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

Wrestling with Angels

Yeah, so I've been gone a while.

In my defense, I've been crazy busy, yo. Between straight razor buying, show preparing and whatnot, I've bought a house, moved into it and hosted events parent, in-laws and all the other things that make you an adult.

I have not been painting much.

And it horrifies me. Horrifies me! I lay in bed at night and suddenly the urge to to be a painter, to draw, to glaze and varnish comes up deep within me and then… I fall asleep. I have thought about this a tremendous amount the last few days. Between my time shooting space aliens in the head on distant words (Starcraft) and organizing the forest legions against chaos (Warhammer) and looking for where I put that goddamn drill bit (under the magazines near the utility panel) my thoughts are chew chew chewing on the gristle of a single problem:

How.

It has occurred to me in that few weeks/months that I know how to paint. In my own opinion very well.  but I have little to no clue about how to be a painter. I have wrestled with this problem for a good long while now.

I have always contended that painting was an angel and I have been, up to this point, Jacob; wrestling with my intention through a long night.

It should come as no surprise that the story of Jacob and angel has been visited numerous times in painting. From Rembrandt:

Rembrandt's version, "Jacob hugs an angel"

To Gauguin

Gauguin's version, "Angel noogies"

The actual passage in the Old Testament is very short, not more than a paragraph. But it's one of those few events in the biblical stories where everything changes. Of all the bible stories I remember as a child I can recall very few that can be thought of in terms of "before this point" and "after this point" in such stark terms. Yes, Jesus fed a bunch a of people. But he did that all the time. Yes, Paul sent a ground breaking letter to the infant church. He sent a few of those. But in that particular story, Jacob literally awoke one man and went to bed another.

As the story goes, Jacob wrestled with the angel all night and in the morning, as neither one had the upper hand, the angel reached down and dislocated Jacob's hip. Then the angel said, "Let me go, it is daybreak". Jacob refuses unless the

And Jacob refused. Exhausted after a full night of wrestling with an opponent of otherworldly strength, a literally unbeatable foe, Jacob continued wrestling. His opponent reach own and then literally wrenched his hip from its socket. And still, Jacob, sleep deprived, physically exhausted and in pain refused to submit. Not only did he refuse submission he agreed to stop attempting to kick the angels ass only if the angel agreed to bless him.

To be honest I have always prided myself on my tenacity. But I have to admit that my strength is fading. Gift for painting or not. Unrealistic expectations or not. At this point I am feeling Less like this:

Alexander Leloir, "Jacob Wrestling with

the Angel" 1865

And more like this

Monty Python, "Monty Python and 

the Holy Grail" 1975

The story says nothing of how Jacobs feels. Only that he wrestled and prevailed. I think I know. For those readers who know me and have endeavored to ask, "What's it like to be painter?" You know. for those of you who read this that I haven't met, or don't paint and what to know what it's like. Try arm wrestling yourself. It feels much like that.

In the beginning it's nothing but a wrestling match. Against yourself. And so, As I contemplate running away, giving up my blessing and staying Jacob forever a part of me, armless and legless whispers;

"Get back here you bloody coward. I'm going to bite your legs off."

Deep Blue

When I was 6, I fell in the pool.

My father and I were outside on a cool, November day somewhat early in the morning. The pool we had was large by backyard pool standards; 20 feet long, 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep. My father held my hand as we walked around the pools edge and he was telling me about how they were going to take all the water out of it the next day.

I thought what he was telling me was boring.

Then I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, something floating on the surface, maybe a foot and a half from the edge. I don't clearly remember what it was, but what I do clearly remember was that I had to have it, and I had to have it right then.

I let go of my father's hand and got down on my hands and knees.

"Don't Fall In." Came my fathers voice from behind me.

I reached. It was floating there. Just beyond my fingertips.

"Don't Fall In Franko." From behind me again.

I stretched.

Almost there…

I stretched again.

Almost… there.

"Franko…"

And suddenly, everything was blue.

Truthfully, it happened so very fast I didn't have time to try and prevent it. One moment, I was on the ground and next I was floating; totally and completely weightless. I didn't even try to struggle. I just hung there; stupidly, a foot under the water.

And then I was out.

