In the Head

Templar Grid Flower of Life Man

Trudy Benson

I really dig this abstract artist named Trudy Benson.  Her work stands out from the myriad of abstract redundancy that pervades painting these days.  Although I am not entirely sure of her technique, it seems like she uses computer based imagery as her starting point.  They look like simple doodles in Microsoft Paint, then transposed onto canvas.  What I love is the seamless relationship between the two realms, creating a dialogue between both analog and digital world views.  Also, the colors, lines and formations she comes up with so whimsically are fresh and fun to look at.  I see a pedigree of Jonathan Lasker in this work, whose work I also like to look at.  I would call this kind of art "Abstract Intentionism".  They are the type of abstractionists who are deliberate in their conceptualizations almost down to the most minute detail, which perhaps represents some kind of conceptual inversion. 

I am not sure of the title of this piece, but I really love it.  Anyway, I had to put her up here in the ole bloggy.

Liminality

I often think that this whole creative process if just one large liminal rite of passage.  That is, every time we approach ourselves and the creative process, we are at the threshold of what was and what will be.  I think most artists can relate to the idea that often the end result is far different from the original concept, with exceptions of course.  Also, there are unknowns in regard to both the past and the future in terms of understanding.  Things have a tendency to change and depending on endogenous and exogenous factors, the variables are perhaps limitless.

There is always a sense of mystery for me with art.  When I paint, I feel like I am engaged in a religious act of some sort, minus the institutional and political connotations of that word.  "Spiritual" might be more politically correct, but in the sense that "relegare" means to "bind fast", that is just it.  Every time we engage in a creative act, we bind ourselves fast to the infinite potential in all things as we connect to them both macrocosmically and microcosmically.

So, liminality underlies creativity because like the trickster, we never really know what it is.  Even after all the exegeses that go on, there is never a definite understanding of a work of art.  Even more so today, with so many styles, derivatives, shapes, forms, concepts in the art world, we might say we swim in a creative sea of liminality, sailing through the threshold of what was and what will be.

Factory Farm

Keep it Conspiratorial

I often find myself becoming too intellectual about art.  There is a tendency to do so due to ever increasing needs in the marketplace to stand out.  I find it all interesting, but after a while, I come back to my own esoteric, mystical, psychopomp view of the creative process.

No matter how we try to use science to decipher the creative process, we end up trying to remove the proverbial needle in the haystack.  At its core, the creative process in whatever form is a mysterious reality that lies beyond the total ability of human consciousness to understand it.  If that were not so, there would be no conscious evolution of sorts.  I think that is the one thing that keeps people going, that they have this Darwinian view of all things and in doing so, believe they are making progress.

However, this is all becoming rote and hackneyed.  I find most contemporary art, even mine at times, to be very trite.  It just feels stupid and inane.  Not to mention, if you go to galleries and exhibitions in New York, the pile of $hiT that presents itself as the so called avant garde.

Well, I can complain if I want and there are many souls who would claim that I have sour grapes, but whatever, I might be dead in the near future, so I don't give a F%@k.