The sound of rain wakes me from sleep. Finally it is here. The water running down the metal drainpipe, the thin drumming on the roof above me, the light patter of drips upon the windowsill slightly disorientates me. It has been so long since it has rained. The sounds, the quality of the air is, at first, unfamiliar. But then I remember that this is what rain is like.

The rain came again. It always does and has been for as far back as I can remember. It seems to be never expected, but it always arrives. And this, for some reason, comforts me. Once again water is falling from the sky. This is just the normal course of things.

At some point there just is nothing left to do as far as the universe is concerned. It is just time to utterly and totally let go. And rain. All the cars, the traffic, the busyness, the frantic efforts trying to make things be a certain way, the plans, the good and bad intentions, the worry all seem to be washed down in intensity a little when it rains. As hard as we try, as much as we want things to be a certain way, sometimes none of it matters. The sky, the world, just carries on doing what it wants regardless of us. Rain is the perfect answer to just about any concern.

Growing up I used to love “coloring” looking out of my upstairs bedroom dormer window when it rained. I would line up my collection of stuffed animals, soldiers and favorite books beside me as I drew in my pajamas. The world seemed so stormy and unknown on the other side of the window. I loved that I was safe, that I was dry, warm and could create any reality, any place I wished to go, by drawing on the paper in front of me. It was a small doorway that once opened let me go anywhere and be anything I could imagine.

I remember the sounds of rain upon the windowsill. I remember the smell of breakfast coming from downstairs, the din of the radio my father listened to every morning and even the waxy fragrance of my shoebox filled with crayon pieces.

As I colored I imagined and created all kinds of places I might go someday. The world lay before me unexplored and waiting. Anything seemed possible. It was raining outside my window and my world inside was made utterly and poignantly perfect. Again.

With gratitude, Nicholas

Today I was supposed to leave the studio at a specific time but just before walking out, I saw something on a painting that I just had to fix. It took a couple of minutes. Now I am sitting here after coming home 4 hours early to meet the cable television guy who was supposed to install TV connection. My window of time was 2-4 pm. I missed him by 3 minutes. That was about the time it took to add that one extra green shape on that painting back at the studio. This happens to me all the time.

What is it about this line of work that can make you so obsessive?

I am told endlessly that I am always working. I can say that “everyone” probably is right. I do call my art “work”. It certainly feels like it sometimes.  When my painting is not going well I definitely call it work. And I usually say it in this sentence: “So I have to go to work now”. When there is more spaciousness in my life I usually call it “painting”. The difference is subtle but palpable. Work seems to have fewer choices, but painting has plenty. Painting is unexplored and is indefinite. However, you can overly fill your life with Art, just as you can with work. How do you balance your art comfortably in your life?

How do you do Art part time? How do you kind of go for it? You’re either in all the way or you are not. At least, this is how it seems to work for me. I sometimes feel I don’t have balance in my life. Actually I know I don’t. If I had a job that was only 30 – 40 hours a week that started and stopped at a specific time every day, it would be so easy to then plan out and balance all the other things such as relationships, domestic things, volunteering, personal and cultural things. I am quietly jealous of those who can consistently tune in every Sunday at 6 pm to watch a TV series for 40 weeks in a row. That is just not how I have structured my life. Everything seems to ebb and flow around my art making. I work hard for several months then have a show, then slip into unproductiveness then start up again. It even goes this way as I am working on several paintings. Some just stay kind of marginal. I then have to push harder at it – become even more focused to move them towards something more compelling. I think the issue with treating Art like a regular job, or the disparity between work and Art has to do with the degree of learning and the required uncertainty in Art making.

In art, you are constantly pushing up against things you do not know, you do not understand and as a result, there just is always a degree of uncertainty present. When you are at work, at a job, you generally want to lessen unsureness. But in art, if you are perfectly rehearsed, perfectly sure all the time, then for some reason, the work ends up looking a bit stale. Good art is risky. So if there needs to be uncertainty in art to make it interesting then I just never really know how and when the painting will turn that corner. It is, by its very nature, an uncertain enterprise. It is not formulaic. It usually does work itself out – sometimes quick, sometimes more slowly – but it always requires such focus. So much so that it can be kind of hard transitioning or really getting interested in doing much of anything else. If you’re stumbling blindfolded along in the dark and are just reaching, feeling something that is understandable, it is just damn hard to stop what you are doing, sit down and wait till the next day. At least for me.

