India Ink Drawings Feb. 12th, 2007-Aug. 8th, 2007

I was given by my family some sketch books for last Christmas and I made a pact with myself to get sketching in all three or more of them and fill them up. Some of the abstract images are about life, others about wine, women, love and all of this together. Sometimes I drew some portraits and sometimes I would write the titles in French or English / even mix them up. It's free association/ being caught up in the moment - all from and in my head. Yes, I'd be inspired by something I would see or read but the drawings just flowed from my body and I just would quickly jump onto their backs as they'd rush by me and enjoy the ride until both the drive and the enthusiasm and the artistic creativity would finally spend itself and leave us both in heaps along the rives/roads of life. Hope you like them. Here are some. Most are titled at the bottom as well as dated. Cheers, TONY

My Father Had An Art / Remembering Him in 2008/ Father's Day

As I get ready to download some of my black and white ink sketches onto this blog spot I am reminded of my father. It was Father's Day yesterday and I kept thinking that I needed to download something onto my art blog as I thought about him. He was a pro. He knew how to give a speech.

I remember in particular the late afternoon in Chicago back several years ago when my youngest brother was getting married. I being the best man had to say some words with others, too. The father of the bride was to speak, friends of the bride and groom and perhaps another person or two. It's been too long. Memories fade. What has never faded though and always been crystal-clear to me is my father's speech. Everyone else spoke but no one did it seemingly as effortlessly and as much to the point as they should have been. My father was brilliant. He said exactly what needed to be said.

I struggled with my speech. I was not happy that my brother was marrying whom he was. It just did not seem to be the right fit and for the right reasons. I anguished : what to say? I'm sure it seemed as labored as it felt giving it. The father of the bride spoke more to what his wife had done for the wedding than he ever did of the two getting married. Perhaps he too was conflicted. My father might have been, too but you could not hear it anywhere in his words. His was the only truly correct speech given that late afternoon. It struck me like a lightning rod. I was stunned! HOW DID YOU DO IT DAD ? I still don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is that some one said the things that needed to be said and he said them beautifully. I will remember not the contents of that speech for the rest of my life ; but the flow and tenor and rightness of it.

Dad, you grew in stature in my eyes that late afternoon in big leaps and bounds. Yours is an art and one that I hope I can master in the future. Cheers to you. I love you dad and still miss you even after all these years. Your son , TONY

Collages In Progress/ Here & In Australia

I like to make collages and collect wine labels and other things around the house to do them with. I figure that it's free and does not cost me much ; also that it's what I've actually come into contact with in my life and thus might know a little more about. Here are six pictures to share with you. The first I did here at my home in Virginia and these just show the state they were in at the time ( not finished ). I did them quite some time ago so I will go get one and include the date later ( assume in the meantime somewhere between 2000-2005 ). The others include the wine labels from West Cape Howe winery where I was staying for the first time ( Feb. 11-13Th, 2008 I think? ) and they also include pastels added after the labels. I gave them all away as gifts to the staff at West Cape Howe in Denmark, southern most tip od western Australia ). Also,there's one of me standing in front of one of my watercolors and a partial of one of my first collages , both done in the 1990's sometime. Enjoy. P.S. I just tried to download some of the images and was unsuccessful so there will only be the three taken in Australia to appear. The others I hope will follow shortly. Sorry, TONY

Two Poems Instead Of Drawings

Here are the TWO POEMS I made mention of in the blog before this one. Laying on the couch watching the slight rain showers and watching the constant dripping from our gutters in the front of the house, our terrier keeping me company - here are the two poems I wrote with ideas that just kept coming to me and would not let me snooze :

The Art Motion
Second None To
Motion Second I
The E-Mote The
Cross Bridge
Build First One
The E-Moting Of
Emotion Mouth
Hands Mouthing
Mouth Handing
Andling Angle
One Real On Early
Really Only One
To Motion Into
Be Yes Up Picked
In Act Of Art Arting
Onto Upon One
Stum Strum Rumble
Might And Carry
Arrived By On
The Emotion Second
Follow Up Swept
Sweep Sweet
Sweat Yes Sure Most
Urely Whirl Twirl
Late Dark Birly Light
Times Any

I stopped then added :

So Ate So Cre Rea
Eahhh Yes Ate
Off Plate
Gone All

#1 May 12th, written at 2:36 PM at home.


She Comes For Me
Gifts Bearing
Baring Self Hers
Me For Of Milk
And Fruits And
Tangled Dark Webs
Blood Lollies To Suck
One Other Then
Again Forth Back
Motion Sooth So
Oothing So Quil So
Tran In As Port
Land Dock Ocking
She Berths Me
Calms My Soul
Virgin Lone Lonely
Man Hunting I've
Weary Am Broke
Roke Oken I'm
In All Done Most
She Cues Ques Res
Es Escues Me From
Pair Pears Pairs
I'm Aved-S-S So
Full Great Grate Rate
Team Us Two Brings
Self Hers For Me
I Her On
Dine

#2 written on May 11th, Monday afternoon at home around 3 PM. Neither of these two poems have been edited. They are exactly as I wrote them earlier. I want the roughness/rawness/immediacy of them to stand, original and not rehashed or written, for better or for worse. I am hoping in the long run that it is for the better. I can always write other poems inspired by these. TONY

