How the struggle ends.

11: The Master answered him, and said, “Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.”

12: “The current off the river swept silently over them all - young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.” 

13: “Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.”

14: “But one creature said at last, ‘I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.’”

15: The other creatures laughed and said, ‘Fool!’ Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!’ 

16: “But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did he let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.”

17: “Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more”

18: “and the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger cried, ‘See a miracle! A creature like ourselves , yet he flies! see the Messiah, come to save us all!”

19: And yet the one carried in the current said, ‘I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare to let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure” 

20: ”But they cried the more , ‘Savior!’ All the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior.”

21: And it came to pass when he saw that the multitude thronged him the more day on day, tighter and closer and fiercer than ever the had, when he saw that they pressed him to heal them without rest, and feed them always with his miracles, to learn for them and to live their lives, he went alone that day unto a hilltop and there he prayed.

22: And he said in his heart, Infinite Radiant Is, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me, let me lay aside this impossible task. I cannot live the life of one other soul, yet ten thousand cry to me for life. I’m sorry I allowed it all to happen. If it be thy will, let me go back to my [simple life] and let me live as other men. 

23: And a voice spoke to him on the hilltop, a voice neither male nor female, loud nor soft, a voice infinitely kind. And the voice said unto him, “Not my will, but thine be done. For what is thy will is mine for thee. Go thy way as other men, and be thou happy on the earth.”

24: And hearing, the Master was glad, and gave thanks, and came down from the hilltop humming a little mechanics song. and when the throng pressed him with its woes, beseeching him to heal for it and learn for it and feed it nonstop from his understanding and to entertain it with its wonders, he smiled upon the multitude and said pleasantly unto them, “I quit.”

25: For a moment the multitude was stricken dumb with astonishment. 

26: And he said unto them, “If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?”

27: “Of course Master!” cried the many. “It should be pleasure from him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!”

28: “No matter what those tortures, nor how difficult the task?”

29: “Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be that God has asked,” said they.

30: “And what would you do,” the Master said until the multitude, “if God spoke directly to your face and said, ‘I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.” What would you do then? 

31: And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard upon the hillsides, across the valleys where they stood. 

32: And the Master said unto the silence, “In the path of our happiness shall we find the learning for which we have chosen this lifetime. So it is that I have learned this day, and choose to leave you now to walk your own path, as you please.”

33. And he went his way through the crowds and left them, and returned to the everyday world of men and machines.

I just don't know what to do with myself.

At one time, things were easy. Now, not so much.

While I'm not (nor have I ever been), an organized person I like to take my time planning things. This is perhaps where my fascination and deep love for wargames comes from. The time it takes to assemble, paint, base organizes, plan, adjust, deploy and generally play a game often takes weeks, months or even years. Hell, my model case alone literally contains thousands of hours of work.

A Labor of Love. Or quite possibly insanity.

The devil of the thing is, quite frankly, that all of my interests run deep. And by deep, I mean that everything I'm interested in is deeply time consuming. Not only are my interests time intensive, but they are also focus intensive. It takes a hell of a lot of focus to get through reading material like this:

It's a complicated as it sounds.

Aside from my interests, there is also my vocation. I'm a painter (obviously). iIve also had a good deal of success so far at what I do; in both realms of painting and teaching. I feel like I've made tremendous strides in my ability to paint. I've written extensively about the Dunning-Krueger effect (where the more you know, the less confidence you have in your ability). Since my confidence in my work has been sliding for a while, I suppose it only means I'm getting better... right?

Totally missed the mark... right?

My interests have in a way always defined me. I've always thought of myself as somebody who learns to do things. I am the sum total of what I can do. 

Then this happened. 

Daddy solos the childcare quest in World of Babycraft

Suddenly, I found myself in a world without free time. Being the only one of a pair without troublesome things like a "work schedule" or "responsibilities" I willingly (and happily) opted to become a stay at home dad. But as I took on this new slew of duties, I found that the the swaths of uninterrupted focus abruptly disappeared. There was just no way in hell I could piece together anything even remotely resembling "free time". Up to my ears in diapers, and up to my neck in something totally new. I have been effectively buried for nearly two years. 

Now what once was a sleeping baby in the stripy onesie above, has metamorphosed into this:

Announcing Princess Deep Trouble 

from the Kingdom of the Terrible Two's. 

(which are ironically not as much trouble as everyone makes them out to be)

And recently, for the first time in what feels like forever.

I am bored.

I find myself in a unique position. It's not because I'm not busy, because I am. I'm terribly busy. kids are an egregious amount of work, pretty much all the time. But now, I have just enough sleep and just enough of a lull between naps, snacktime and park trips to cobble together "free time." It's not a lot, maybe a couple of hours a day and one full day a week (when Charlotte is at daycare) where I get to once again become my own master. However, it is enough free time for me to recognize that I should be doing something other than watching television.