This art business is just not like regular work. I see how much it affects everything I relate with in my life. It is a bit like herding cats. You want to put this all in a nice tidy box but it doesn’t fit. It is a roller coaster; it is so wonderful, is sucks so heavily sometimes, it is admired, then sometimes people feel pity for your plight. I still don’t know the answer. I do know I am way too in to change things now. I cannot imagine getting a regular job. The more art I make, the more curious I become. What would I make – what could I make if I spent my life trying? Each attempt at a piece of art is a clue as to this outcome. I don’t think this should ever be called “work”. Maybe it is better to just call it Art. Work is a part of your life, but your Art, if you’re willing and able, is more like your life.

Does your Art feel like work? Is it?

In balance, Nicholas

I recently posted a painting on Facebook. It was one of those posts that you kind of cringe as you post because it was in a stage that I didn’t like. I had a tough time with this painting and at the end of the day I pretty much had just a big grey mess. It was one of those days I get paint all over myself. There is wet paint everywhere. I even get paper towels stuck to the bottom of my shoes and because I am so impatient, I won’t stop and deal with it. I just want to keep painting–I know I should stop and move to another one, but I don’t. I just keep hammering away at it hoping like a madman that I will suddenly get different results by doing the same thing. I never do and I didn’t this time either.

So I posted this painting on Facebook and said something to the effect that I was a bit lost here and that hopefully tomorrow I could figure it out.

I didn’t feel too good about posting this ugly painting but that’s what I made and sometimes the actual act of posting something, seeing it in a different light gives you more information. And this really has helped me.

So much so that I am beginning to realize that I am now integrating the process of sharing what I am doing -mostly on Facebook everyday when I am painting, but also with the people who happen to walk by my studio doorway. I used to be much more solitary, and I certainly didn’t encourage visitors. Somehow sharing your work, or even talking about it separates it from your self, not to mention the huge benefit of seeing and commenting on others work. That is such a nice break from your own movie.

When the thing you are trying to make gets to exist in another form – in this case, a 4 or 5-inch square Facebook post, or even a verbal description of it, then you can see it in a new fresh light. It takes on a level of objectivity that the original object sitting there next to you in your studio day after day does not have. Having even a few people see and comment can shift your perceptions. Rarely, or I would have to say never actually, are my concerns or the flaws I perceive in my work the thing that is even mentioned by others. Many of the comments I receive are from fellow artists. I have learned a tremendous amount from other people, but especially this idea that what I perceive as important or flawed in a painting is not what others perceive.  It just leads me to reason that if I am circumscribing my painting to be a certain way, maybe it is possible to let go a little bit of how I perceive it is supposed to turn out. I notice that as I make work I definitely think about past work and how it turned out a certain way and that this piece too should follow the same course. I can see how this thinking can possibly limit the potentiality of new work.

Sometimes the comments of others will point out something more interesting, something that might have more possibilities in it for the future than even I imagined. Maybe we just need to get out of our own way. And maybe the way to do this is to share a little bit of what we are doing with others.

It might not take a village to make an engaging arc of work but it is nice knowing they are right outside the studio door, especially if you don’t close it all the way.

And again, thank you for your comments,

Nicholas

I was just visiting my father, who is an artist, in Ashland, Oregon. He mentioned that because of some health reasons he had stopped painting. It had been a few months. I asked him if he missed it and he said he did but, at the same time, he reasoned that because you get older your creativity lessens which makes the whole process of creating not longer as satisfying.

He cited various artists whose careers petered out in their later years. I agreed, however, I also thought of that Gerhardt Richter movie showing the 82 year old artist miraculously dragging giant squeegees across enormous paintings. If you have not watched this movie, do so as it is truly inspirational. So clearly there are some exceptions to this idea that creativity wanes later in life.