The Written Word As Art

Recently I have used more often the written word as art rather than drawing. I love drawing , I have done it all my life and I love working over a white surface with whatever I have handy to work immediately with. I'm very spontaneous , I like working in the moment as so often the moment seems to catch me and snatch me up. I sometimes struggle with this being taken hostage so to speak by the muse of whatever art is out there that decides to use me as it's vessel to transport/ create/ actualize/visualize whatever it has on it's agenda at the moment. I try and remember, I try and think of things not to forget.
That does not work. I do forget so now more often than not I succumb to the will of whatever art genie is out there calling/whispering/teasing/baiting/pulling me hard. I stop what I am doing and I start writing or drawing whatever it is. I get more, so much more out of this approach. It leads me on. It's like going down a new and undiscovered path.
I begin to pull things together and my art expression begins to flow sometimes easily and naturally and other times as if I have the weight of all art expression on my lone shoulders. That sounds conceited, sorry. I do usually work alone in creating my art. There is no other person there helping me. I know that in many art forms it helps to work together : music, theater, etcetera. I often wonder why I don't work in a team? Am I too demanding, too difficult, too unwilling to share the stage with another ? It's probably some of all of that and perhaps my art has and will continue to suffer as a result.
I'm in a period of change and enjoying doing as many things as I can with a new perspective and attitude. I want to be successful at what I do. I want at the end of the day to be happy that I went as successfully down whatever path as possible. That will be my reward. So earlier I wrote two poems which I will include later in my next blog. For now let it suffice that I am working well, feeling well as I am harnessed and fitted and as whatever art expression passes through me and onto paper. That's a great feeling. Who can say what the value of the resulting product on white paper is? I don't know or especially care because it is the " doing " of it that saves my humble, sorry, enthusiastic ass each and every time and gives it such a good feeling that I am hooking perhaps into Nature and life and all things wild and curious and wanting to be and stay alive. Cheers. TONY
P.S. I am not worried, the drawings and sketches will soon follow. Soon it will be their time. For now it's clearly the written word for me as I roll it over, look inside, dissect it, chop and piece it together in what I hope are valuable and original ways. Time will tell.

Why I Draw ? On White ?

These two questions surface now and then and I'm always intrigued by each of them. I'm driven, I'm directed, I'm pushed to draw and to work these white surfaces. They are my stages, they are my stories told over and over and over again. I need to retell my stories because in the telling of them I rediscover or at least reassert myself. This is fun and mental both to me thus the word : fundamental. The fun is excruciating, it dogs me , it bugs me, it hounds me ever so and often at night. But I'm tired then, I want to be pampered and yet I'm supposed to create on a white backdrop.
If I don't create something then I can't tell myself that I'm really an artist can I ? I need the proof of doing : those motions jerked and strained and sprained so often are rough and articulate in their absolute inarticulatenesses! They are savage, primal, threadbare and yet so very alive , fertile and some quite pregnant. I can feel it in every fiber of my being. I know when I've touched the bottom of my self, IT all resounds so clearly and so truthfully. I may not understand, I may not know, I may not fully grasp. In fact I know that I will never fully grasp anything except the simple concept that I will never grasp all of this experience of drawing. It does not matter. I know to leave well enough alone. I know or feel keenly to not edit myself out of the equation. Thta's grand. I love this. I triumph in this. I'm proud of this. Take me or not but if you do then take me in my nakedness and rawness, crudeness, human clarity and humble,endearing, loving and nurturing as well as fearing, hating, loathing resentful and self-centered sublimeness. I'm what I am!
I draw to come closer to myself and to touch my life and that of others through my drawings of faces and bodies and their abstractions abstracted in those of wondrous, vibrant, wild and raging, staging, storming Nature. I love and eat life daily. Life I fill these virgin white pages with but life that rings of truth, unvarnished, unedited and both gut and hearty/soulful. My drawings I want to be filled with energy and all the highs and lows and everything else in between of what to me registers as real life. I don't give a rat's ass to impress others. I'm not trying to please. I want something that rings true so that it will last even if it's badly executed , raw and flawed. That's life. Majesty and mire and mud and sunshine warming the muddy dried backs of pigs and hypos all in one.
We are what we are. We are still largely primitive, at least our bodies are, beautiful, cruel, savage destructive and constructive. My sharp attack with pen and pencil and crayon, brush and all pastels and watercolors is about the undiluted, forceful statements that we and life make continually - sometimes plainly visible, sometimes not.
So I stab and I scratch and jot, splash, thrust, grind, grip, rip, paste and stripped of vanity and hopefully falseness, too - I draw and paint and collage and save myself somehow in this totally enmeshing process. Cheers, TONY

Art Is My Life !

I'm on and charged, loaded, ready to be heard and shared, weared( word made-up! ), worn and sworn all in the name of original art and output that's about art and not about money! Of course I'd like enough to get by but this blog page is really just about creativity and artistic impulses passing through me, registering in small part : and hopefully captured long enough, borrowed so that I may record how they influence me before I have to let them go again because they are never really mine, not really. I just wear them, try them on for size, fit and feel! I squeal _ I peel with laughter, I'm drunk with artistic intensity and attitude to do or damned be! Oh what a crazy, wonderful ride and journey it's still to be. Open eyes wide : See! More soon ... TONY