My Father had reached out like a holy bolt of lightning from heaven, grabbed me by my winter coat and heaved me from the water with a violent jerk. (Suddenly I was no longer weightless, in fact I weighted nearly twice what I had no more than 17 seconds prior.) Before I had even fully realized what had happened, it was over.

I have long suspected that I suffer from a mild to moderate from of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Sometimes, it is worse than others. Most often it takes the form of insomnia. And it's funny because it's not that I'm not tired. In fact, I'm often incredibly tired. But my mind will not shut down. And I am left with the low hum of an unspecific anxiety.

That hum has become so familiar to me now. I almost don't notice it anymore. It is the grip that won't relax. It a ray of sunshine turned in on itself until it burns paper. And I know it's unspecific and unfounded because it's not what I felt, hanging in blue space under the surface of my pool.

It's what I felt when I saw that thing floating on the surface of the water.

While it happened faster than I had a chance to react, I knew full well what kind of situation I was in while floating weightless in the void. And while I sure as hell was concerned, I wasn't anxious. But when I was walking with my six year old hand in my father's on that November morning and I saw that, thing, floating on the surface of the water I had to take it out of the pool. I could think of nothing else.

Perhaps that is how I know everything is just fine. Because when it matters, I am never worried or anxious. I am only anxious when everything is alright.

Still sucks I can't sleep though.

Lame.

-F

Disposable Blade = disposable men.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

-Henry David Thoreau

Six months ago, I woke up and decided it was time to be a man.

It sounds silly. In fact, it's also slightly embarrassing to admit to a group of people who you're not related to. But after a little research I found a good deal of men felt the same way I did. There is a growing movement that suggests the the ideals of masculinity are in trouble. Young men have so few positive roles models, no rites of passage and are often discouraged from being aggressive and competitive. Who feels the need to dig deep when everybody gets a trophy?

So, In december of last year I began sitting down and carefully, methodically examining my life and evaluating what was important to me. To throw out all of the old prohibitions, the old attitudes and expectations. I came up with a lot of things. I stopped playing video games. I stopped watching television. I stopped doing almost all the things that caused me to waste time and money. But one of the most visible changes was this:

Robert Duvall: Straight razor.

BOOM. It don't get more

manly than that.

Cartridge razors, in my opinion, are the single greatest lie marketed to men. When I picked up my straight razor for the first time, I was nearly certain I was going to die. It took me nearly a hour to shave. But now, it takes no more time to shave than with a cartridge razor. And time aside, when I started shaving with a straight, something drastically changed.

I began to actually enjoy shaving.

I'm a fan of precision. I like it when things do as they are supposed to. I also like simplicity. Straight razor shaving embodies all of that. So far, this is what it looks like:

This is where the magic happens.

Note the ever-present cup of tea on the counter

It takes some getting used to, but with a little practice you can get the absolute closest shave you have ever experienced. I mean nothing but skin, in any direction. And come 5:00? No 5:00 shadow. The hair hides in fear…

Gentlemen choose your weapon.

This is my razor collection. From the bottom up, a Theirs Issard extra hollow 6/8 round tip. Next up, a George Wostenholm 5/8 quarter hollow, "Pipe razor" with square point. Above those two are razors that are being restored. An unknown 7/8 extra hollow square point made in Sheffield England around 1860. A Wade and Butcher 7/8 wedge with a square point and full smile. At the top a Tally-Ho razor, 7/8 square point wedge with a full smile. The two vertical razors on the side are both 5/8 that I use to practice sharpening. Speaking of which..

For that "extra sharp taste"

according to the translation on the packaging

These are my sharpening stones. The grey stone up top is a diamond plate used to flatten the stones below. From the top down the grits are 325 for the lapping plate, then 1,000, 5,000, 8,000 and 12,000. The little stone is a vintage barber hone and sits probably around 8-10k which I use for touch ups. The round stick is chromium oxide paste which I use on a leather strop for finishing. What's a strop you ask? Oh ho:

Got more leather in my shave den than

a Dominatrix has in her closet. Then again…

A strop is used to keep the blade ready for shaving. It's basically a long piece of treated leather that the blade is rubbed on prior to shaving. I have two. One that is pasted with the green stick above and one that is used plain.

So why the fuss? Because some things are better when you take the time to do them right. Lemonade tastes better when you make it from real lemons: not from a plastic jug. Bread is better when it's heavy and baked at home. Furniture wears better when it's actually made out of wood. Not chips of wood and glue.

