Space: A Group Exhibition 2010

Sold a painting in, literally, the first two minutes of the opening. Hope to sell more over the next couple weeks of the exhibition. -North

Miniatures 2009: Portraits

November's Opening Reception boasted over 100 visitors! Not bad for a town of 3,500.

Deep Maps

My work reflects an obsessive interest in deep maps. A deep map goes beyond simple landscape/history-based topography. It interweaves autobiography, archeology, stories, memories, folklore, traces, reportage, weather, interviews, natural science, science, and intuition. In its best form, the resulting work arrives at a subtle, multi-layered and 'deep' map of a small area of the earth.

Tracing the beginnings of civilization to the heart of modern exploitation. Inspiration runs the gamut from the author and former professor William Least Heat-Moon to the neighboring Hutterite colonies where formal education ends at the eighth grade. - North

"Bitter Providence"

"Bitter Providence", 18"x18", Oil on Canvas, $500
-North

“Rocky Mountain Backbone I”

"Rocky Mountain Backbone I", 18"x25", Oil on Canvas, $500
-North

"The Grand Convergence, Buried"

18"x25", Oil on Canvas, $500
-North

More

More Cold Maps

-North

New Work - Cold Maps

-North

Inside the New Studio

Looking from the back half to the front half. -North

Opening June 1st

New Studio... now featuring elbow room

I was in some timeless space, timeless face of my embrace
Held empty air and empty space, all on a sunny day
There's a lifeline that I know and it holds me back and lets me go
Whatever I do I don't let my lifeline stray
So it goes as lifetimes pass from heart to mind and back again
My restlessness becomes a flame letting my lifeline show
-Gordon Lightfoot

It has been a while since my last update. Something I would have found unforgivable a year or two ago, when these posts were a daily occurrence. Ultimately, it has all been sidestepped in the name of art or at least the malnutrition of my lifeline.

Fortunately, I believe I have finally found a time and place in which to remain, at least for longer than usual. I have rented a downtown storefront for my next art studio. Something with a thousand square feet to work on the large scale installations that my waking dreams have only alluded to during spats of semi-consciousness. The idea is to finally have enough space to create and document the works, then dismantle and store while I market to various galleries and museums.

It also has another thousand square feet for gallery space and art classes. In a time when the economy seems to bring in fewer and fewer sales, it seems that a focus on providing summer art camps, after school lessons and adult night classes may be the best bet to paying the rent on a new and massive space primarily acquired to finally fulfill my longtime desire to work in cubic feet rather than square inches.

Works a comin’ so sit tight, we’re getting into uncharted territory. – North

Progress

The house is temperate, despite the twenty-below weather, outside. I’ve missed the unforgiving manner in which life continues with an almost detached certainty of cold. Yes. Nearly a foot of snow, now, with drifts taller than my youngest son. It is scheduled to start again; at any moment – the eastern blowing momentum of snow and ice strained through a sieve before pelting glass and wood and pressed-aluminum.

The canvas is stretched and primed. The painted sketches, which I typically ignore in my madness to build deposits and sheets and layers of pigment, are nearly to a state of finish – something a sketch should never confusingly reach. The abstracted Hutterite half-truths need permanent visual explanation before they are buried with the short stories, biographies and landscapes that are lost among my memories of Southwestern arroyos, Southern deltas and previous Rocky Mountain winter blazes.

I may eventually consider sleep, if I can continue to deny this urge to step out into the dazzling midnight snow and cross the sixteen or so feet from the mud-room door to my awaiting studio. The wind chill will reach negative fifty, within another two hours.
-North

"The Boy with a Moon and Star on His Head"

Tuesday’s election ushered-in a new moment of change for the nation. Then, almost as if by grand design, my family awoke to a few inches of snow the following morning. The powder wiped the northern slate clean, yet somehow, along this region called the Hi-line, the golden-white fields were limited to Glacier County – the only region of the north central Montana political map to turn blue the previous evening. The snow lasted for only that twenty-four hour period and I’m not one to believe in blessings, but I did stop and consider the gesture as appreciation.

Now, however, it is Sunday. The first fresh week as it starts after the election and so far nothing of depressing consequence has happened. There were no riots, there were no assassinations. There was only this humble resignation muddled with silent relief from my red-hued compatriots.

Under these thoughts and safely-missed illusions, I began this first new day of the week, listening to the album “Catch Bull at Four” by Cat Stevens.