The hard part is that often this free time is not enough time to do much other than take a deep breath, or occasionally a nap. But once in awhile I get just enough of a break I can actually contemplate doing some of the things that I used to think worthwhile. I am the sum total of what I can do... right?

Unfortunately I'm having some difficulty deciding what that should be. I hesitate to start any new paintings, simply because Kasey and I are actively planning for a second baby. It wont be long before I'm bitch-slapped back into the land of 4 hours of sleep at night and endless bottle feedings, (plus the added magic of a 2andahalfyearold demanding an "upside down day" (which is where I hold her upside down and walk around the house).

The solution is this far, not blatantly obvious. And really, I don't think this blog gets many visitors, so really I'm just asking the wind questions. And I'm fine with that. Mostly because I'm fairly convinced that at some point, the answer will become obvious. It's the way things have always worked. Whenever I've been at an impasse with no obvious answer in sight, something comes along and shows itself to be the obvious resolution. It worked that way in college. It worked that way with Mission:Renaissance and it worked that way when we bought our house; it seems to be the way the universe functions in these matters.

If that is in fact true, then it's important to remember that all roads lead to Rome. If the resolution comes to you, then in some sense it doesn't matter what you do, the resolution comes when it's ready to get there. So like everything else right now, the solution is simple:

I should take a nap.

Thanks interwebs. You've been most helpful.

-Genius zzzzz....

Ghost in the machine Pt. 1 an Introduction

For a along time I have wrestled very deeply with my aversion to contemporary art.

The first question that always came to bear whenever I talked about my wrestling with the eternal "why" of painting and the contemporary was, oddly enough; "why". Why care? Couldn't you just ignore it if you don't want to be part of it?

The short answer is no. The long answer is incredibly long, but the medium length answer is that contemporary art has always been the grain of sand in the oyster of my understanding.

God. That's horrible to look at isn't it? 

That sounds kinda icky, so let me put it another way.

I have always understood things in terms of systems and categories. Whenever I undertake a new project, especially if the subject is complex, I first spend a lot of energy attempting to learn the system by which it operates. The mechanical side of painting was very much like that, and my training made it doubly so. The idea that all the values in a given subject can be organized into three (called 3 general tones) and further broken down into another three for each given area of tone (a light middle, a medium middle, and dark middle) instantly appealed to my understanding of how to approach subjects of nearly infinite complexity.

Likewise the ability to break colors down into Munsell notation, or the ability to think of color as existing in a three-dimensional "color space", was extraordinarily helpful in pushing my ability to render objects in a way that replicated reality. This was fundamental in pushing my painting style toward that of tromp l'oeil which now comprises 90% of my work.

My name is Frank. Sometimes I paint stuff.

A system of thought is a lot like a system of language. It allows us to describe and categorize things in a way that we can understand and utilize to get things done.

Now imagine you come across something that there is literally, no words for. It is not even like anything you have a word for. In contemporary philosophy, this is referred to as a "singularity". And by most accounts of such things exists throughout history (like the first time people saw men riding horses in combat, or when gunpowder was first used on the battlefield) it is often met with fear, terror and panic.

Not to say that I run screaming from a building any time I see a painting by Jenny Saville, but the effect is not dissimilar to the aforementioned grain of sand. It's profoundly irritating.

Actually, I might run screaming 

from this one

Also, this is not to say that the individual works of art themselves are irritating (although that happens) but that the very idea of the "contemporary" itself does not fit within the system of art as I have come to understand it. It is the equivalent of listing the primary colors as "red, yellow, blue, and scream" or listing a values in a painting as "light, middle, dark, and scarf."

It would also be one thing if this singular anomaly were isolated. But it's not. Being an artist who is profoundly interested in the systems of art, you simply cannot interact with anything art related with out bumping into it on a regular basis (perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be it smacking you in the face with a wet fish on a regular basis). Inevitably if you are hit in face with enough wet fish when walking through a desert, you eventually begin to wonder, "Where the are all the fish coming from?" And also, "Why the fuck are there even fish flying through the air all the way out in the desert anyway?

I have wrestled with this problem over and over. And I think I have an answer but it is a complicated one. It is a synthesis of history, theory, language and even a little money and class thrown in to boot. The posts in this series entitled "The Ghost in the Machine" will eventually become the basis for a book I am in the process of writing entitled "The Architecture of the New and the Phenomenon of the Avante-Garde." I'll attempt to make it as theory light and humor heavy as possible.

I'll also have pictures of bunnies from time to time:

OMG ITS A BUNNY IN A KNIT CAP 

*HEAD EXPLODES FROM CUTENESS*

Watch this space.

Genius out.

Cup of coffee, pet the bunny and spin around three times.

