{"id":8,"date":"2011-07-06T23:28:11","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=8"},"modified":"2011-07-18T19:11:26","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T19:11:26","slug":"the-hand-the-eye-and-harrington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"The hand, the eye, and the Harrington"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

from the Barns collection<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

If I step back and just observe myself while I paint what I notice is pretty simple\u2014and extremely simple-minded. I become less and less conscious of myself and what I want my activity to mean and far more aware of the feel<\/em> of what I\u2019m doing. When I know, with the entirely subjective certainty of someone in love, (translate: deaf and blind to the opinions of others) that everything I\u2019m doing is exactly right, a number of conditions hold up. I\u2019m aware of having established a set of personal rules, which I\u2019m following at a steady, rhythmic pace, not too fast, not too slow\u2014the quality of the brushwork, the thickness of the paint, how closely I maintain crisply defined edges and outlines, exactly what colors I will and won\u2019t use, and what kind of sheen I expect the paint to have when I\u2019m finished\u2014slightly matte, not reflective, no shine at all, seemingly as soft as the cloth that supports it.<\/p>\n

I might be the only person in the world who cares about these things, ever, but the strange thing about painting well is that these factors become all-important. I\u2019m never focused on what the painting has to say, or what it \u201cmeans,\u201d or how \u201csignificant\u201d it needs to be. All of these variables would appear entirely arbitrary to anyone else, but for me they become an absolute necessity. My Ten Commandments. My Noble Truths. My Rules of Order. Whatever. Once I start swerving away from those personal guidelines, and that steady Dr. Dre tempo they impose on my work, those minute particulars and private measures of excellence, there\u2019s no going back\u2014it\u2019s all lumbar punctures and tracheotomies and triage. Now and then, the patient survives. But she\u2019s on life support. Also, when it\u2019s going well, and I\u2019m working on an image which is precisely, carefully, representational with an obsession Monk himself would admire\u2014where the evocation of form becomes as significant as the shape of color on a flat surface\u2014it\u2019s as if I feel the actual, three-dimensional thing itself emerging into relief under my fingertips, through the brush, so that I have the faint sensation of carving the figure from a block of material, sculpting it with paint. I have no idea if what I\u2019m doing corresponds to what other painters experience, but that\u2019s how it works, when I\u2019m doing it well.<\/p>\n

Years ago, I attended a poetry workshop during which Hayden Carruth talked about writing to a dozen of us sitting around the table, and he said something that resonated with me at the time, but which I didn\u2019t fully understand until recently, in relation to painting: \u201cWhen I write poetry, there\u2019s almost a physical pleasure in it when it\u2019s done well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Painting, for me, is almost entirely a physical endeavor. Absent is any conscious notion of a painting\u2019s significance, any intention to make the image resonate as a concept or idea or metaphor in any way other than being a visual representation of the physical object or setting that I\u2019m using as a source for the image. I\u2019m aware of a level of evocation: a certain music or poetry that might or might not emerge, subliminally, as I\u2019m working. But that is never something I can consciously shape into an image. It\u2019s either there or it isn\u2019t, happening on its own. I\u2019m as far away from any sense of interpretation or conceptual baggage as someone having satisfactory sex is from the thought of being a parent. This doesn\u2019t mean I won\u2019t generate something that has a life of its own in the world\u2014it simply testifies to a painting\u2019s unconscious, physical, non-conceptual. . . uh . . . conception. The act of creation taps subconscious urges aligned with a craving for certain colors, certain lights and darks, certain kinds of line and shape, a certain feel of a brush in the hand, and a purely sensuous apprehension of oil paint\u2019s flow and luster\u2014so that when I paint, I feel most of my gestures originating in an area just south of my belly button, and nowhere near my head. My head is often listening to a podcast while all this is happening. It can get tedious this labor. These same originating sensations happen when I play golf well, or run three miles, or shoot a three-pointer. They aren\u2019t happening as I type these words, which is neither here nor there. I don\u2019t need them for thinking, though thinking comes in handy while I paint, but only when I get stuck. Otherwise, no thinking.<\/p>\n

I had a mug of coffee with a friend, recently, Rick Harrington<\/a>, who has been getting the sort of beauty\u2014from a long series of repetitive, abstracted images of barns\u2014 which Rothko derived from that mythic horizon he kept doing over and over. Rick\u2019s colors, in these hard-edged, abstracted representations of farm buildings, can be as alive and fresh and subtle as Brice Marden\u2019s or Milton Avery\u2019s. He has found a motif he can keep repeating for more and more surprises as long as he cares to keep painting. He lives south of my home, a half hour\u2019s drive away, near Geneseo. He was in town to pick up his wife, Darby, at the airport, so we met at a spot called Starry Nite\u2014in a structure like a tiny homage to the Flatiron in Manhattan\u2014and it was like many of these one-off places where you get espresso or a latte, except that it has a unique mural, a surprisingly talented enlargement, painted directly onto the wall, of Van Gogh\u2019s Starry Night,<\/em> as well as various copies of other Van Gogh paintings, on conventionally stretched canvas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tougher this year,\u201d Rick said. \u201cLast year, I thought we\u2019d gotten through the downturn. I don\u2019t know now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was smiling, just as light-hearted and affable as he were reporting a seven-figure income, and I sat and listened, throwing in a few wow<\/em>\u2019s and no kidding<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0 whenever he took a breath.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you paint?\u201d he asked, out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

I laughed, it was so abrupt, and typical.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to figure that out. Why paint. Why bother? I mean, I know why, but it\u2019s hard to put in words.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s physical isn\u2019t it?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

I shook my head, which actually meant I was agreeing, it was so close to my thinking, and I was so amazed that he and I saw it exactly the same way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like sports. You completely lose yourself,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rick looks a little like Aiden Quinn, but with more gray hair. Ten years ago he chucked every other source of income\u2014he\u2019d been an art director and illustrator for most of the time I\u2019d worked with him\u2014and plunged into painting, dragging his work to art fairs around the country, covering thousands and thousands of miles, in a van or towing a trailer. Some years he\u2019s made serious money\u2014not Art Basel money, but enough to pay the bills and put a kid through college. In the early years, he was thinking he\u2019d be fishing for dinner the rest of his life. (He fly fishes and kayaks, and both represent for him the same kind of union with nature\u2014and his own nature as a human being\u2014offered by painting.) He went into a long, well-told narrative of a free fishing trip he\u2019d won to British Columbia, complete with a guide, and the steelhead he snagged. It was such an enormous steelhead, a real prize, it may very well have been the fish Elizabeth Bishop once wrote about.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should do a blog,\u201d he said before we shook hands and drove off in opposite directions. I said, yeah, I think I will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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