I goggled the research and learned a little bit about how our brain works, how it seems to build and expand itself mostly when we are learning new things. Young children, for example, are just utterly preoccupied with learning because their world is still brand new. Their brains are madly creating new neural pathways all day long because their curiosity is on fire.

How does a ball point pen work? Can you really grow an avocado from the pit by sticking toothpicks in it and hanging it in a cup of water? Why do flies fly in square formation? Why does it smell like that after an electrical storm? Can a thought actually bend a spoon? How does a bee find its way home again? How can the sky sometimes be that impossibly beautiful blue?

My father thought one of the primary reasons we might lose our creativity was because we had already been there before. In other words, we already have done so many paintings, so many figure drawings, so many doodles in sketchbooks that we already know how it is going to turn out. There is so much behind us that it begins to inform and predict the future outcome. Not entirely of course but just enough to maybe think twice about starting yet another painting when making the previous 3 wasn’t particularly inspiring. We no longer are particularly curious.

And this curiosity part is where I found a foothold in coming up with my own idea about stemming the tide on creativity later in Life. I notice in my own life that I am busy with a capital B and unless I choose something new and exciting to do, it just won’t happen.

However there is a choice. And this is key. We either go somewhere we haven’t, choose something unfamiliar, take a chance when we don’t know how things are going to turn out or we don’t.  Having things always work out the way you predicted they would is somewhat reassuring, but it comes at a cost. Predictability has been exchanged for curiosity, surprise, and most importantly, wonder. It seems to me that there will hopefully always be so many things yet to know.

I know I can grow an avocado tree from a seed having grown one that grew faster than I did as a child, and I know a lot about honey bees, but I do not yet know why the sky can be that amazing untouchable, beautiful blue.

It still fills me with curiosity. It makes me wonder. And as a result, thankfully, it gently nudges me back into the studio to start looking for answers.

With appreciation, Nicholas

This week I have been working on several paintings that are mostly black and white. Interestingly what I have learned or rather relearned has to do with color.

In the beginning of making a painting I am not thinking too much about color. I tend to think more in black and white – making decisions based on the lightness or darkness of the shapes (value). In these striped paintings, all the shapes are either very black (the absence of color) or very white (also quite colorless).

Today I started to bring color into them and right away I noticed these little colorful dots I was making looked very rich and vibrant. And then I re-remembered why… Color always looks especially wonderful when it is surrounded by something that is not colorful. In this case, the colorful dots are sitting upon black and white stripes.

The more not colorful my paintings seem to get, the more easily I am able to make a statement about color on them. It is quite surprising. When a small amount of color does appear, it looks so… well, colorful. And because it is such a surprise visitor to the painting and is so different-it becomes especially noticeable.

And in Art, noticeable is a good thing.

This is, of course, obvious, but I am amazed how often I forget this simple idea… The absence of something makes that something more like itself when it finally does appear again. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

I see this all the time in my life – it happened today in fact. For example, when I go without baked goods and instead just keep having kale smoothies for breakfast – when I do fall off the wagon and finally eat a bran muffin it tastes especially fantastic. And I don’t normally like bran muffins that much, but the one I had today was sublime.

For some reason this principle is easy to overlook in art making. The idea of giving up something in order to make a small amount of it seem like a lot is a very powerful and poignant idea.

It touches upon discipline, understatement and restraint. It is what makes good things great. In art for sure, but also life. It is what turns an ordinary bran muffin into the best, by far, part of your day.

How does color show up in your art or life?

One of the biggest annual Art Fairs in America is Art Basel, held in Miami, Florida. It is massive and goes for almost a week. I have never seen so much art in one place. I wasn’t sure why I went except for the fact that there is pretty much more Art here, this one week in December, than anywhere else in the entire world.  I knew also I would learn something but I wasn’t sure what.

The caliber of the work is quite high, however after several days of wandering through cavernous exhibit halls, it all kind of starts to runs together a little.

There are exceptions, however. Every 15 or 20 minutes you would come across a piece of extraordinary art. It didn’t matter what kind of art it was, painting photography, sculpture, etc.; it just was hands down remarkable. Something that just stopped you in your tracks.