"The Boy with a Moon & Star on His Head" by Cat Stevens

A gardeners daughter stopped me on my way, on the day I was
To wed
It is you who I wish to share my body with she said
Well find a dry place under the sky with a flower for a bed
And for my joy I will give you a boy with a moon and
Star on his head.
Her silver hair flowed in the air laying waves across the sun
Her hands were like the white sands, and her eyes had
Diamonds on.
We left the road and headed up to the top of the
Whisper wood
And we walked till we came to where the holy magnolia stood.
And there we laid cool in the shade singing songs and
Making love...
With the naked earth beneath us and the universe above.
The time was late my wedding wouldn’t wait I was sad but
I had to go,
So while she was asleep I kissed her cheek for cheerio.
The wedding took place and people came from many
Miles around
There was plenty merriment, cider and wine abound
But out of all that I recall I remembered the girl I met
cause she had given me something that my heart could not
Forget.
A year had passed and everything was just as it was a year
Before...
As if was a year before...
Until the gift that someone left, a basket by my door.
And in there lay the fairest little baby crying to be fed,
I got down on my knees and kissed the moon and star on
His head.
As years went by the boy grew high and the village looked
On in awe
They’d never seen anything like the boy with the moon and
Star before.
And people would ride from far and wide just to seek the
Word he spread
I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned, and love is all...he said.


I pass through life less as a visionary than an actual man, lonely for the past, pitiful yet anxious for the potential future. I miss my children, though they are within arm’s reach, I long for my partner, though I can still hear her in the next room. I wonder where the next painting will come from as I travel the outstretched prairie shadowed by the Rockies to the west and the Sweetgrass Hills to the northeast. I may confuse my left with my right - but never my true direction... it is bound to me where a soul should be. - North

Homesteaders

Click the picture to zoom.
-North

Fulfillment

-North

Rhymester

-North

Before the Windfarms

-North

Brothers

-North

Again

-North

More

-North

New Work

-North

Enlightenment from a Yogi Tea Bag

The head must bow to the heart.

Sounds like Montana to me. - North

501 Posts, Have I Learned Anything?

Actually, only a small minority of the human race will ever consider primeval nature a basic source of happiness… Mankind as a whole is too numerous for its problem of happiness to be solved by the simple expedient of paradise. – Robert Marshall, an early explorer of the Brooks Range in Alaska

Like most blogs, this page was established to give voice to the spinning wheels in my head. I was looking for a way to work-out-loud with my ideas of the visual, literary and conceptual arts. Sometimes it works beautifully, other times, not so much. Basically, a philosophical sketch of my past, present and future – everything changes, everything stays the same. It’s all about perspective. - North

... I am bliss. - North

Gotta Love Small Towns

From the local paper...

Friday, Aug 29: 12:03 a.m. - Officer is out with three individuals in a parking lot. It is a man and his two sons. Their vehicle broke down and all motels in town are full. Officer told them to go to sheriff's office and they will put down mattresses in the old judge's office and they can sleep there.

An Art Market is Not Decided by One Artist

Damien Hirst Bypasses The Galleries - The End Of The Gallery System As We Know It? "What does it mean for the art market that a living artist bypasses dealers altogether and sells his wares directly at auction? There is some speculation that this might be a pivotal moment, like the end of the studio system in movies or the continuing decline of the record labels in the music business. Could the gallerist's traditional role as mediator between the contemporary artist and his market be passÃe?" Wall Street Journal 08/23/08

I’m not sure that it really means anything, considering the artist in question is Damian Hirst – a living artist that time and time again financially dominates the British art market. His conceptualized work has always been somewhere outside the traditional painting and sculpture gallery scene; how is this a huge leap? In fact, I dare say this may have a positive impact on the gallery market, in the manner in which it opens the playing field for other artists. - North

Samuel's 6th Birthday Wish

Blackmail the Baker

The dream is… Or rather it should be, dammit, like a fan club for philosophers. And poets. And painters. And maybe even rogue Hutterites. At least the ones we can catch – as they're draining a staggering number of pints (always Olde English) in the dark corner of the local pizzeria.

Like home everywhere. But not too much.

This place where Rod serves unlimited spaghetti dinners and can win free loaves of french bread like he’s blackmailing the baker. Then the next evening, playing Texas Hold’em, late into the darkness, with two Mormon missionaries and the hint of a steady hand. - North

Fresh

This house that saw less than eight hundred nights now searches for a fresh ten thousand.

Brothers building yard castles from empty crates and boxes. Stacks of cardboard trapping their voices, releasing their ingenuity. The threat of a blistering reality removed. Though, I can still glimpse it – only distantly. Once imminent, now cascading as soap round the drain.

The neighbor’s stereo is never sleeping. He has it wired to pour music through outdoor speakers and illuminate our nights with jovial harmonic gestures that release a soundtrack to a new life. This old life. One that is not revisited or retraced so much as reinvigorated. - North

The Portfolio Website has Been Updated

www.danielnorth.com

Driving My Oldest Child Home

The car sputters to a stop and we have passed to the moment after. My language is defunct. Words and phrases remain listless in their transition to time. The Ford hesitates, then turns over and we continue.