For the next 40 minutes I am alone.

Well, that is ostensibly alone. The little one is asleep upstairs sprawled across the bed, sleeping. (not entirely unlike her mother). For the first time in along time I have not only the time, but the impetus to actually write something. I also have the uncanny need to insert as many obscure adjectives into the sentence as I am capable.

Ahem.

Over the last few weeks and months I have become more more aware of how important the rituals around things are becoming to me. So much of my desire to do something is dependent on all the steps that come before it. In order to shave I have to shower. In order to sit and watch television I have to eat something. In order to paint miniatures I have to make a cup of tea first. These things in fact seem so interconnected to the activity itself that they have actually become part of that activity.

I suspect this is my latent OCD manifesting itself in a less destructive manner. Instead of repeating line of a song over and over and over, (or words that have a funny sound or hand motions, or whatever I get stuck on) the ritual of doing things not only prepares me for the activity, but puts me in the mindset of "it is time to do x".

It reminds me a lot of the time I spent at university. Where the early forms of these rituals became. Every wednesday I would clean the room, shower, write for an hour and walk to the bookstore. where I would have two cups of coffee and then walk back home, work on a painting for three hours and then go have a beer. Every week, without fail. I woke up at the same time, and did copious amounts of work that way.

Fast forwarding a few (nearly ten?) years and I see echoes of these early routines throughout my day. I no longer drink earl grey, but I do drink black tea. I don't clean the house the same way, but I do clean my studio before I work; and so on and so forth.

PG Tips. Breakfast (and occasionally lunch and dinner)

 of champions (and people who forget to eat)

One thing that strikes me however is that I'm not working. Well, I am teaching (which any teacher can tell you, is an enormous amount of work) but I'm not actually painting. I suspect this is because my need for ritual has be supplanted by the needs of my daughter. I.e. food, changing, making funny sounds and sleeping. Her routine is still developing, but for the first time in a long time, I actually feel like I might be developing the routine necessary to get back to work. Cup of coffee, check the email, organize the studio, pet the bunny twice and so on. It's still in its early stages, but its here.

In the meantime I've also realized how much pressure there is on being a painter. Most of it coming from within. The need not just to paint, but make good paintings. I've painted a lot since last march (when I completed "Above and Below") but none of it has been on canvas. It's all been on tiny soldiers. I think because most all, my hobby retained some of it integrity as my life, house and studio was thrown into upheaval once we knew we were having Charlotte. On my modeling desk, very little, (if anything) changed. Granted I have less time to do it, but the rituals persisted, the space endured, and the activity continued.

"Above and Below" 

14" x 14" 

oil on board

It's my full intention (and has always been my full intention) to continue with the blogging. At one point, I blogged (such a funny work "blogged") once a week again, without fail. But as my work life went haywire when my employers recognized that I could be taken advantage of with very little pushback, my time for the ritual that led to blogging was pushed aside and, inevitably, my writing disappeared.  I think I can fix this, since I think i have recognized that the steps prior to take-off are as important as the plane actually lifting off.

I know this particular blog entry is terribly straight forward. But for the first time in long time, the weariness and anxiety of both parenthood and career are both asleep upstairs. Its almost as if where 10 minutes ago I was eyeballs deep in the weeds and now all of a sudden my hands are free. Time to put those hands to work and make some paintings.

But first, I'll have a cup of coffee and a biscuit pet the bunny and spin around three times. Or whatever.

2 seconds

Had a baby. Well not me, but my wife had a baby. I was there. It was awesome.

Got a big post in the works but I need some more time for refinement to make sure its just right. Plus, theres the baby thing... so yeah.

New stuff incoming very soon, watch this space.

-teh genius who is also really good at spelling.

Exquisite rapture.

From the time I was in highschool, every 4-5 years I'd shave my head.

Originally, it grew out of the fact that I liked to mess with my hair color. Sometimes this worked out very well, and I looked awesome. However sometimes this did not work out very well and the powers that be, (my mother, my principle and church) found my method of self expression "troubling". I would then get suspended, or grounded or excommunicated and chased by short fat women with pitchforks.

CONFORM

So shortly after somebody cried "It's a witch! May we burn him?!", I would get myself hauled off to a barber and get the whole thing chopped down to the nub, where the white/purple/red/ whatever remnants of color I still sported would slowly fade into memory.

As I grew this eventually this got to be habit. I stopped dying my hair very shortly after graduating high school, and still, every few years I would get the urge to to completely remove whatever was happening on top and start fresh.