Yes these things cost more. all in all I can say I've spent nearly $500 for everything in the pictures above. $700 if you count the stones (which were a gift). I've spent that much because I like it. I have real fondness for these things. But you could get a solid working kit for under $100 easily.

So expensive right? Here's a little math for you.

Let's say you're a man who shaves. You're not really fond of shaving, but you're not real fond of looking like a homeless man either. So you shave every other day during the week and not at all on the weekends. That's 3 days per week. You use a disposable cartridge razor, say a Mach 3. You're not stupid and you sure as hell aren't going to switch those cartridges every day so what, every 2 weeks? Three if your pushing it? For the sake of argument, we'll say every three weeks. Wallmart sells 10 blades for $35.00. If you're changing blades every three weeks, that means 10 cartridges lasts you 30 weeks.

I had to start shaving regularly when I joined the workforce. I started working full time at around 18. The average American man lives to be 75. That's roughly 57 years of shaving. Granted you're not going to shave until the day you die (at some point, you'll probably "experiment" with facial hair). So let's say 50 years. 50 years of regular shaving with a regular, middle priced razor, changing the cartridge every 3 weeks. Do you know what that works out to be in razors alone in your lifetime?

$3,033. Spent on razors. Which you probably hate.

Let's say you hate waiting that long to change razors. And change them every two weeks.

$4,550.

Every week?

$9,100

That's crazy talk. nearly $10,000 dollars spent on razors just so I don't have to feel as though Satan is pulling my hair out at the root?

Here's a real mind boggler…

Wade and Butcher.

One of the finest manufacturers of razors pretty much ever.

This is the Wade and Butcher I showed you earlier. I bought it from an antique dealer for $40. It needs some work, it's dull, has some chips and broken scales. It will take roughly $150 to restore it to it's original condition. It was manufactured in England somewhere between 1840 and 1850. That makes this razor, give or take, 165 years old.

It is very possible to shave every day with this razor. In fact Wade and Butcher made razors for barbers use. Barbers who probably shaved 10-20 customers a day. If you replace your razor every two weeks, that's 6 shaves. As I said before, this razor is 165 years old, what the equivalent cost in Mach 3 blades?

$30,030

With care this razor could easily last another 300 years.

$84,630.

Don't even talk to me about electric blades either. Comparing the shave off an electric and a straight is like comparing the blast radius of a rock and ballistic missile. And I guarantee your electric will not last 465 years. Besides, when the zombie apocalypse comes, I won't have to plug my straight razor in...

Like a Boss

Disposable Blades = disposable men.

Genius out.

A brief interlude.

Originally this was intended to be a painting blog.

But I get distracted easily. I know there are those out there that read blogs on painting, but without feedback, I am just a random stream of consciousness. In some ways, hate mail might be nice. I can always use more haters….

So, since I don't know what interests YOU, I will write about what interests me. Until I hear otherwise.

So let actual posting begin!

Painting is like being trapped behind enemy lines.

Painting has changed drastically for me in the last 8 months.

Not just what I do, but particularly how I think about what I do. When you start painting nearly all of your attention is wrapped up in controlling paint. (provided that your goal is to make paintings that look like something, not expressions of emotion or as I like to call them, "Temper-tantums.") Really, for the first 10,000 hours or so, all you are trying to do is make the painting DO what the hell you tell it to. You spend your time studying painters. Sargent, Vermeer, Gerome and Bouguereau. You pick them apart for their genius, their technique and their brilliance.

Sargent was a brilliant painter. And for that I

will never forgive him.

After a while, this learning curve levels out and the focus of your work no longer becomes the acquisition of skill. That's not to say that you don't actively try and improve, but there is a big difference between training to "just finish" a mile and to "shave two minutes off your time". It is here when you realize what that game is really about.

I had a an acquaintance through a mutual friend in college. His father served in England's SAS, or "Special air Service" as a medic. The SAS are world renowned for their training and tactical ability. Generally if you are a "bad-guy" the SAS are generally people you want to stay away from.

If you see a bunch of guys dressed like this

swing in through your window. Run.

