The mind-numbing dissonance of today's right-wing politics is by design...it frustrates critics and hoodwinks followers.
Media outlets amplify and mainstream these reactionary and xenophobic political operatives. Glenn Beck cynically maneuvers himself to stand alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and the media puts him there—Beck is elevated and MLK is reduced. It is a slick game.
Update: Throw in a little "christ is the best" shtick and you're good to go.
I'm not necessarily happy with this one. There are a lot of things about it that I now like, some having to do with it being—almost—a lost cause. I think the ground was too uniformly dark from the start. This limited the pictorial depth I could work with, incidental or intentional...it closed up too fast.
The tension between gesture and painted form is there and I like the different types of painting used—impulsive and considered (fast and slow).
Some of the difficulties I encountered with this painting go back a long way for me. They revolve around abstraction and its translation, flirting with the literal (space, color, object) and accepting the importance of a mark, shape or painted field without it feeling decorative.
Update: I struggle to make it not feel decorative, but know that it fundamentally is.
View preliminary states and comments below the break.
Hundreds of new planets have been discovered by Nasa's new space probe, sparking new hope of life outside our solar system.
Up to 140 of the newly-found planets are rocky and Earth-like containing both land and water, conditions which could allow simple lifeforms to develop.
I continue to figure things out. They are entirely situational (and self-seducing). The process boils down to chasing a series of subjective visual hooks that I eventually blunt, obscure or eliminate..
While each painting has illuminated an aspect of what I want to do, I really am beginning to like doing them. I enjoy it as a practice, something I can do daily with the simple goal of moving on to the next one...and finally...to have a completed painting require the next one.
View preliminary states and comments below the break.
My approach is changing as I do these...certainly more thoughtful. Or at least doing more deliberate work alongside the direct and impulsive. I am learning (possibly again) that there are more places I can go as I work...more mindsets. It has been so long since I painted regularly, I honestly don't remember if I was conscious of "wearing different hats" as I painted.
View preliminary states and comments below the break.
Animation and Direction by BLU
Produced and Distributed by ARTSH.it
Soundtrack by Andrea Martignoni
Very ambitious on-site painting and animation (check out their equally creative website at blublu.org).
I like how the painting/drawing seeps through and incorporates pre-existing graffiti and urban/industrial decay.
Welcome to the 21st century where, politically, we will live out the 20th century in reverse...sort of. Or better yet, to conduct politics as a vaudeville review of the 20th century's low points...to gradually unwind real progress, cultural or scientific, because it's too hard to lie and bamboozle in the face of an enlightened population.
Post-modern empowerment...yay!
Sound familiar?
You can make horseshit look glitzy and informed.
Don't mess with Texas (as it cranks out stupid kids).
For fun, and greater effect, play all the video clips at the same time.
This one was interesting to work. Even though it required more effort (revisions and re-thinks), I felt more confident that I could get the thing to go in a better direction when it had crashed.
I was able to approach it in different ways as well...not just with "rough-handed" brushwork, but also, at times, a calmer hand.
View preliminary states and comments below the break.
When I was doing this years ago, there was always a point where I couldn't work a painting any further without it seizing up, becoming mannered or just tickled (and it showed). With this painting, I was able to keep it suspended longer, make critical changes and course corrections along the way...persist.
Painting #6 of 6 (30" x 31 1/4")
Details:
View preliminary states of the final painting below the break.
A couple of things:
The political and media theater that this clip represents is rather disgusting...okay...especially that it followed the Biden's "Super Soaker" picnic that many of these journalists attended.
But...the political instincts of this sharp elbowed Democratic veteran "reluctantly" taking on another tone deaf Republican talking point is brilliant. When finally "coaxed" by the White House Press Corps to address Joe Barton's undemocratic apology to BP, he destroys Barton and the Republican's position on the oil spill. He makes it clear that the corporatist, big business loving, free-market wanking Republicans don't give a shit about the "real americans" they always claim to represent.
This photograph of my great-grandparents and their children (my grandfather is standing on left) has always intrigued me. My grandfather's sisters are rather frightening. He regularly gave accounts of his sisters' cruelty toward him (with the exception of Ruth, far right).
His father was born in Canada of Scottish parents, who migrated to Connecticut. My great-grandfather was a farmer like his father before him.
His mother was born in New Jersey and in the 1880s moved with her family to southwest Ohio. My great-grandmother was a member of the United Methodist Church and regularly taught and performed music and musicals for her church and the local Grange.
I have no accounting of my great-grandparents age or the circumstances around their meeting and marriage.
My grandfather.
He learned farming as a boy, but initially worked at the Ford manufacturing plant in Hamilton, Ohio. Just before the stock market crash of 1929, he became a policeman in Hamilton and later a motorcycle patrolman. His time as a cop was notorious and mythic (largely as a result of his alcoholism). Around the beginning of WWII, he retired from the force (was asked to leave) following an off-duty motorcycle accident (that nearly took his left leg). He returned to the work of his father, farming and farm management, which he did well around his alcoholism. He would regularly make arrangements to move to another farm job just ahead of going on a binge. Consequently my grandmother and mother lived in many different parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin.
I think this one is finished. The marks, lines, shapes and palette are starting to move beyond a phantom-like recall...slowly becoming current, more now than mere physical memories of having once painted.
I've posted some version of this before, but it's worth a look every month or so. One might listen to this and think..."Why so harsh Mr. Burroughs? After all you're dead, and certainly things have improved in the past 24 years"
Just read a Sarah Palin Facebook post. Listen to Rand Paul talk about how mountain top removal is okay if the mountain belongs to you or your company. Watch anything uttered by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Think about the politics of South Carolina and Arizona.
Oh, let us not forget the Gulf of Mexico.
You can never be too harsh when discussing the American right wing.
UPDATED: American politics have become a zero sum game. Let's face it, some of the right wing, libertarian and fiscal conservative bullshit is attractive to a lot of Americans. Processed within a life of work, debt, fear and hassles of every proportion, the "I've got mine, screw you!" mentality hits a chord.
Whether the issue is guns, re-segregating private businesses, illegal immigration or the deficit, a moderately clever right wing strategist can appeal to a large number of Americans who struggle enough on a daily basis to have long ago walked away from the idea of citizenship; the concept that the real founders folded into both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (and yes, they were wealthy and white, but philosophically visionary). The challenge that the founders faced (and well meaning Democrats/liberals still face today), is convincing the population to take the bet that helping the least among us, and advocating for the middle class over corporate power, will benefit the whole and preserve a modicum of social stability and harmony. The more rightward politics move, the less anyone really benefits.
Come on...reasonable federal gun laws, the EPA, Social Security, Medicare...state sponsored law enforcement, fire protection and local social services for the poor, the addicted and the crazy...does anyone really think that eliminating these things will make life better?