But now that I'm older, I'm beginning to appreciate every follicle that holds onto its tiny existence on my head and I don't feel that accelerating my progress to total chromdomary is beneficial to my self esteem. The wife isn't a fan either. But the need for a refocusing every 5-6 years still exists and its roots go deep into my psyche. The head shaving was really a way for my take off everything that I had been attached to before (because your hair is important when your in high school) and start from ground zero. To really ask myself, "enough of what I as before. What do I want to be now?"

lol

In ten years I went from living in a flat in London to being a unemployed aspiring artist in Southern California. I've since been trained in painting and drawing, taught other people to draw and paint, gotten married, moved, adopted 5 rabbits and a puppy, bought a house, started playing world of warcraft, quit playing world of warcraft, started and quit again. I've painting nearly 200 2 inch soldiers, become an accomplished Tromp l'oeil painter, exhibited my work all over the United States and very soon now will be a father. Considering the amount of changes I've left out, the amount of flux and accomplishment is staggering.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you used to take a magnifying glass and adjust it so that all the sunlight condensed into a single spot? About 10 years ago I was writing my masters thesis. It remains the time in my life that I was the most focused. In last ten year years, changes and the need to accommodate new situations, new demands on my time and new frustrations with people who don't know their ass from their elbow has gradually, and ever so slowly, caused the magnifying glass of my attention to grow. Because of that I feel dispersed and my attention no longer has that laser-like focus.

Might wannna check that lens out....

Creativity for my has always come in waves. And out flowing of work and then a pull back and refocusing. It's time for a pull back. I'm back to writing. I'm back to painting. So that once again:

Every morning when I wake up
I experience an exquisite joy.

The joy of being Frank Krifka.

And I ask myself in rapture,
What amazing thing
will this Frank Krifka
Do today?

Watch this space.

-F

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chan-ges!

Sometimes painting is like trying to squeeze a fat guy into a small can of tomatoes.

 Why do my eyes burn?

Why one would want to squeeze said fat guy into a a tomato can is irrelevant and pointless. But a task such as this at times seems impossible: fat guys do not belong in cans of tomatoes. But after huffing and puffing, cajoling and begging, you eventually realize you are stupid for trying to get a 300 pound man into a can that is only 8 ounces.

And then you get a bigger can.

That might just do it!

For the last, oh I dunno, year or two I have been focusing almost entirely on miniatures. That is to say, paintings under 8" x10". Make no mistake I adore, simply adore painting small. In fact 8" x 10" seems like a hugely unfathomable space when I think that most of my recent work has easily been half that size.

It really amazing how ingrained you get to working in a particular way or particular style. When I was working at Mission: Renaissance I don't think I fully comprehended how my concept of a still life was tied to three the, "3 objects on a medium value cloth (or dark value if you're feeling adventurous)" aesthetic.

Once I began working on my own it seemed all I could produce was some sort of variation on that theme. I completed maybe 8-10 paintings before I realized that I was simply painting the same painting over and over. The only difference between them was perhaps a different color or two maybe different objects. In short I was bored.

So I sat down and began to look at my painting methods.

1. I had always used an open pallette, with secondary colors mixed from primaries.

Once I started to push my boundaries in subject matter I actually found my mixing habits to be a handicap. Being that I wanted to get a way from my previous idea of "still-life" I began to heavily restrict my use of color and get a tighter control on my light. I found that my previous method of mixing colors (by mixing two or more color's together to get a general hue and then mixing a compliment to get   a proper chroma) using my brush, resulted is slight variations within the local.

For those of you who don't speak painter.

 Instead of getting this:

If you blow your nose and you see this you're

probably sick

I got this:

If you see this, you're probably dead 

and turning into a zombie

This is fine if you are painting impressionism or abstracts where precise control over color isn't really an issue. In fact, when painting this way you get a color almost by accident. Generally speaking I was trained to think about color like this:

Your basic run-of-the-mill

color wheel of death

The more I attempted to push for a precise communication of color I needed a way of thinking about color, value and intensity in a way that was more descriptive. In short I needed to expand my color vocabulary.

I started experimenting with a "closed palette" that is to say I began mixing strings of colors using pre-tubed neutrals on a scale of 1-10.

Why do I taste paint?

When I wanted to mix for a particular area I would first mix for the color and then add an amount of grey to whatever value I needed. So instead of thinking about red as I did above, I began thinking about it like so:

I think the red square is just about right.

In short, color went from a wheel, to a three directional globe ascending in value and growing in chroma as it moves out from the center:

Looks delicious doesn't it?

Occasionally the problem you are facing requires that you re-evaluate the tools you are using. in this case the problem of painting (fat guy in leotard, see above) requires a re-evaluation of the tools at hand (can of tomatoes, see above). 

Tools are only tools because they are useful.  If they are not, all your left with is a fat guy standing on a can of squashed tomatoes. 

The picture of the fat guy in tomato sauce 

was too horrible to include. So here is a baby

in tomato sauce to make up for the leotard picture earlier.

Your welcome.

-G