One night while at a friends house, SAS-boy shared a few of his fathers best war stories. One in particular revolved around a firefight in which he was separated from his unit. After being wounded by small arms fire, he avoided enemy capture, while bleeding, for two weeks. That's two weeks of blood loss, two weeks of not sleeping and two weeks of not being captured by a bunch of guys with guns who are actively looking for you.

Less like this.

More like this.

While it seems like an odd comparison being a professional painter is not unlike being SAS-boy's father. Survival in this game has nothing to do with technical genius, virtuosity or brilliance. Ultimately the one that comes out victorious, is the one that survives. Above all else, painting takes endurance.

This take endurance?

Ok ha, ha. Yes, holding a brush is not like being shot by a Desert Eagle .50 jackass. However, the resolve to continue painting after being rejected from a gallery, or have a show garner a bad review or to be working in a style deemed "dead" by art critics, is about the closest thing you can feel to being shot without actually taking one in the chest.

When I first started studying Sergeants work, I was absolutely awed by his ability. Now what awes me is the guys endurance. He painted over 900 oils paintings, 2000 watercolors and more sketches and drawings than I can possibly count. Van Gogh painted well over 900 oils as well. And yet, only ever sold one: for $1,600. Van Gogh lived to be 36. If you figure Van Gogh started painting when he as 28, that's an annual income of $200.

It is relatively easy for us to see how Van Gogh's endurance failed. But still even up to that point, his endurance is well and truly astonishing.

And before we well and truly blame financial failure on Van Gogh's suicide consider that Rembrandt found fortune early on, but died nearly bankrupt. And of the 600 paintings, 300 etchings and 1400 drawings he completed, some of the best ones were the ones that were created during the years of financial hardship bordering on destitution.

Ultimately, this is not a case of "The Tortoise and Hair" but more a case of "The Tortoise, the Hair and the Man made of rock with 18 pound balls of carbon steel." Ultimately the prize may not go to the guy who is the best painter. The prize goes to the guy who soldiers on despite being sleep deprived, shot, chased by pissed of enemy soldiers and lost.

In the end, the ones that succeed are not the fastest.

The ones who succeed are the ones who endure, even if it kills them.

Art is a Marathon People.

-Genius out.

Malaise

Inertia is a helluva thing.

I desperately need inertia to be successful at anything I do. For me to be effective at doing something I almost have to build up a head of steam that can sustain me through the inevitable challenges that arise when taking on difficult tasks.

In other words, I hate stopping what I'm doing because it's very difficult to start doing that again.

Here's what our boy Newton had to say about things:

First law of motion: The velocity of a body remains

constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.

I think of art not unlike a rocket.

Seriously? Is that the best picture

of a rocket you could find?

It takes a huge amount of force to move a rocket off the ground. But a relatively small amount of force to keep it going. So after a working rhythm is built up, I find painting ideas come to me with unnatural speed. (Mostly as I fall asleep.) It's almost as if my brain is so used to working on painting related problems that after I stop painting, it is so set in the groove that it says, "Well, that color combination worked really well today, I wonder what else we could do with it." and it rifles through is filing system pulling from my own experience as a painter and the paintings I study until it coalesces into a concrete idea.

I have found that painting's turn out best when begun from a concrete idea. I used to just show up at the canvas with a rough idea and waited to see what would happen. But I've since moved away from that. And that requires inertia.

I hate inertia.

So, hopefully I can get things moving again. I am tired of writing now. Because blogging is like firing up a rocket ship. So here is a picture of a bunny eating a banana:

BANANNA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Genius out n'stuff.

The Sad Pirate

By the time I was 5, I was almost completely blind in my left eye.

When I look back through family photographs, I would be challenged to find one where I don't look odd. Sweater vests, sailor suits and bowl cuts abound. However the ones that strike me as the most odd are those where I am posing with my just newborn sister. I was a very agreeable child and had not yet reached the age where I felt the need to exercise my god-given right to squirm relentlessly, nor had I realized that sweater vests made me look like a lumpy pumpkin. There I was, the very picture of smiling acquiescence gazing up at the camera (which I had been fooled into thinking was some sort of duck there to assume me) my right eye sparking with childlike wonder while my left eye seemed oddly preoccupied with what was going on on the other side of my face.

