Work on Exhibit at - ART SANTA FE International

Diptych - "Boxed-In: Under the Sandia"


"Green is for Water Rights"

These two works will be on display in July at ART SANTA FE International. - DN

Works at Gallery RFD in July

Sweetgrass Hills, Prairie Place


Going to the Sun Road


Einstein - Man is Here for the Sake of Other Men

Enjoy. - DN

Busy Summer... gotta remember to create posts!

I am currently coming to the end of two shows. My two-month solo exhibition at Palette Contemporary in New Mexico and a one-month group show of religious work at Gallery RFD in Georgia. Despite these closings, new exhibition opportunities are on the horizon. I am scheduled to show two paintings in mid-July at the prestigous ART SANTA FE International Exhibition; basically, the southwest version of Miami Basil. Collectors and galleries from around the globe will be present, as well as special guest Frank Gehry... so maybe something will come of this opportunity.

I also had my "Immersion Travel Art" movement recognized by the curator of the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia. Three paintings representative of the movement along with my manifesto was selected by Curator Holly McCullough for display at Gallery RFD in July and August. So maybe something worthwhile could come of this... is this how viable art movements start? - DN

Toddler Philosophy... is this where dreams originate?

At eight-thirty this morning Samuel took his first swig from the egg creme he begged me to make. He claimed he needed something "chocolately" for washing down his oatmeal. He swallowed and turned halfway around in his chair to proclaim, "that's as smooth as a clean chair"; while stroking the back rail of his kitchen highboy-style seat.

My wife and I regularly discuss opportunities - both missed and acquired. She loves her career as a Speech Language Pathologist working in the hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (not so much her previous stints in the schools or private contracting). Though she still wonders if she should have gone on to medical school; as she secretly always desired. Growing-up, she never felt that her family would take her dream seriously - so she kept it to herself... for a decade and a half.

I took my own odd little paths in the past. A round-about-way of getting from there to here. In my family, ideal career opportunities for a "smart guy" (someone college-bound) led to either engineering or business degrees; and anyone that knows me can easily recognize I don't have an interest for either. I originally settled on working towards degrees that would lead to teaching at university level (English, Art, Philosophy - I didn't care which, but it was something I could justify to my parents), I loved self-expression (particularly painting) and attained a degree in studio art. Graduated and worked for a while as a gallery director with the intention of eventually returning to school for an MFA. I worked for a while as a K-12 art instructor, basically worked my way around the west to find my voice as a painter... the desire to be a professor now only an occasional memory. I'm not sure if I really have any regrets, any other path would have interferred with my progress as an artist; well... maybe I wish my wife was a doctor... my salary isn't what one could honestly classify as "exact" or "regular".

"that's as smooth as a clean chair"

My four-year-old son... the philosopher. He makes strangely obscure comments like that on a daily basis. Though I seem to never know exactly where they originate, I can't help but stand in wonder as the statements flow from his mouth and mind. Where will this train of thought take him; what dreams lay under the blanket with a middle-child-toddler actively seeking abstract thoughts? - DN

Contradictions to Create Revisionist Landscape Art

It rained heavily yesterday afternoon, Samuel and I found ourselves trapped in the studio painting whilst the wind blew and the water fell from the sky. He spent the afternoon working back and forth between dabs of acrylic paint, watercolors and Play-Doh. Happily, I put the finishing touches on three small works; but given my tendency to prefer natural light for shooting images of my work… the weather was much too wild for me to photograph the paintings. So there are no images to share, today.

Over the past five years I have never been at a loss for painting ideas. I have always attributed the inspiration to my frequent travel habits; but how much of it really was associated with the unconscious developmental process of creating a unique stylistic approach to recreating the landscape? I am no longer a realist, therefore I’m not widely accepted in their circles. Yet, my undeniable representational painting subjects drive-away the traditional abstractionists, as well. I am by choice a painter, though I deeply admire the work of conceptual artist Andy Goldsworthy. I seem to live and paint as much for contradictions, as because of them. As I create and consider the methodology of my process, my mind questions the true nature of what I hope of accomplishing with these works. How much of my approach to painting is a random excuse to travel and embed myself across the American landscape and how much is a masterful decision to create a “revisionist landscape art movement”? – DN

Sam A Baker State Park

Goliath at the campsite


Samuel the snake charmer


My three on the trail with the naturalist

We spent the weekend at Sam A Baker State Park in the St. Francois Mountains of southeast Missouri, just north of the bootheel. Last night, I started two small paintings of the region including the St. Francois River and Big Creek. I chose to paint them in a smaller format, because the simple beauty of that place seems to occupy such a diminutive spot on the map.

Hopefully, I’ll have them completed and photographed in time for tomorrow’s blog posting. – DN

Women in Western Art Video

Ran across this video of “Women in Western Art” on YouTube and I found it quite amazing.

Click here to view…

There was a number of praising comments and a few idiots as well, but one statement really stuck with me- “They look beautiful but lonely, aren't they?”

Made me think about my own figurative paintings. – DN

New Kiln ... for a painter

My newest acquisition... A $1300 kiln for $110... in perfect working condition... gotta love yard sales in the South. - DN

Number 4: Map to Samuel's Robin's Egg

"Number 4: Map to Samuel's Robin's Egg", Sumi & Acrylic Inks & Acrylic Paint on Canvas, 24"x44"

Click the image to see a detailed view of the painting.

A good friend in Santa Fe was enamoured with birds and spent immense amounts of money on quality Nikon digital equipment and vacations with the sole purpose of documenting their flight. It never really occurred to me that he had to leave the desert in order to photograph his muse. We were living in a land with few examples of the familiar birds of my youth: Painted Buntings, Bluebirds, Cardinals, Hummingbirds, and Warblers and Doves. Looking back, my memory of New Mexico birds primarily involved watching Road Runners drift between vehicles in the mall parking lot.

One of the more amazing realizations discovered in my recent move was the manner in which my children share my love for the simplicity of trees with leaves. My daughter and youngest son enjoy the freedom of climbing. More than once I have whistled into the backyard for my daughter and from the mid-top of a tree halfway across the small pasture-like space heard a warble in return. However my middle child, Samuel, has become entranced with the lives of the birds he helps to feed around our home. High winds frequently accompany Missouri summer storms; and Samuel stays busy collecting and replacing fallen nests and eggs. It is quite beautiful to watch a rough and tumble four-year-old boy, whom is accustomed to torturing his pre-teen sister, tenderly take care of small creatures. – DN

Map to the Stinging Lizards

"Map to the Stinging Lizards", Sumi & Acrylic Inks & Acrylic Paint on Canvas, 14"x26"

Southwest Missouri is home to the Ozark Mountains and a culture that is more closely aligned to Appalachian than traditional Southern or Midwest society. In addition to the already strange mixture of wildlife that inhabits the mountains: black bears, cougars, crawfish and armadillos; the region is also rampant with scorpions. I first learned this many years ago, while preparing to fill a dry Jacuzzi at a B&B cottage overlooking Table Rock Lake. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first child and nearly stepped on a cluster of the smallish arachnids in a moment she will never let me forget. She made a beeline to complain to the B&B host only to be rebuffed by the statement “their only stinging lizards, Hon”.

