Why does visual Art provoke me? I am not alone. Today I received this text message from WTP. He was writing from his cabin that over looks Lower White Fish Lake. Foolish me, I thought he was there to fish.

“Is art, as Freud believed, a kind of socially acceptable wish fulfillment for a social infantile desires? A way of finding in imagination what we have lost in life? A sublimation of serial energy? A way of transmitting our hidden wishes or shameful secrets, our failures and losses and humiliations, into beautiful objects that win us wealth and admiration and all the serial fulfillment that we put off in order to do the work in the first place?”

I suspect that message was in response to my quote in a previous conversation.

“The role of art, for Immanuel Kant, is to embody the most important ethical ideas. Art is a natural extension of philosophy. Kant held that we need to have art continually before us, so as to benefit from vivid illustrations and memorable symbols of good behavior and thereby keep the perverse parts of ourselves in check. He wanted to understand how the better, more reasonable parts of our natures could be strengthened so as to reliably win out over our inbuilt weaknesses and selfishness. Art helps us to be good.” 

Yes. “Art helps us to be Good.” That stuck with me. Art represents an Ideal. Going to the Met was always inspiring. Once, while wandering I was stopped by an 8th century BCE vase. An anonymous Assyrian artist had the sense of beauty and skill that demanded my attention. His talent had crafted it and, ten thousand years later, it gave me a sense of awe. (Yo, that is so awesome, dude.)

Thank you WTP. Now I am going to contemplate Freud …and my navel. (What the hell is ‘serial imagination’?)

An Introduction to my latest series; a work-in-progress.

I have been making art seriously since 1970. Whether working in photography, painting, drawings, prints or video, the efforts are always done as a series. Though I was diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease in the late 1990s, this did not affect my methods for another twenty years. Then, slowly, betrayal. With increasing visual impairment, my approach to making art required change. 

First, my central vision became distorted, then slowly “whited out.” Dr. Tsang, my opthamologist, said it was progressive, but I would never go blind. I would always have peripheral vision. “What about driving? And reading? Drawing?” I asked. He didn’t answer.

Accepting this, in 2017, I stopped doing commercial work to concentrate solely on my art, and began making plans to leave New York City. In the two plus years it took to sell, move, rent, buy, and move in, I stopped painting. I continued writing, but I knew that my next efforts would focus on how to express myself with diminishing visual skills.

To that end, in 2019, I began a new series: I call it INSIGHT. I cannot replicate my vision for you (nor do I want to) only convey my experience; that is, my frustration and my vulnerability – but also my joy while finding a method for making meaningful images. My creative journey IS the destination. INSIGHT is my paper trail.

First efforts were prints; a combination of free verse and past paintings or photos. I bound replicas in a softcover volume. Three months later, I republished it with additional explorations. Available here.

Desiring a larger format, a year later I published a limited edition broadsheet INSIGHT 3: LEMONADE.

Nine months later, I followed that with INSIGHT 4: EXPRESS. I have found a direction. These are my strongest images. In the published tabloid, they are accompanied with a running narrative. If INSIGHT 1, 2 and 3 are day trips, EXPRESS is a long term encampment. Available here.

In the Fall o 2022, I began INSIGHT 5. I am calling it HOPE. I write about it in the post EUREKA!

(This post and the next are sticky posts that introduce this site. After that begin my posts in chronological order.)