It seemed that my right eye was like a pair of miss-matched siblings. One was studious and focused (who we will call Clark) and the other's attention was prone to wandering (we will call this eye Morton). While Clark watched television, Morton would get suddenly bored and decide it was time to nap. Going dormant, Morton would roll around in the bed that was my socket whenever startled by bright lights of cameras that were masquerading as ducks.

As I got older my parents thought there must be something wrong. Eyes are supposed to be a package deal and it seems at least one of them didn't get the memo. The trip to eye doctor was a curious experience for my now 5 year old self. I remember the large heavyset man shifting some sort of a machine that could only have come off the set of "Star Trek" over my tiny head (beam me up Scotty!) and asked me to look at the screen.

Scotty: Do you know your letters?

Me: Uh huh

Scotty: Ok read the third line.

I concentrated…

Me: "D F N" (Hell yes. And WHY can't spelling tests be this easy?)

Scotty: Ok now. With just your right eye, read the fourth line.

I concentrated some more.

Me: (with growing confidence) P T X Z (WOOT! Me and Scotty were an unstoppable team. Together we would conquer the galaxy and have incredible adventures.)

Scotty: Ok, now just your left eye. Read the third line again.

The hell is that?

Me: Uh. Q….. a backwards Q… and... I think that's a triangle...

Scotty: Oh. Ok, try the second line instead.

WTF? Is that a spider?!

Me: (deeply confused) H… P… or possibly a seven. I can't be sure.

Scotty: Ooo. Ok one more, try the top line.

I want my mommy.

Me: (desperately trying to remember the letter at the top of the chart) I… don't know what it is.

Scotty: Ok I think that's enough.

The traitor Scotty informed my mother that I had failed the test and was kicked out of the spaceship club. I had failed the eye test so badly in fact, fatty-fatty-fat-pants said there wasn't even an eye test designed that I was capable of passing. As it turns out, my right eye was Superman and my left eye just got tired of trying to live up to his older brothers expectations. As such, left eye decided to quit it's job, take up online gambling and possibly try meth.

So how do we make lazy eye feel like a winner? Easy.

We chain down Superman eye with Kryptonite patch.

I remember when my mom first brought me the patch. She explained that I had to wear it everyday until my lazy worthless left eye could get off drugs and rejoin society. At first I was easy to convince. Mom handed me the eye patch and I put it on.

You mean I get to walk around and look like this (plus an eyepatch)

every day? Avast ye Scuurvy dog!

Awesome! I was a bonafide pirate. I immediately took of at full steam and after six or seven minutes of me running about the room chasing the dog with a discarded paper-towel roll. My mom caught me and sat me down.

She looked upset. Had my impersonation of Blackbeard not been spot on? Our dog was being punished for not swabbing the decks fast enough. Perhaps I had been too stern a disciplinarian? My mother looked directly at me and a never before seen compassion swelling in her eyes and said, very softly, "No, son. The patch goes on your other eye." I paused and gingerly slid the patch over my nose imprisoning Superman in darkness and dragging his meth- addled lazy brother Morton, screaming into the light.

And Morton couldn't. See. Shit.

I literally could not see anything more than 3-5 inches in front of me. I spent most of these agonizing days watching television, simply because it prevented me from moving around too much. When I was forced to move (either due to the call of nature or because my legs had gone numb), it was a precarious affair.

Ever get up in the middle of the night in total blackness and walk around with your arms stretched out so you don't kill yourself? That was my life. All day every day, all the time. In order to truly communicate my ability to see things, I have composed a sophisticated diagram.

A picture takes a thousand words to describe to a

kid wearing an eyepatch.

It took me three years before I was able to wear glasses sans pirate patch. My prescription for Superman was no stronger than that of a sheet of cellophane. Morton on the other hand, got coke-bottle level lenses which made my face look something like this.

I'm an artist. Did you know that?

It would be nearly ten years before I was able to stop wearing glasses as my vision slowly corrected itself. Morton changed his name to M-Dawg and now runs a successful chain of auto-body repair shops.

Good for him.

In closing, t the start of the new year I occasionally find it helpful to remember how I arrived at where I am, even that means remembering the day I got to be the saddest damn pirate on the seven seas. However, not everybody can say they "Got over being blind". And if nothing else at least I can say I don't look like these guys:

I had to wear a patch. These guys chose to.

I have big things planned for 2012. Big things.

Keep your eye(s) peeled…

-F