Our recent return excursions to the Ozarks have served as a reminder of the local dialectical eccentricities of all communities. The term “stinging lizard” in southwest Missouri applies to any creature that crawls and stings/bites; just as every flying insect in the southeast section of Missouri is classified as a “tree bug” (particularly if they end-up in your house, due to an open window or door).

Click the above image to see a more detailed view of the painting and its multiple layers. – DN

Review

Click here to read the recent review of my latest New Mexico exhibit at Palette Contemporary in Albuquerque. - DN

Impulse

The daily lives of action painters inadvertently reflect their studio methodology. Painting purely on impulse requires a total commitment to the Zen-like release of the mind; if you create in that manner long enough… the time in the studio becomes a neo-reality that invades and eventually replaces the manner in which one approaches life in the outside world.

Sadly, I must admit that my ignorant teenage mind had little interest in any traditions or beliefs beyond the narrow scope of my own southern Missouri home. This place was somewhere to endure until the moment I could leave, with few concerns for reconciling the impact of its unique culture on the later years of my life.

It was my slowly acquired impulsive approach to living that allowed me to spend yesterday traveling the marshy bottomlands of the river’s northern delta. I bounced across gravel roads and blue highways (not listed in the online services of Google Maps or even Mapquest) intermingled between the towns of Caruthersville, Hayti, Dyersburg and New Madrid. Searching for that perfect taste of barbecue with slaw. Waiting for my moment to interact with locals.

I see this land much differently, now, than I did even ten years ago. Glancing out a car window while cruising across strips of highway connecting corn and cotton; I wonder at the white flowered fields still picked by hand. The people of the Mississippi Delta regularly contend with floods, tornadoes, immense poverty and a history steeped in longstanding traditions of racism. Suddenly, now, these residents are rarely far from my thoughts.

Occasionally, even I consider the moment of retirement; but in a manner different from most. I simply see retirement as the years spent creating the final paintings of a specific place. I argued, a few months ago, with my friend Hank regarding locations where we could retire our two families, together. I pushed for Alaska and the like… but he was adamant to return to a homestead within the Missouri Bootheel. I couldn’t quite grasp his desire to travel home. His declared love of this region puzzled me for some time until ultimately it became the leading influence in my recent urgency to explore the Southern states… and I’m better creatively, for returning here. – DN

Following the Mississippi to Cottonwood Point

“Following the Mississippi to Cottonwood Point”, Sumi & Acrylic Inks & Acrylic Paint on Canvas, 13”x 48”, $600

The necessity of constant relocation is proven by the manner in which my work drastically adapts to each new region. I began the series of map paintings, in the last few months of my Santa Fe residency; however their true evolutionary style did not matriculate until jolted by the move east. Despite my own insular knowledge of my studio methods and inspiration, prior to the last relocation I questioned how long the map series would be able to continue… it had not occurred to me that the works would simply further abstract to harmonize with the region.

I’ve been infatuated with maps for longer than I can remember. Almost fourteen years ago, I first saw the lovely independent film, “Map of the Human Heart”. Though he was onscreen for only a brief moment, the “mapmaker” character played by John Cusack captivated me. The idea that a place is beyond simple landmarks and rock formations lends ones’ self to a new level of introspection that relies heavily upon recognition of the residents of the outlying community.

To me, Cottonwood Point is no more important as a destination than a random point along any route that I have traveled. It’s a place I passed as I followed the river along highway 164, boasting a few farms and homes. To others, though, it is a life I may never recognize. – DN

Lake Jumping in the Ozarks

"Lake Jumping in the Ozarks", Sumi & Acrylic Inks and Acrylic Paint on Canvas, 20"x30"

My parent’s Ozark Mountain cabin rests on the banks of Bull Shoals Lake in southwestern Missouri along the Arkansas border. In the mid-1950’s a series of Dams were constructed along the powerful White River. The man-made lakes created in the dams’ wake (Bull Shoals Lake, Table Rock Lake, Beaver Lake and Lake Taneycomo), immediately developed into a major tourist destination for residents of the Southern and Midwest states. - DN

Delta Bottoms

"Delta Bottoms", Sumi & Acrylic Inks & Acrylic Paint on Canvas, 14"x24"

Neighbored with nearby Crowley’s Ridge, the bootheel region of Missouri is primarily filled-in marsh surrounding the Mississippi River. Some scientists consider Crowley’s Ridge a former island between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers; while other researchers believe the strange 500 ft rise in the river lowlands is a result of the New Madrid Seismic Fault Zone. Personally, I’ve only been concerned with scouting the length of these rolling hills for the best topographic view of the northern-most end of the Mississippi Delta.

When the annual summer floods are held-back, the richness of this region’s farmland is unmatched in the Midwest. Maybe that is why the residents ignore national ridicule when they refuse the regular buy-out options of the federal government. – DN

Elaine

Last week, a frequent French visitor to this blog traveled to Montana, including the region where I still maintain a home. I thought I'd send this note out to her.


Elaine and Kodiak in Cut Bank, Montana

Elaine,

I’m glad you enjoyed your time in Cut Bank, if you had visited later in the summer, my home would have been empty and an available place for you to stay. After only a couple years, I left my quiet little Montana hideaway for greener deserts. During my time in Santa Fe, I learned something immensely important. Commercialized exotic locales are often rarely relevant in the lives of anyone other than tourists on a ten-day holiday. What you did in Cut Bank, is what I continually attempt to do wherever I reside. I meet ordinary people in everyday environments and walk away with extraordinary experiences, ideas, and insight to personal philosophies. It is the heart of my painting and the only reason I can give when asked how I can paint on a daily basis without a loss for ideas.

I spent last weekend in the Ozark Mountains of southwestern Missouri and northern Arkansas. A few months ago, my parents acquired a cabin in the region overlooking Bull Shoals Lake and I found myself lost in the land’s topography and residents for nearly three days. The southern mountains are not nearly as high as my adored Rockies; but the canyons run deep and the area is rife with caves, springs and well-hidden black bears and cougars. I shall always love the American west, but for now these short mountains and deep valleys might be enough.

