nobody has offered a plausible way to do that. George has one last chance this week to present one.

Everybody has been focused on troop strength. That should actually be a fallout of a rational plan. In other words, a good plan should come first, then you decide on how many people you need to implement it. I’ve seen one or two good plans, but they require far more people (50-100K) than the numbers coming out of the White House (20K).

I’m afraid that George is going to screw it up again. I think he’s looking for something he can call a “plan” that will need 20K more troops. He wants a troop increase for political reasons, so it looks like he’s doing something. He won’t draw down the troops because that’s an admission he failed. And he won’t commit the numbers that are really needed.

In my view, if he chooses not to commit sufficient resources, he chooses to let Iraq sink. If he chooses to let Iraq sink and keep the troop strength the same or bigger, then he not only fails Iraq, he fails the country by wrecking our already-overstretched Army and Marines. If he chooses to let Iraq sink and pull our troops out, at least we can start rebuilding our forces.

So the choice is to between implementing a realistic plan with sufficient resources, or pulling our troops out. Both are tough but we can live with them. Anything less than either of these choices is complete and utter failure, both now and for the long term.

Happy Hanukah?

A lady I know was telling me today that her young daughter was invited to a Hanukah party by one of her classmates. The girl had invited pretty much her whole elementary school class. The lady took her daughter over there a bit early and was the first to arrive. When she went back to pick her up later, it appeared that she was also the last to go.

As it turned out, nobody else had come.

The girls are young and don't seem to really understand what happened. They just had a great time playing together. The mother was appalled. As am I. Why would all those parents keep their young children from experiencing a Hanukah party?

Well, DUHH: it's because racism and anti-Semitism is alive and well in the South. But they won't tell you that. And they may not even think they're racist or anti-Semites. They all think they're proper Christians, raising their children the right way. (I know this because they've said it to this lady on different occasions). The problem, of course, is that Jesus was a Jew and would have celebrated Hanukah himself. So by keeping themselves and their children away from Jewish practices, they're missing an opportunity to understand a side of Jesus that's not taught in Christian churches. What are they afraid of: that their children are going to be forcibly converted to Judaism? Give me a break!

Every time I think this country's making progress, something like this happens to throw a wet blanket on my illusions.

And to my Jewish friends: Happy Hanukah, and I'll come to your party.

Merry Christmas to ALL in the military

Today is Christmas and I'm fortunate to be home with my own family. But there was a time when I was in the Navy and deployed to somewhere far from home during the holidays. Those days are over, but somebody else has taken my place on the deck watch, or the operations floor, or the thousand and one other places where military people must spend their time to keep our forces ready for anything.

So today I'm sending these Christmas greetings to all those who wear an American military uniform, wherever you may be. Thank you for taking up the challenge to serve this great country.

And have yourself a great Christmas!

Nonsense Spam

We all get spam, but I've noticed that over the past several months, I'm not getting as many offers to enhance my male virility or save money on prescription drugs. (If I'd followed up on even half of them, I'd be better endowed than King Kong and it wouldn't have cost me a nickel!) Instead, nowadays I'm getting nonsense. Real nonsense. This new breed of spam seems to be made up of random sentence generators, with titles like "themselves on the his heart because of pure heart to heal thyself ". Makes it easy to identify and delete, but I'm wondering, who would go to all the trouble of spam that doesn't do anything except clutter mailboxes?

Career Change

A few days ago, I received an email from a post that I subscribe to. The writer spoke of a friend of his named "Bill". "Bill" is a stockbroker, but isn't happy with his life. He see's Robert (the writer) making a lot of money selling his paintings and wants some of that action. "Bill" is thinking of quitting his job, leaving his wife, and going to live on an island for six months and just paint. In other words, he's Paul Gauguin. Robert said his recommendation was to take a leave of absence for six months and see if that's what the guy really wanted to do. The question to us was, what would we say? And, of course, I had something to pitch in. Here's what I said:

"Robert, your advice to "Bill" to take a leave of absence was good. "Bill" is obviously unhappy with his current situation and searching for something better. However, he doesn't have a clue to what it's like in the real art world.

Like many of your readers, I'm on my second career. I was a Navy officer for 22 years. My move into art was carefully planned: I studied with private artists and at Maryland Institute College of Art's continuing ed classes while on active duty. After retiring, I earned a BFA from a university with a very strong fine arts program. I've been an "emerging" artist since graduating three years ago, working my tail off to make paintings, get them in shows, and market like crazy. My studio is still in the red, however, and probably will be for another couple of years. It's a good thing that I have my military retirement and my wife has a good job. Without this support system, I couldn't have made it. Or I wouldn't be painting what I want to paint, which to me is the same thing.

To be monetarily successful in the art world, it seems like you have to be very talented and/or skilled (they're not the same thing), you have to create something that a lot of people want to buy, you have to have a great promotional system, you have to work your tail off, and you need a good bit of luck.

To be personally successful, you need to find a way of working that satisfies your inner demons. To do that, you have to be willing to ask yourself some really hard questions about who you are and what is important to you. And you have to answer them honestly, whatever the real answers are. Even then, you haven't even started the issue of making a living at it.

And regardless of whether you're striving for personal or monetary success, six months ain't gonna do it. That period might give him an idea of what it's like to really focus on something, and he might be able to build up a body of work. But he'll be just barely getting started: being a successful artist requires way, way, WAY more than that.

Before throwing everything away, "Bill" needs to understand what he's really getting into. Otherwise, he may as well try to make a million as the lead singer in a rock and roll band."

Botero and Abu Ghraib

There's an artist named Fernando Botero who's well-known for his paintings of cute chubby people. He's made a very lucrative career of them. His paintings normally have all the emotional depth of a Hallmark card, but sell like crazy.

Botero has now done a series of paintings on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. You can see them on the Marlborough Gallery web site. Frankly, I'm impressed. He takes his signature chubby people, but this time they're not cute: they're tormented, anguished, and in pain. The works address a deep and painful subject. There is a tremendous amount of feeling in these pictures. In stepping out from his normal shtick, Botero has hit a home run.

But Botero hasn't gone far enough. Frankly, none of us have. There have been quite a few artists who have criticized President Bush, the Iraq war, and American excesses at Abu Ghraib. I've been one of them. But in seeing these works, I'm struck by the fact that it's always the United States that's the subject of criticism. Where is the criticism of the Sunni and Shi'ite death squads? Time magazine just had an article on Abu Deraa, a Shi'ite warlord who's responsible for thousands of Iraqi deaths. One of his favorite techniques is to run a power drill into a live victim's head. Where, I ask you, is the art world's criticism of Abu Deraa? Where is the criticism of Putin, who's rolling back all the democratic gains that Russia has made since the collapse of the USSR? Where is the criticism of Hezballah for the war they started with Israel? I'm no fan of Israel, but the widespread condemnation of Israel for the destruction in southern Lebanon ignored the fact that Hezballah did half of it. You can pick almost any conflict around the globe, and artists probably aren't doing anything about it, except to criticize the U.S.

And as much as I can't stand Bush, he's right when he complains about the criticism of America over Abu Ghraib and other atrocities. If we're going to condemn atrocities, we need to condemn them ALL: American, Shi'ite, Sunni, Serb, Sudanese, all of them.

So Botero's work is great, as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far enough.