What I found interesting was that the art that I found exceptional was the same art that others did too. It was easy to tell because of the fact that everyone today seems to have an iPhone. When something is hands down amazing, people stop, walk up close, pull out their iPhone and take a picture.

Everyone makes this same motion and when streams of people are all doing this same action, it becomes noticeable. It is almost as if people are stopping momentarily to give a gesture of appreciation and respect before moving on. They are giving it a “like” It is crowd sourcing Art.

After the second day of noticing this phenomenon I started asking myself, what is it about all these particular works of art that make them extraordinary?  What reaction or feeling are they eliciting in all these different people from all over the world? What do all these works of art have in common that the others don’t?

I thought about this a great deal. I am not sure I figured out the answer.

But even so, this is what I came up with:

Great Art gives us one primary feeling. And that is Wonder. It is about being presented with something that is so different, so surprising that it makes us reconsider a small part of our own reality. It offers us the possibility to see our world entirely differently than we did before. And this, in turn, makes us feel alive.

This feeling comes crashing through to the viewer regardless of where he or she comes from, regardless of whether it is abstract or representational, a painting or a photograph, a miniature or an enormous sculpture. It just simply awakens us to a new aspect of our lives, even ourselves. We are simply made more alive. And like a once in a lifetime visit to one of the 7 wonders of the world, we take a picture to remember. We take a picture to remember how it made us feel.

How does great Art make you feel? What was it?

Curiously, Nicholas

I have a solo show in about 5 months. It is going to be at Caldwell Snyder Gallery,in San Francisco, opening June 4^th, 2014. What will I make? Will it be more interesting than what I’ve made before? There is a certain amount of worry beginning to pile up, of course, in not knowing. If the work is going to be any good at all then I really shouldn’t have any idea, at this point, of what it should look like. It should be brand-new, but nonetheless it’s scary and the prospect of making 15 paintings that I have not seen before is daunting.

Every year I revisit my process and the way I work. I have realized that little and often is the best way for me to get things done. I try to paint three hours a day without stopping, keeping my attention and focus very high. Sometimes this goes to four or five hours but I try to do at least three hours. I write down how long I’ve spent to keep track of how I am doing. I also have a rough idea as to how long it will take me to make each painting. I add up all those hours ahead of time and I come up with a big old number and then I divide by the number of art making days I have – this gives me an approximate idea of a schedule, some answer to what it will take to make this work and if it is even possible.

This is, after all, a practice and when I think about it that way it seems to take the stress off of me. I know if I just show up and not worry too much about the enormous task at hand, in this case creating 15 paintings, that I will be able to figure it out. Bit by bit. The point isn’t to be super efficient, but rather to enjoy the process rather than being stressed all the time.

I love the idea that “your vocation should be your vacation”. I tell myself, as well as my students, your art making should be the best time of your day and that it’s a lovely escape from the predictable routine of your life. It is also a time when you can feel more like yourself than at any other time in the day. This is a big clue – or rather a reminder – to make sure I am staying true to making work that really pleases me. If I am excited and love what I am in pursuit of, then it is fairly certain the emerging work will be personal and unique when it is finished. It will automatically fit in with the rest of my work, even though hopefully it is different than what has come before. But mostly, it should feel like me, to me.

Oddly, I notice I have the most difficulty painting when I’m not painting. When I actually get to the studio and I pick up a paintbrush and I start mixing the paint things always get easier. It’s almost like the hardest part of making art is when you’re not making art. The more you do the more you do but also the inverse is true the less you do the less you do.

Have you ever stopped for a few months only to realize that it has suddenly become super challenging to get back into it?

With inspiration, Nicholas

I had dinner with my friend, artist and designer Tom Stanley the other night. We both attended Art Center College of Design together umpteen years ago. The conversation meandered around to our artistic paths, our careers and what was hard in the beginning that was not now.

Tom said that what had recently created the most positive change was the fact that he recently redefined how he wanted to run the business side of his art making. Remarkably, he had changed his thinking about how his creative business should be run.