Whilst dreaming of Montana, I often think more in terms of routine moments than specific places or vacations. Just yesterday, I sat in a local Dexter restaurant… but my mind was 2,000 miles across southern Alberta, in the pattern of traveling home after a long summer day spent in Calgary or Lethbridge. Driving my Land Rover down a north-south highway that separates the rolling fields of ridiculously yellow canola in east-by-west plots. I’ve traveled here at least a couple dozen times before. The Canadian equivalent of NPR sends out a folksy tune in the speakers. The sun makes a downward descent outside my passenger window. I approach the American border as the last bit of light disappears and I get that exciting shiver up my spine when I consider the Cubans in the glove box. I cross without incident and speed-up a bit to drift the final forty-six miles home. There is something special about living as a native in a foreign land, but what am I saying… you know this better than most. – DN

To Build a Painting

Samuel and Dylan Thomas help out.








The next and final step is the addition of the black Sumi ink... check-out the final image on a previous post (elephant rocks). - DN

En Plein Air

My young son, Dylan Thomas, gives a bit of reference to the size of the canvas that is to become the "Elephant Rocks" painting.



Here, you can see that I utilize the heavy southern heat to speed-up drying times on my work. I may be one of the few abstract trompe-l'œil realists that paint "en plein air"... then again, I'm not sure there are that many abstract trompe-l'œil realists to begin with.....




More pictures to come tomorrow. I have produced roughly a dozen and a half paintings since moving from Santa Fe to southern Missouri; all of the works have been created outdoors. I've eliminated the paper stage of the painting (I primarily used it to speed-up drying time) and am once again working directly on canvas. The en plein air technique allows this elimination without sacrificing any of my printmaking/painting infusion processes. Although I am stretching the pictures of the process over a couple days, I started and finished this entire painting in a single day - a rather common occurrence in my action painting method. – DN

Elephant Rocks Painting

Click the above picture to see the full-size image.

I will post images from the process of creation over the next 2-3 days. - DN

Stage Three

I'll try again next week, showing all the images in one day. - DN

Process Stage Two

Yesterday, I was gone for most of the day, so when I returned home to post photo updates… it only made sense that my Internet provider was down for the evening.

The painting is done and I’m really pleased with it… I’m an action painter, there was never really much of a chance that I would be able to slow down my process to make it last the course of a full week for only one work. Just the same, I’m dragging this photo spread out till tomorrow. – DN

In Process: Stage One

The next few days will document the creation of a painting. The hardest aspect of recording the stages of an action painter is the interruption of the work for utilizing the camera.

Probably the most poignant guise of my process is the manner in which it builds a realist life from chaotic beginnings. As can be seen from the two pictures, I started the base of this painting with a combination of blue tones. The canvas is roughly 28”x40”, with an estimated finish size of 24”x36”, after stretching over 2” deep stretchers. – DN

Blending Modernist Abstraction with Trompe L'oeil

This week, I installed a “yard sale” air conditioner and some additional lighting in my new studio. Until now, I’ve been too busy these last two months stretching canvas, mounting paintings and framing to actually get anything else done.

I stayed-up late the last two nights painting and smoking camels in my newly organized studio (only took me two weeks to get around to sorting existing portfolios with the newly built shelves). I am working on a new method of painting. Creating on loose canvas rolled-out on the floor and leaving the stretching for afterwards. I’m not the first to work this way. Pollock painted on the floor and stretched after completion. Since I also mix my own paint formulas, the biggest issue is to test the paint tension after the stretch. Experimentation continues to be the most important element in my work. I find the opportunity for evolution in technique a welcoming companion to my quest for patterning a new style.

To what degree does a new art movement demand a specific reference to subject? When is it purely about technical style? My newest series of paintings continue to rely on the aspect of travel as they take-on the look and feel of a topographical map influence. However, my ever-evolving style demands recognition as it blends modernist abstraction with the traditional trompe l'oeil techniques. The last two years have seen my paintings slowly move away from intricate brushwork for the equally detailed utilization of brayers and rollers, sticks and etching tools as drawing utensils. I pour paint where I previously used a fan-brush. I print with hand-carved balsa wood plates where drawings once would have gone. I scratch paint into marks illuminating movement across a fictionalized reality with sticks, medicine-droppers and brayers. Ironically, as I find myself moving further from my traditional realist oil painting roots, the images become more photo-realistic (with a bit of surrealism), once again. The most common statement I heard from the gallery audience at my last opening of map paintings was “I can’t believe that the surface is actually (physically) flat”.

Next week, I will post a series of pictures tracking the creation of a painting in progress. – DN

As I see it....

"The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time. " - Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

Don't Mess with a Lama

So I ran across this online, while searching for keywords like zen and lama and west. Funny insight.- DN

Lama in the Hood:

An Interview with Pema Jones Rinpoche

By Chris Helm

We're in a grimy McDonald’s in Wyoming, eating Quarter Pounders with Cheese. Rinpoche, "precious one" in Tibetan, is sipping his chocolate shake. Pema’s his name, actually it’s Pema Jones, and he wears baggy jeans, an untucked red lumberjack shirt and funky high top tennis shoes with a built in pump, flashing lights (currently in the off position), and for all I know, a microwave oven for high-fat junk food snacks. Somewhere in all those baggy clothes is a thirteen year old Tibetan boy, born in India to his Tibetan mother and American father, raised until he was seven in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and transplanted here in red neck central.

At thirteen, Rinpoche is the youngest Buddhist teacher in the country. He’s a well kept secret for several reasons, some of which have to do with his unorthodox style but mostly because his protective mother wants it that way. There also isn’t much need for teachers of Tibetan Buddhism in Wyoming.

His sister Trudy is also here with us. She’s a strikingly beautiful and extremely intelligent nineteen year old with an interest in American history and concert piano. Trudy will be attending Stanford next fall, but now she’s performing the job she’s had for the last five years, attendant to Pema. She takes his phone calls, schedules his appointments with students and acts as his chaperon and personal secretary. She also keeps score at his Little League games.

Rinpoche has a .435 batting average - not bad for a short kid, incredible for a pitcher and probably a record for an incarnate lama. My mind strains at the thought of his next incarnation trying to pick the correct Louisville Slugger along with prayer beads and robes. Would the little tyke choose the wood or the aluminum? Would past life knowledge include Earned Run Average stats and the ability to throw a knuckle ball? I flip on the tape recorder, ease into some small talk about the upcoming Super Bowl (he’s a Stealers fan) and drift into the first question.

CyberSangha: It must be hard enough to be a thirteen year old boy in American, not to mention a Tibetan lama. How do your friends and family treat your connection with the Dharma?

Pema: It’s kind of weird. My brothers, I have two older ones, tease me about it. They call me shrimpoche. My sister is nice and even helps me by taking my phone calls when I’m at school and scheduling interviews with my students. The kids at school don’t know I’m a lama, I would never tell them.

CyberSangha: Why wouldn’t you tell them you’re a lama?

Pema: I get dissed enough as it is just being Asian. They call me names like nip and gook. It’s not like when I was growing up in India. Everyone here in Wyoming is white. I consider it a good day when some goof in a pickup truck doesn’t try to run me over. Is my mom going to read this?

