Quality Over Celebrity

Monetization of art and the building of collections are often to the detriment of the work.  While I like a buck as much as the next guy, I recognize the conundrum that money poisons the well of creativity. 

Today, Impressionists paintings are easily shrugged-off by the serious contemporary collectors and critics as beauty for beauty’s sake.  Fluff is an even coarser description.  While the works of artists such as Monet and Degas are indeed pleasurable to look upon, they must be viewed primarily as explorations.  While artists such as Renoir grew old and comfortable in their style, a few of the Impressionists continued to explore painting and color theory with the same fervor that initially led the father of Impressionism, Edouard Manet, to create “The Fife Player” and “Luncheon on the Grass”.

Monet’s Water Lilies triptych (1915-1926) is the perfect example of overblown beauty that one can walk into and absorb into their skin, immediately recognizing the mental labor spent on its creation. The layering of colors make the canvas glow to a near effervescent shimmer, but technically Monet was simply an old man with failing eyesight, attempting to master the ultimate illusion of color.  This was not a one-off painting created for profit.  It took nine years to complete and the size, alone made it unsaleable to a single person or institution.  Once completed, it stood as his Opus in a life’s search for scientific qualities of light and color, visualized.  He was so enamored by the piece that he kept it in his personal collection until his death.

However, the beast that is capitalism has forced the separation of the pieces between three museums (St. Louis, Kansas City and Ohio).  How can the best interests of the work be held higher than the celebrity of the artist, if the institutions set-up to champion art for the people is mired in the politics of acquisitions and patronage?  Monet was only able to create this nine-year masterwork thanks to his success.  Yet, during his life he kept the painting close for constant re-observation, refusing to separate the triptych. -North

Not famous or Pure Art as a correlation of Pure Math and a counter-balance to Applied Mathematics and its relation to Representational Art

Pure Art is unique in the fact that it is creation without purpose.  Profit is a secondary purpose/by-product.  Contemporary aesthetic design (e.x. Apple products) falls under the profit spectrum.  Initially, art is created for the sake of art.

• DaVinci created paintings such as the Mona Lisa for commission/income; but he placed the subjects into radical settings of his own design

• Manet and the early pre-impressionists (such as Corbet and Goya) created sellable masterful works to illicit response rather than just fulfill a market need

• Van Gogh as an artist represents the epitome of art for art’s sake.  He created a world of his own making... that no one was interested paying for; yet he continued to paint as if it were as important as food and air

-North

Pure Art

Pure Art is the treatise that purely abstract concepts and intentions in the creation of art, naturally, still follow the physical laws of a specific multiverse.  Despite the seeming randomness of non-objectivism; basic physical laws (such as balance and composition) still affect aesthetics in the drive for pure abstraction.   The difficulty in widespread acceptance of this idea has more to do with the lifecycle of art through the ages than actual recognition of the basic concepts.  Pure abstraction is only a century old.  If we breakdown the exploration of Art to a timeline of human existence, this is what we are left with:

• Cave painting was Art’s birth
• the Greeks engaged our learning throughout its toddler years with the discovery of aesthetic perfections
• the Renaissance and onward through the times of Ruben and El Greco, were Art’s turbulent rebellious teenage years where the rules were bent and broken but hidden behind the illusion of realism; the Catholic Church was the parental figure that punished and rewarded creative duties
• while the often-considered rebels of early-twentieth century movements that ultimately led-to modern art are more accurately the mature embrace of early-adulthood and the natural human sense of experimentation with purpose
• Art is now in middle-adulthood, that moment when understanding accompanies both a heightened comprehension of the effects of theorizing the future as well as recognizing past opportunities, both missed and embraced

Like theoretical physics, Pure Art redefines the differences between that which is true and what is possible.  If the human mind can conceive a unique idea or angle to existing laws, than that mere conception makes it a logical possibility or truth. - North

Planimetrics

Planimetrics, Oil on Canvas, 12”x 72” 

Planimetrics is fundamental to the creation of maps, the representation of real-life features as seen on a three-dimensional Earth, and accurately portraying them on a two-dimensional surface.

-North

ABQ Downtown Series

"ABQ Downtown 1", Oil on Paper, 11"x15" (unframed)

"ABQ Downtown 2", Oil on Paper, 11"x15" (unframed)

"ABQ Downtown 3", Oil on Paper, 11"x15" (unframed)

"ABQ Downtown 4", Oil on Paper, 11"x15" (unframed)

"ABQ Downtown 5", Oil on Paper, 11"x15" (unframed)

"ABQ Downtown 6", Oil on Paper, 11"x15" (unframed)

-North

Penistaja

Penistaja, Oil on Canvas, 28”x40”

Penistaja soils are extensive in New Mexico, where they have an extent of more than 1 million acres. They are very productive rangeland soils and are excellent for livestock grazing, wildlife habitat, and recreation. The Penistaja series of soils was named after a small farming and stock-raising community in northwest New Mexico. “Penistaja” is a Navajo name meaning “forced to sit.” Penistaja soils occur in a beautiful Southwest setting of sandstone mesas, snow-capped mountains, and desert grasslands.

-North

Crescit Eundo - It grows as it goes

Crescit Eundo - It grows as it goes, Oil on Paper, 25”x 48” 

The Latin phrase, Crescit Eundo, can be translated as "Increases as it goes" or, more commonly as New Mexico's motto, "Grows as it goes."  The phrase is taken from Book VI of Lucretius' epic scientific poem De rerum natura, (On the Nature of Things).

-North

Resistance 2

Resistance 2, Oil on Canvas, 28”x40” 

- North

Resistance

Resistance, Oil on Canvas, 28”x40” 

-North

Festival of the Cranes

Festival of the Cranes, Oil on Canvas, 12”x36” 

-North