He said that he originally went into a creative field because he just loved making things and that somewhere along the line in trying to make it a business, or at least following all the “shoulds” about how to be successful, he had become overwhelmed with a whole slew of tasks that were no where near as enjoyable as just making his art. Endless self promotion, pushing your work even though you have already grown tired of it, endlessly toiling away on your website, pursuing clients who might one day need your work, being strategic about negotiating prices, and of course constantly having to shore yourself up emotionally in the face lackluster sales.

He wondered why he had to spend so much time and energy on all the unpleasant “shoulds” in order to finally just make his work. Shouldn’t he just be spending most of his time and energy on making his art?

Tom decided it just wasn’t worth it. He said he realized his design; art business was just like managing a massive orange tree farm. He was solely responsible for planting and nurturing the trees, haggling with the markets to get the best prices, watering acres and acres of trees just perfectly, worrying about frosts in the winter, and basically overseeing thousands of trees every day just to hopefully stay in business. It had become all too much.

So instead, he decided that he would rather live like a single orange tree. That instead of spending most of his time doing aspects of his career he disliked, looking after all the other trees, he could simply spend most of his time just making perfect oranges; producing amazing design solutions as well as his more personal fine art for a small but growing number of specialized clients and fans. His life became simpler. He stopped promoting, chasing clients and abandoned his website.

He took the chance on just staying in one place, growing in the sunshine with plenty of extra time to just make work that was more satisfying. And not surprisingly, it became better. It promoted itself. He didn’t try to be noticed, he just started paying attention to just making the world’s best oranges and, as a result, he is not only becoming more known and successful but most importantly, he is happy doing it.  If people want the best, he came to realize, they would have to look for it themselves. Eventually those most interested in quality would find their way to the top of the hill, to this one particular tree, that makes remarkable oranges. They would have to come to him.

Today Tom has found himself in the enviable position of actually doing what he loves on his own terms. From my own experience of a lifetime of making art and helping others do the same I know how challenging this is to pull off.

Tom’s story reminds me of the importance of keeping a huge part of your life force available for making the work you love. Make it great for yourself and the rest will often take care of itself.

Has your creative life become simpler or more complex? Are you happier doing what you do now then when you originally started?

Tom Stanley lives and works in Santa Barbara making art and design. His most recent work can be seen in the entire redesign of the McConnell’s ice cream brand and store right downtown on State street. Inspirationally

I absolutely love the opportunity to start over, reinvent and begin fresh again.

What makes a new beginning anyway? The ending of an arbitrary weird 12-month calendar? The blow out festivities of the Holidays? The coming of the cold and rain?

I am not entirely sure but what does seem always related to new beginnings is a pause, an absolute stopping, a cessation of everything
you were doing for the past year. And then, as the tasks, the busyness, the constant agenda of you lessens, a new feeling of spaciousness arises.

There is, suddenly, a distance between what you used to do and what you are not doing now. All the things you used to do are over there and you and everything you are not doing is standing here. And now, standing here, unencumbered and with nothing in particular to do, two distinct things begin happening.

Firstly, and this is just how it works for me, I get overwhelmed with how wonderful it is to just do nothing. The first 45 minutes of doing nothing, however, do feel a little strange but I was amazed at how fast I took to doing nothing. Of course, I have been training for this winter break since October because I had an Achilles surgery and it forced me to stop all manor of physical things – not just running, which I love but even walking, climbing stairs and till only recently, even painting. But this time my break even includes art making and almost all social media. (I know I am still blogging but I can’t give everything up!)

For days now I have been wondering if I was meant to be a “lay about” – an English term for “couch potato,” something my Father used to toss at me in my
youth as I laid in bed some days, till noon. I told him I was busy growing, which was true. (Once I hit 6’ 4” I stopped growing and sleeping in so much as well). I just am flat out amazed at how good and comfortable I can feel doing nothing much at all. It is scary how good it feels.

Secondly, the next thing that happens after the shock of doing nothing wears off is that maybe 3-5 days in, a question begins to quietly loom in the background of your idleness. “When will I start again?” And actually related to this and maybe more accurate, is “How will I start again?” What will beginning again look like?