CyberSangha: Yes, we need to show her the interview when we’re finished. Is that a problem?

Pema: No, but there’s stuff I won’t talk about - I don’t want my mom to get mad. She’s cool but she’s not too happy with me teaching. My dad convinced her, so I want to keep things cool.

CyberSangha: That’s fine. Does your mom disapprove of your teaching?

Pema: No, not really. I don’t think she cares much about Buddhism any more. When she was in Tibet she made offerings to the protection gods, but it never stopped the Chinese. So she stopped making offerings. Then she put all her faith in Buddhism, but her friends and relatives were killed anyway and everyone kept suffering. So now she doesn’t really have much faith in religion. That’s just what I figured out. My dad's an American. He teaches chemistry at a junior college.

CyberSangha: What’s your position on that? How would you deal with people trying to hurt you?

Pema: That’s the way it is around here! It’s pretty safe, but us Asians need to stick together. Some of my best friends in our gang are Chinese. It’s strange to have Chinese friends when your family has been treated so badly by the Chinese, but this is America, I gotta live here with my own karma. Some skinhead doesn’t care whether I’m Tibetan or Chinese. He just wants to stomp my head.

CyberSangha: You’re in a gang!?

Pema: It’s just for protection. We need to stick together. It’s like if a guy threatens one of us, there’s nothing we can do by ourselves, but by getting a bunch of us together, we can defend ourselves. We don’t have guns or nothing, and we don’t do drugs or rob people.

CyberSangha: Have you ever gotten into trouble?

Pema: No, but my brother got picked up by the cops for beating up this kid who dissed my sister. Can we talk about something else?

CyberSangha: Sure. Do you like your students?

Pema: Yeah, they’re alright. They.re kind of funny.

CyberSangha: In what way?

Pema: Well, it’s like they say they come for the teachings, but when they get into the interview room, they talk about other stuff.

CyberSangha: What other stuff?

Pema: They mainly talk about the opposite sex. Men talk about problems with their wives and women talk about their husbands and boyfriends. I don’t get it. It’s like I have little enough time as it is with school and little league and my chores and they want me to be a shrink or something. And I’m only 13! I mean, I’ve got girlfriends and all, but what do I know about relationships?

CyberSangha: So what do you tell them?

Pema: I talked to my dad about it and he gave me a stack of business cards from one of his friends, a psychologist. I just hand them one of the cards and ask them about their practice. I put my name on the back of the card and whenever he gets a new client he takes me and my brothers and sister to Dairy Queen. It’s cool. Buddhism is no big deal; it]s like being a doctor. There’s suffering, you diagnose it, give someone a prescription and hope they go to the drug store. No one in America wants to go to the store though. They all want to be pharmacists and sit around discussing different types of medicine. What’s with that? Take some medicine and come back next week. I mean don’t get me wrong, Buddhism is choice.

CyberSangha: So you’re a fully qualified to teach?

Pema: Sure. I mostly teach Tonglen, giving and receiving. It’s what I think works best at times when people are trying to kill you or too many changes are happening at once, which seems to be the case in this country. You’re basically a giant filter, like on an air conditioner. You suck in the bad air and breathe out the pure air. I see myself like an air conditioning repair dude. I teach people how to filter and cool things down.

CyberSangha: So if you can cool things down, why do you need to be in a gang?

Pema: Is this like one of those Zen riddles? It/s a samsara and nirvana thing. Yeah, some guy just dissed me and I tell myself that he really doesn’t exist separate from me. You know? It’s like he’s dissing himself. That works fine. But what happens when he stops talking and starts beating on me? You need to be able to take care of yourself so you don’t get killed. We live in samsara and spacing out about nirvana doesn’t help anyone. It’s like Kane in Kung-Fu. You take a Dharma master like Kane and you put him in the Old West. The result is predictable. He tries to be nonviolent and everyone wants his ass. That’s how I see myself. I’m nonviolent all the way, sometimes people just need to be reminded that they’re actually hitting themselves.

CyberSangha: Don’t you see any contradictions in that? The Dalai Lama, for example, constantly teaches non-violence, despite being terribly oppressed all his life.

Pema: (laughing) Oh yeah, right. The Dalai Lama is an awesome old dude and a killer teacher. But he’s got like a dozen bodyguards around him when he’s travelling. What do you think would happen if some butthead pulls a gun on His Holiness? Do you think those dozen bodyguards will practice non-violence, or shoot the guy in the arm or bust some karate move on him? No way man, a bodyguard sees this dweeb with a gun and he’s gonna pop a cap in his ass.

CyberSangha: Do you want to continue being a teacher when you grow up?

Pema: No way, there’s too much suffering and it’s too tough to absorb it all. Tonglen and practice go only so far for a teacher. It’s really not fair what teachers have to do. It's like they have to be bodyguards for their students. They've got to take the bullet when things go down. They sacrifice their lives to help people. That’s one reason why so many teachers die of cancer. It’s too rough and I’m definitely not ready. My teacher, Uncle Norbu, says my attitude will change when I get older, but I don’t think so. I want to play pro ball. I want to be in The Show. On the field is the only place where I get respect for what I do and not for who I am. When I’m on the field, and I’m doing well, they see me as a part of their team. I want to be the first Tibetan in the major leagues. America can grow its own lamas, they don't need Tibetans.

Rory Stewart, a new breed of Travel Writer

I recently finished a fantastic “travel” book by historian Rory Stewart. The Places In Between, first came to my attention last winter in a “best of the year” retrospective by the New York Times Book Review magazine. I pulled the following off the back of the book jacket:

“Someone in Kabul told me that a crazy Scotsman had walked from Herat to Kabul right after the fall of the Taliban… I thought the story was an urban legend. I was wrong. The crazy Scotsman was called Rory Stewart, and the book he has written about his travels is wise, funny and marvelously humane.” – Michael Ignatieff

After finishing the book, I was desperate to read something more by Mr. Stewart. Click here to read the story I found; you won’t be disappointed. – DN

More about the Map Paintings

A few years ago, satirist Joe Queenan took a romp across America in search of high-culture. He documented his journey in the book: Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon. He was looking for the perfect cannoli, instead he found a society in love with the musical Cats; seafood ejected from molds at the local Red Lobster and entire galleries dedicated to the "Painter of Light".

My map paintings expose the natural tendency of modern-Americans to seek out suburban lives in even the most remote reaches of the American West. The maps do not show a civilization at the height of urban sprawl, but rather offer a glimpse of a post-suburbia environment with reclaimed land in this modern era of technology and industry. Evidence of past civilizations is only slightly hidden under the surface. Trails and pathways are still evident and utilized by prospective builders. How soon will the suburbs return? How long will it take for corporate America to reintroduce Red Lobster, endless stretches of identical pre-fab houses and Wal-Mart? Or will the quickly disappearing middle class find this newly formed vast acreage of land suddenly beyond economic reach?