You ride with me, but I’m not driving. Our destination is sketched in blueprints and the side columns of a menu stolen from the diner outside Hungry Horse. The prairie lies east; but I can’t see it through the tinted glass and mountain pass.

To the south, they built Teddy a cock. I tell you it is an obelisk and shield your eyes. I petition the rocks and streams for the moment before. When the house was yellow, the sky was full of light and the minutes were less. - North

Buried

Beyond the vinyl siding lay the remarkable. Where planters don’t require satellites and crops are small enough to avoid the call of migrant workers. Dyed diesel is a myth, but my wood shingled roof has a fresh coat of paint infused with linseed oil.

The red jammers are full though the road curves to dreams of avalanche. I imagine they’re playing golf again not far from where I picnicked amid a ruptured flock of aspen. A forest is waiting.

I hear stories of the huckleberries falling off the bush before ripening. The hinterland looms within reach of the curious. Milk and honey live in legend. Brush and grouse and wolves live in here. - North

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”
- Matsuo Basho

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W.B. Yates

The Jesus Year

I’m halfway through my 33rd year. My old friend, Vin, calls it my Jesus year. While I'm not saying it compared to crucifixion; I must admit that sometimes… it has felt like an extra rough time. I’ll be home, in Montana, by the end of the month and my mind is already flush with questions of which direction I should attack the new batch of paintings that will inevitably follow. I’m interested in pushing my explorations of the human figure back to the forefront of my work. While I’ve never let a month pass-by without drawing or painting from life, I’ve been lax in allowing it to step forward from the landscape during these past six years of unending movement. When I look at art, I’m typically drawn to figurative works, it’s only natural that I should return to that vein, myself.

The last few sporadic posts have alluded to my interest in functional painting. The details of such a venture have been less than exact. I’m not precisely sure where I’m going with that idea – I suppose that one could call it my own little growth industry. Not unlike the two unfinished novels bouncing around my mind. – North

Remains of the Day

Packing and selling the last remains of the past dozen years, I'm reminded of a line from The Human Comedy by Balzac:

"Tell me what you possess and I will tell you what you think."

They say ownership is 9/10ths of the law, but are they referring to those that possess or those that are owned? Intersections and tragedies don't necessarily have to go hand-in-hand, but I'll be damned if it doesn't rip the essence from life every now and again.

Five weeks and I go home. - North

Steampunk.... probably not

The last couple years I have really enjoyed reading about the different processes various Steampunk artists use to create their post-modern Victorian throwbacks. Perhaps it has something to do with the complete opposite approach to ornamentation used by 99% of the art world when presenting art – myself included. Now I’m not saying that I want to crossover to the Steampunk genre, but I do believe the style has definitely evolved these past couple years from nostalgic kitsch to verifiable minor art movement.

Click here to see an example of the process.

I bring this up, because Steampunk seems to be the most easily transferable functional art movement that I have come across. Nothing seems to be off limits for a Steampunk transformation: laptops, watches, lamps, etc. But is the utilization of transformation of a functional object into an art object enough of a process to generate a MAJOR art movement that will stand the test of time?

Rather than take something mass-produced and change it, I believe I need the complete sense of power that accompanies starting from scratch. That does not dilute the importance of this style or level of process (watch some of the online videos and instructions and you’ll see that the level of detail and raw talent utilized by the artists is astounding) – but for myself and my work, I just think I need to keep looking for the functional art process that starts with empty hands instead of something I picked-up at Bestbuy. - North

With Complete Disregard for the Bear...

While packing my studio for the next move, I ran across this nine-year-old photo from my Gallery Director days the first time I lived in Missouri. - North

Collecting Thoughts

So I’ve noticed that the terms “functional painting” and “functional art” have a near endless supply of meanings. I’ve found examples of work that expand the definition of the terms to include:

• Methods of alternating home-décor to suit one’s image or financial status.

• Murals (this one threw me for a loop, I suppose the “function” includes teaching history, narratives, etc. – but that could include the majority of painting, so…)

• Work that involves the recycling of one material to create the base substance for another creation (such as a couch or wall hanging).

• Pretty much anything that falls within the realm of folk-art.

• And of course the standard-bearer for the American West – lamps and end tables made almost entirely from antlers.

So where does that leave the fine artist searching for a bit of the ole’-kinetic-lovin’ in the standard-bearer two-dimensional painting process? I believe the answer lies in the mixing of traditional media. Clay, glass, oils and glazes – let’s not forget paper either, oh where would we be in this world without paper. Wood and canvas also seem necessary in any process that would require more than a token nod to classicism whilst displaying the innovation that can redefine itself as contemporary art.

Don’t worry I’m working towards something, here. – North