The fact that you even have time to ask this question, that you are in a place to even ponder an answer gives this moment it’s potency. It is what is at the heart of all new starts, new beginnings. You can’t help hoping, wondering if things this time around will be different.  Most likely they will be. They certainly will be more in tune with you and how you feel now because you are beginning now. The very question has invited change back into your life and I know, at least for me that means uncertainty, curiosity and a heightened state of creativity; a threesome that keeps me awake at night and pops me up a little earlier in the morning. What will I do now? What possibly can I make that will surprise even me? It is simply exciting.

I am not even sure there are more important questions to answer than these…it is why we are here and why, once more it is so imperative to
start again.

How and what are you going to do differently this time?

In anticipation, Nicholas

Pablo Picasso, Tete de Taureau (Bull’s Head), Bicycle saddle and handlebars. 1942, Musée National Picasso, Paris

This year it was decided that gift cards of a pre determined dollar amount would be exchanged between family members for Christmas.

I actually had never purchased gift cards before. At first blush this dramatically simplifies Xmas gift purchasing, reducing hours if not days of gift hunting to just minutes.

Once I knew that this year I would be giving gift cards as presents I noticed them everywhere. Every store has them. These, I found out are a boom to the respective businesses as many, once purchased never are redeemed and show up on the books almost like an impersonal donation or a year end Christmas gift from us to Amazon or Starbucks. Also, if the card is redeemed the chances are that more will be purchased, adding still more to the profits of the business. It certainly is a win win for these various retail businesses.

I noticed that Credit Card companies have gotten in on this idea too. If you buy a gift card from Master Card or Visa the recipient can go anywhere at anytime and buy something. The only limitation being of course the amount the gift giver – me – has paid on to the card – in this case fifty dollars.

Of course it is pretty easy to pop around to the various stores and pick up the gift cards but once I saw I could just get half a dozen Master Card gift cards I then realized that I didn’t even have to do this step. In fact I could just order these cards online including its accompanying white envelope and I would be done. Xmas shopping this year could be accomplished without actually ever having to go to a single store.

When I told my daughter my plan she said that this would actually be taking it too far. Merely buying and handing out mini credit cards without specifying or thinking at all about which store your gift might come from was just too impersonal.

The exchanging of the cards went without a hitch. No piles of wrapping paper to clean up, no too small sizes, no feigned “No really, I did really, really want this basalt carving of a moose for my dresser!”

The thank yous were sincere. I think everyone was pleased.

For me, however, it kind of fell flat. At first I couldn’t figure out why. Everyone was getting what he or she wanted or would in the coming months. What was the problem? And then it dawned on me.

Finding a gift is mostly a brief preoccupation, a small obsession perhaps with a question. “What do I think would fit into this person’s life? What would make them happy?” The answer to this question is of course the gift.  However, part its value is derived because the answer, was in fact, your answer and not the receivers.

The gift card has drastically reduced the individuality, the creativity of the gift giver.

The card carries with it no particular quality, no particular whiff of me. All gift cards are identical in look and feel. There is no way I can change this. I simply cannot make a gift card more like me.

Unlike a paintings or a work of art’s that derives its value from the amount of individuality contained within it, a gift card somehow has lost entirely any aspect, besides perhaps generosity, of the giver.

We want a Picasso because we want to be reminded of his particular individuality, the way he lived the way he chose things to put in his art. It is refreshing and of value because it is so NOT like us.

A gift card would be like giving someone an empty frame as a placeholder for a gift and saying now go frame anything you want and when you’re done hopefully you will think of me.

So in years past, although it was exhausting perhaps and sometimes resulted in a mismatched gift, at least the gift carried some degree of the giver within it. In the future will we not be able to say  “Oh yeah, yes, that odd thing sitting on my dresser is totally strange but it was a gift from my Dad years ago and I just kind of like it now as it reminds me of him”?

I am not sure the answer but perhaps next year there will be some kind of online service that allows us to make our own gift cards. You just upload your picture and it is redeemable for something that you and only you can make or do. That would be truly wonderful.

I hope you enjoyed the holidays, and were able to spend it with those important to you.

Warm regards, Nicholas