By the way, I found the perfect cannoli at a small bakery in Kalispell, Montana. The owner and pastry-chef is a former resident of Philadelphia that made his way to northern Montana over twenty years ago and never left. He fills the tubular treats with a cream whipped from huckleberries he picks at the edge of Glacier National Park. - DN

Treasures Still to be Found

"A shepherd in a remote region of Nepal bordering Tibet has been instrumental in the discovery of an extraordinary art treasure that lay hidden for centuries: a collection of 55 exquisite cave paintings depicting the life of the Buddha." - The Guardian (UK) 05/05/07

Click here to read the entire story. - DN

If G-d is in the details...

Interesting article about a long-lost find; though it seems very suspect that one of the researchers just happened to be a music expert... - DN

Click here to read it.

Maybe I should raise my prices to compete with rocks...

Hairy stone on sale

A stone growing long white hair was given a price of 10 million yuan (£650,000) at an art exhibition.

The stone, exhibited at the 3rd China (International) Treasure Stone Exhibition, is around 30 cm long and has 15cm long white hair.

Staff of the exhibition say the hair must be the remains of a kind of fungus, which grows on the surface of the stone and makes it look like a hairy head, reports Tianfu Morning News.

I ran across this, today... that's a lot of money for a rock covered in fungus... - DN

When Good Monks Go Bad

Some disturbing images that I ran across. Is there ever a moment when it's alright for humanity to overcome philosophy? - DN

To College You Should Go?

There are about 30 full-time classical ateliers in America. "The atelier system--of extended apprenticeships in the studios of master artists--is an old European tradition, spanning back to the Renaissance and up through the Flemish painting guilds to the Ãcole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. But they faced extinction in America when art education became a province of universities in the first half of the 20th century." - The Stranger 04/25/07

Click here to read the entire article.

This is a fantastic piece written about the conflict of modern art education with a lack of traditional training. I recall innumerable art students, from my college years, which graduated without acquiring actual technical skills. Even my own skills were not to a comfortable-level until I had acquired a few years of self-education after graduation. It definitely makes one wonder what they were paying for when they dropped $40-$100k on an accredited university education and didn’t learn the one thing they wanted most to understand. I tell everyone I meet, if I had it to do over again, I would have never chosen my University. That, in itself, is a sad truth to realize, after the fact. – DN

A New Show in New York

A new show at New York's "PS1" is made up of "only art that can't be bought. Thus, the exhibition is composed of work that artists either kept or, in a couple of weird cases, sold then bought back. By this curatorial criterion, nearly every artist on earth could be included. Curator Alanna Heiss compounds the problem by haughtily stating that the show evinces her 'unfortunate allergy' to the marketplace. But for the director or curator of an institution that relies on the largesse of artists and dealers--who in turn depend on commerce--to claim an 'allergy' to the marketplace is not only smug, it's deluded and hypocritical."

“Not for Sale” doesn’t fizzle because most of the artists in it are millionaires or famous or both. Nor does it fail because more than a third of the work on view is less than ten years old and fourteen of those pieces are less than five years old, making you wonder how “not for sale” much of this art actually is. No, the exhibition fails because its ideas and construction are lazy. - New York Magazine 04/23/07

Click here to read the full article.

It seems odd to hold a show featuring only the most marketable of New York artists as a shining example of anti-consumerism in the art world. – DN

When Faith Darkens Our Path

"Efforts to restore Afghanistan's legendary Bamiyan Buddhas are moving forward at a snail's pace, a far cry from the few days it took the Taliban to destroy the 1,500-year-old statues." CBC 04/23/07

Click here to read the complete article.

"Celebrated storyteller Mike Daisey had barely begun his 90-minute monologue at the American Repertory Theatre when much of the audience suddenly stood up and walked out. One of the put-upon patrons even picked up a glass of water used as an on-stage prop and poured it over Daisey's papers. The problem? The posse, 87 students and staff visiting Thursday from Norco High School in Southern California, objected to Daisey's dirty language." - Boston Globe 04/23/07

Click here to read the complete article.

Now I haven’t heard Mike Daisey’s monologue, so I’m not even sure if I’d enjoy it; but after reading the two articles, from an artistic standpoint – what is the difference in how the religious majority handled creative works? – DN

Sounds Great (but doesn't help me much)

Feminist art is the most important art movement since World War II, writes Blake Gopnik. "More than any other 20th-century movement, feminism pushed back against the art-for-art's-sake attitudes of modernist abstraction. It pushed instead for work that talked about crucial issues in the world outside. Ever since feminism, in all areas of artmaking, the message has mattered as much as the medium." WaPo produces a section of stories... - Washington Post 04/22/07

Click here to read the entire series of articles.

Some good points are made in the above by-lines, but I guess that leaves me out as far as actually participating... - DN

Abstraction is Back! (life might be more fun if I could more easily jump onboard)

Abstract Expressionism and the artists behind it have always intrigued and inspired me. Steeped in the moment of the creative process, their paintings were layered with more than just paint – they boasted the passion of self-destructive lives as their undercoating.

Few will argue that the rise of early abstraction coincided with the birth of photography. As the number of non-artists purchasing Kodak Brownies rose, so did the emphasis on abstract subject and technique in the visual arts. The past couple decades saw a resurgence in the popularity of photo-realism and figurative painting; however, with the advent of digital photography it seems that Abstraction is becoming vogue, again. Is this return to non-representational themes a backlash to the now common use of Adobe PhotoShop by computer-savvy non-artists? Is this rebirth a reaction to the rise of the Internet and it’s purely representational, straightforward presentation?

While I respect the work of past and present pure abstractionists, I know in my own paintings that totally non-representational work is an unnatural act. When painting and writing, I rely heavily on the places I’ve been. The lives I have been allowed to share. The emotions that have been stirred and kindled in my own mind – I see these images at all times, and repressing them for the sake of fashion are beyond my control. Even my most abstract works are shrouded in the mystery of imagery. Mysteries that unfold themselves as my works evolve through the years, from series to series and moment to moment. Masking the questions of a lifetime with the unique, yet unifying, color and symbols of a place. – DN

Abstract is Back (Did it go somewhere?)

"Just as the figure--once disparaged as academic, facile, or simply frumpy--experienced a renascence, showing up in numerous guises to suit the social, political, and artistic moment, abstract art has been flaunting its brilliant past and reconfiguring itself for the present and future." - ARTnews 04/07

An interesting piece in this month’s ARTnews magazine; click here to read the entire article.

Is abstraction cycling itself around again? Did it ever really completely leave? Will it become as eclipsing of other styles as it did in the mid-twentieth century? – DN

A Manifesto to Fight Manifestos

A little something floating around the internet that was brought to my attention. - DN

Did I leave too soon or just in time?

As detailed in an April 8 feature in The Post's Travel section, the burgeoning Santa Fe Railyard development with its growing cluster of top contemporary galleries, is helping reshape and further energize the New Mexico capital's long-flourishing art scene.

A project in the discussion phases, however, could propel it to a whole other level and generate even more international attention than the city already receives, especially during the summers when artists, critics and collectors descend on SITE Santa Fe for its respected contemporary-art biennial.

Longtime art dealer Charlotte Jackson and other Santa Fe leaders are pushing the idea of a contemporary-art museum designed by Frank Gehry, the architect responsible for the Guggenheim Bilbao, the most influential building of the past decade. – Denver Post 4/12/2007

Gehry in Santa Fe could definitely solidify the city as the new American art destination; but I have to wonder how well Gehry’s contemporary architecture will fair in a town that secretly still prefers selling Indian pottery and horse paintings to tourists. – DN

Oh NO they didn't!

"Two hundred years after wandering through drifts of spring flowers in the Lake District, William Wordsworth has been given a pop video and rap version of his famous poem on daffodils. Read by a zany red squirrel in a series of dramatic mountain and lakeside locations, the hip take on the 24 lines of verse aims to lure more young people to the national park this summer." "Wordsworth's Daffodils poem has remained unchanged for 200 years," said a spokeswoman for Cumbria tourist board. "To keep it alive for another two centuries we want to engage the YouTube generation who go for modern music and amusing video footage on the web." - The Guardian (UK) 04/11/06

The original:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

The rap:
I wandered lonely along as if I was a cloud
That floats on high over vales and hills
When all at once I looked down and saw a crowd
And in my path there was a host of golden daffodils
so Check it!
The kind of sight that puts your mind at ease
I saw beside the lake and beneath the trees ...


Is it really necessary to dumb-down everything in this world? Is nothing sacred? Is there no longer a belief in the idea of universal timeless appeal? – DN

Intelligent Art

"The election of Tracey Emin to join the Royal Academy of the Arts as a Royal Academician alongside more traditionally academic artists such as David Hockney, Peter Blake, and Anthony Caro" raised a question, unspoken though it was: "Is she enough of an intellectual to join the RA?" Ana Finel Honigman matches it with another: "Why is this even an issue?" The Guardian (UK) 04/10/07

Click here to read the entire article.

The above article, when read in full, classifies “intellectual” in a purely classical sense. I don’t believe it is that simple. On one hand I agree that art cannot be measured by purely traditional academic standards then again, I take umbrage with the title of the journalist’s by-line: “Intelligent Art is a Foolish Concept”.

We recognize the difference between literature and recreational reading; art films and the latest Die Hard incarnation. Why is fine art any more difficult to differentiate? Is it really that surprising when we run across a “mall” gallery, wedged between the Gap and Old Navy, boasting their collection of priceless Kincade or Jesse Barnes prints? While Tracy Emin is hardly of the low-brow caliber of these charlatans, I have to wonder if the author isn’t undermining the art and artists she wants to defend. Here are some comments, from readers of her post, that I feel sum-up my impression of this subject very nicely:

• There's a difference between an intellectual and someone who's intelligent. Artist's use materials and their handling of that denotes whether they are intelligent - is the work economic or fussy ? are the right materials used in the right places? etc. etc. They don't need to be intellectual to do that do they? Jackson Pollock was by all accounts a bit of a drunken brute but his handling of paint was fantastically intelligent.

• Or maybe artists should do us and other artists a favour and stop thinking it's clever to hide their intelligence.

While I’m sure the author would never think twice about considering the standard American “mall artist” prints in her assessment of an art form or category; I believe we tread a dangerous path when the glorification of ignorance becomes precedent. Much like the concept of whom decides what is good; in this case who decides what is too intelligent to be “fun”? – DN

The Unforgotten... simply misplaced for a few decades

“The Annunciation” by Maurice Denis

Maurice Denis (1870-1943) was a member of the Nabis group of painters active in Paris at the turn of the century. Their credo (the name Nabis is derived from the Hebrew word for "prophet") called for the incorporation of aesthetic pleasure into every aspect of daily life, and the merging together of art and craft, an approach that would inform the Art Nouveau movement. Together, the Nabis celebrated the beauty of the natural world and domestic contentment in scenes that were highly decorative, with simplified, stylized forms built from areas of lavish patterning and sumptuous colour. Unlike his leading Nabis confrères, such as Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, Denis was an avid writer, becoming the movement's chief theoretician. Yet he has remained largely beneath the radar. – Globe and Mail (Canada) 4/09/2007

Click here to read the entire article.


The above article was written regarding an upcoming Montreal Museum retrospective of Maurice Denis’ work. It would appear that given enough time all good artists eventually get their due. It is these “minor artists” and their “minor art movements” that have always given me the most comfort as a painter. Even Van Gogh went largely unrecognized for a number of decades after his death. – DN

Equality and Separatists

Museums in London and New York have recently made headlines with serious attempts to increase the profile of female artists in their collections. "Two concerns, though, arise from attempts to increase the valuation of women in art. Does the imposition of modern equalities on museums that deal with periods with different sensibilities falsify the historical record? And is a balance best achieved by the creation of separatist institutions?" The Guardian (UK) 03/30/07

This raises some important questions. Did female artists such as Mary Cassatt, overcome their feminine label to become recognized as master painters, or because of it? Will the establishment of separate museums/institutions for female artists help to recognize their importance or simply further the rift? Would Lee Krasner’s importance as a painter and role in Jackson Pollock’s life have been overlooked in another time? – DN

Iandi I shall go...

So the past two weeks I have been trying to have an intelligent conversation with the Iandi group I mentioned in an earlier blog post. Unfortunately, they seem to want no part of my questions. They have ignored my legitimate questions and even deleted some complete topic/posts I started. It seems they only want to hear praise. Hey, who doesn’t… this is the most recent topic/post on their “discussion” board:

Over the past few months we have dedicated ourselves to giving well thought out answers to legitimate questions about our art movement. We have been very pleased with the discussions we’ve had with artists however, every so often someone that feels a sense of entitlement comes along and feels free to hand out opinions of our movement as if they know anything about us. I’m not sure what would posses someone to feel it’s acceptable or even mature to insult an entire group of people they’ve never met. The discussion board was created to have positive critiques and ideas about art. It was not created for random hurtful statements to boost the ego’s of angry artists that can’t believe a group of artists can make art for art’s sake. The discussion board was not created for us to respond to underdeveloped criticisms. If you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything.
Also it would seem hypocritical to despise our art movement, but use it to advertise your own web site.
-EK Wimmer (Iandi)

Daniel you have nothing to offer. We will delete anything that is not an apology.
-Maria Rose (Iandi)

Ironically, I posted one question three times and that seemed to really set them off. All I asked was “What does Iandi mean?

Well, to be honest, I may have also mentioned something disparaging about choosing an Art History degree over a Studio Art degree, while claiming to be an artist… and maybe a word or two questioning the legitimacy of their claims to actual technical prowess as artists. But in my defense, that was only after they refused to answer my repeated question about their name.

This morning, I was formally blocked from logging into their discussion board and finally I received this email…

Well, I received your raging criticism on the discussion board. I feel that I need to address you directly as your insults were of a very personal nature. First, our website is set up to create a discussion about art. Criticism is fine, as long as it is helpful. You obviously have some personal issues that extend beyond our website. Your first contact with us said that you did not mean to be snarky. Unfortunately this is not the case. You have shown your true intention. We are not criticizing your work, your record of shows (yes, I have been to Billings and yes I have a bag of criticism about your work), your training, your skill. Instead I would like to criticize you as a person...

What kind of person wants to impede the professional development of another artist? We are not in competition with you! We have only tried to create a community of mutual support/development. What can possibly be negative about that? Why do you need to vent your aggression? Is it because we didn't answer your question about our name? You have no right to know everything about us. Clearly we were right in guessing what type of person you are.

I know that you are unimpressed with our work, even though you complimented it earlier. You are a very mean-spirited person and I don't really value anything that you have to say. You use the anonymity of the Internet to allow for freedom to show your true colors. You are not a kind person. You are irrelevant. You are small. Hopefully your family has not seen this dirty side of you. Leave us alone if you can't think of anything worth saying.
Maria Rose

Wow, I guess I was just overcome with confusion, I was wrong, the combined genius of Iandi is unmatched… it’s all my fault really, you have to keep in mind that this was the first time I had encountered an art movement based on sunshine, rainbows and lollipops. I suppose Iandi somehow means… happy? – DN

Sundown Towns

I’ve been in a bit of a daze these last few weeks as I worked to set-up my new studio, and put the finishing touches on pieces before shipping off to upcoming shows. Occasionally, I have to take a moment to stop amidst ordering slides or rewriting artist statements to notice that the once familiar environment of my youth has drastically grown and changed. However, I find this “new” home to be strange in so many ways I never expected.

When I left my Poplar Bluff home fourteen years ago, the nearby township of Dexter was still a notorious “sundown town”. For any non-southerners out there, a sundown town is a place that does not welcome minorities within the city limits after daylight hours have ended. Thankfully, this practice is now defunct and the population is much more diverse and open to change.

Despite this less than sanctimonious practice (or maybe, ironically, because of the hundred-year old tradition) the community developed into a pocket of “deep south” culture and cuisine at the northern-most border of the “Southern” States. While there is still the occasional outcropping of NASCAR fan-boys (I still do not understand the joy in watching someone drive in a circle 500 times) and rebel flags… I have to admit that the number of trailer parks dotting the landscape is drastically reduced when compared to my previous New Mexico home. Then again, maybe old-fashioned southern decorum is just more suited for hiding their evidence of poverty behind weeping willows, dogwood trees and azalea bushes.

This southeastern Bootheel region is often considered the poorest section of Missouri. I suppose when one decides to measure the world in terms of monetary rewards, it’s hard to argue with demographics and statistics. Despite the formal townships, such as Dexter, that once lived by “sundown rules”, the overall region boasts a relatively large black population which makes it distinct from the rest of rural Missouri, giving the area, its music, and food the uniqueness associated with rural southern black culture. Unlike the rest of Missouri, the Bootheel is culturally considered more Southern than Midwestern. Some say it is part of a subculture that includes northwestern Tennessee, the westernmost part of Kentucky, and the Little Egypt portion of Illinois.

The Bootheel area, where I now reside, is on the edge of the Mississippi Delta culture that produced the Delta blues. The music that I loved enough to always take with me wherever I traveled. My good friend blues musician Don Haupt grew-up nearby on the banks of the Mississippi River and first cut his teeth on this same music and food that later formed his musical career. He’s been sharing our Delta blues music on the West Coast for about seven years and has cut two CD’s. Don’s long gone from the region, now, but I can still hear him slap his National resonator guitar everytime I open the door to a backwoods fish house, come near a pit barbecue or watch the riverboats and barges pass. – DN

Rebel Artists of the Postwar Era

I ran across a great article by Carolyn Kinder Carr, Deputy Director of National Portrait Gallery. In her curator's statement for an exhibition titled: "Rebel Painters of the 1950s", she recreates a fantastic portrayal of the birth of a new art movement in New York City after World War II.

Click here to read the full paper. - DN

Has the curator replaced the artist as rebel?

I posted the long article about Robert DeNiro, Sr., yesterday, in an attempt to reinvigorate the discussion around the artist as a force of life rather than just a machine-like craftsman. While even I am guilty of factory-like production numbers in my own painting; I believe that I utilize nearly every opportunity to randomize my life in a manner that forces the art work to evolve via the continuous introduction of radical change.

I ran across this year-old article at CNN.com:

Wednesday, March 29, 2006
LONDON, England (CNN) -- With a fiery, alcohol-fueled temper and a dynamic splatter-gun technique, Jackson Pollock was one of many painters and sculptors who, from the 1950s to the 70s, embodied the classic role of the rebel artist.

Perhaps in an indication of the rising status of the curator, a feature about America's groundbreaking Whitney Museum in a recent edition of the New Yorker magazine focused not on the artists or works displayed in the gallery, but on the driving force of its director Adam Weinberg.

Thus, in the same way that old fashioned rock stars have been eclipsed by DJs creating music from mixes and samples, these newly empowered curators have finally helped lay the rebel artist to rest.

Click here to read the piece in its entirety. Unfortunately, the author seems to be primarily interested in land artists such as Christo and I question whether he believes these are the only artists worthy of the term contemporary. – DN

The other De Niro

Although I have always enjoyed the work of Robert De Niro, the actor; I find the life of his father even more intriguing. This is one of the better descriptions, of his life, that I’ve found. It is long but worth the read.- DN

Both of Robert De Niro’s parents, Robert Sr. and Virginia Admiral, were painters and students of the legendary Hans Hofmann. They painted together in an airy Greenwich Village loft and entertained their bohemian friends including the writers Anais Nin, Henry Miller and Tennesee Williams. They separated then divorced two years after their son’s birth in 1943, when Robert Sr. acknowledged his homosexuality. Robert Jr. was raised mainly by his mother who supported herself by doing typing, and later by opening a typesetting and printing business.

While his ex-wife demonstrated her practicality and supported her son, Robert Sr. moved to what his son later called the "dank and dreary" part of New York to pursue his art and the counter-cultural lifestyle that went with it.

Whatever the complexities of their family situation, Robert Sr. was devoted to his shy, sensitive son who often took a hamster to school in his pocket. They went to movies together, and afterwards the son entertained the father by imitating the leading actors of the day, including John Wayne. Young de Niro, who would break out his shyness by developing into a neighborhood tough nicknamed “Bobby Milk” taking cues from what he saw on the screen.

When the teenage De Niro took up smoking, his father, then working as a guard at the Guggenheim Museum, bought him packs of cigarettes on the way home, hoping that the glut of tobacco would make him quit. The father and son began to quarrel as De Niro Jr. hung out with questionable friends, and by the late 50’s De Niro Sr. felt estranged enough to leave for France and pursue the life of an artiste. When he found himself depressed and destitute a few years later, it was his eighteen-year-old son, now a budding actor, who flew to Paris to bail him out and bring him home.

Through the years, Bob Sr. built his meandering life itself into a kind of work of art. In the late 40's he meditated with Paramahansa Yogananda, the charismatic Indian founder of the "Self-Realization" movement in the Pacific Palisades. In the 50's he painted at the famous artist's retreat Yaddo where an onlooker once asked him "How can you paint, weighed down by all that jewelry?" In 1960 the uranium magnate Joseph Hirschorn purchased a group of 50 De Niro works, and the artist used the money to spend three more years in France where he sipped wine at "Deux Magots" and painted in Montmartre. In the late 1970's he lived in the Bernal Heights area of San Francisco -- it reminded him of Montmartre -- and spent time in San Francisco helping Jack Kerouac’s widow Stella extricate her daughter from the cult of Reverend Sun Yung Moon.

As his poems indicate, he was self-consciously building himself a rootless life of Bohemian splendor:

My days are spread like an Eastern plain

I've searched a Dynasty in vain

I am a Chinese of another Empire

My splendor is let out for hire...

-Robert De Niro Sr.


Although he periodically had shows in New York, fame as an artist was eluding him. The art world in the 60's was dominated by Pop art, and then came the vogue for minimalism. De Niro Sr. may have been flaky in some ways, but he was ethical and focussed when it came to his art, and it developed steadily through the years regardless of the trends surrounding it.

De Niro’s art remained true to its roots in French Fauvism, and his signature style hints at both the artist’s and his love French modern art of its themes of luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

Characterized by Matissean color and loose, Zen brushwork, De Niro’s best paintings are intensely sweet and sensual. When he painted he kept in mind the painter Ingres’ statement that “You can catch more files with honey than with vinegar.” An increasingly strong draftsman, De Niro was, in fact, an artist who worked very hard to make his art seem easy.

When De Niro became a household name in the 1970’s it was because of Robert Jr’s gritty and hyper-realistic performances in movies such as “Taxi Driver” and “The Godfather.” which brought threats to the actor and his family. The fame of his son was a source of pride and annoyance to Robert Sr. who still had a very minor reputation as an artist even though he had shown at Peggy Guggenheim’s Gallery with Jackson Pollock in the forties. The art of Robert De Niro Sr. remained practically invisible, while the name “Robert De Niro Jr.” became internationally famous.

In 1976 the artist/poet published a small red book of poems, titled “A Fashionable Watering Place.” It opens with a note that “These poems are by Robert De Niro, the painter, not to be confused with Robert De Niro, the actor, his son.” The last poem in the book, titled “42ND STREET MOVIE” hints at the strangeness of his life, and of what it felt to be upstaged – and rescued -- by his son.


42ND STREET MOVIE

The Mexican upon the screen
Shoots twelve men
Flees unseen
John Wayne
Will win
In the end
His horse and he
Fly round the bend


This isn’t the poem I started to write,
Nor even the same movie.

-Robert De Niro Sr.

Throughout the years, father and son remained close, but De Niro Sr., who liked one-on-one contact with people and avoided large groups, stayed out of the limelight surrounding his son. He remained, in the words of dealer Larry Salander, "... more interested in the act of painting than in the business of painting."

Since his death of cancer in 1993, Robert Jr. and his mother have worked to bring his father's art the broader recognition it never received during his lifetime. Had de Niro Sr. still been around, he would have probably held them back: he had always wanted to be known on his own terms. Even the title of one of his poems -- "I DON'T WANT TO REINCARNATE ANYMORE"-- hints that he wouldn't like the idea of a retrospective.

At the recent opening of his father's work in Rome, Robert De Niro Jr. stated that although didn’t pay too much attention to art as a boy, he had adored his father. De Niro Jr, who told Vogue when discussing his late father "I also have his temper, his eccentricity, his passion..." is a chip off the old Bohemian block. The actor has even kept his father's studio untouched since his death, leaving it as a place to reflect on his father's life and legacy.

Click here to see the website where I “borrowed” the article and some examples of De Niro’s work. - DN

Obama Christ

Father forgive me for what I am about to do... yet another story that I have to admit getting from the FOXNews website... Amen
Some call it art. Other call it blasphemy. A new piece of art showing Senator Barack Obama as Jesus Christ is now on display at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. - FoxNews Chicago 4/2/2007

I don't think this story has had quite enough time yet to piss anyone off (did ya catch my subtle reference to the "Piss Christ" artwork from a few years back? Yeah, I am that kinda person). I feel the work is pretty dead-on for contemporary issues, simply because the country is putting a lot of pressure on one man to act as savior. I personally like Obama. When you think about your options being the regular batch of career politicians such as: Hilary, Edwards or McCain... Obama and his "newness" to the Senate look pretty sensible.

Now I realize that there will be plenty of middle-America knee-jerk reactions to anything that comes out of an art school... or someone recreating the image of Christ as a politician... or recreating the image of Christ as a black politician... or recreating the image of Christ as a black politician endorsed by Oprah. But c'mon people open your eyes and see the work for what it is: caricature.

Caricature of the idealized man. Caricature of the "we need a savior" mentality. Caricature of the expectations being placed on this lowly politician by the media machine. Caricature (mixed with a tad bit of celebration) of the fact that the artist created this work of a "religious figure" and he doesn't have to fear for his life. Life in this world has such potential for beauty, no one should have to fear retribution for living outside the socially-accepted religious norm, censorship is only good for the censors... try to cut the head off that idea. - DN

Darth Vader is one of the numerous carved grotesques on the Cathedral. Like gargoyles, grotesques carry rain water away from the building’s walls. Gargoyles carry away excess water via pipes running through their mouths; grotesques deflect rainwater by bouncing it off the top of their heads, noses or other projecting parts, and away from the stone walls.

How did Darth Vader, a fictional villain from the Star Wars movies, end up on the wall of Washington National Cathedral?

In the 1980s the Cathedral, with National Geographic World magazine, sponsored a competition for children to design decorative sculpture for the Cathedral. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader of Kearney, Nebraska who submitted a drawing of this futuristic representation of evil. Darth Vader was placed on the northwest tower with the other winning designs: a raccoon, a girl with pigtails and braces and a man with large teeth and an umbrella. – www.cathedral.org

Interesting stuff, I guess George Lucas didn’t toss-up any copyright ownership issues. – DN