Sisyphus Calls It A Year

So, 2020 was pretty awful in a lot of ways. Certainly didn't see that coming. Such are the plans of mice and men. A pandemic, the death of both of my parents, the passing of several friends as well. But life plows on one way or another, like a glacier, whether you like it or not. And it drags you along with it, so it is best to get to your feet if you can.

I used a variety of coping methods to survive the year. I drank like a fish. Fortunately I am a beer person and the craft beer movement has been a blessing to me. I doubled my intake easily. Had I been a whiskey drinker or a vodka drinker, I might be in trouble right now. I asked the Beer Distributer guy, who I had now become more friendly with, how business had been and he confirmed my own increase was pretty much par for the course. Business had never been better. I also began a series of obsessive behaviors built on existing behaviors, for example, I ride my bike to work each day and in a year that amounts to about 3,000 miles. I will log just under 5,000 miles by the end of this year. I was painting 4 to 6 hours a day, most days. Significantly more than normal. In a really good year I might get thirty paintings done, my best year was 50, this year 80. The end result is I made it through this fucking shitstorm of a year with a lot of scars, but no lethal wounds, not so, many others, but I am aware of the last line in Villani's book, The New Chronicle, about the plague in Florence.

A METAPHOR

This year also saw massive destruction to our beach as mentioned in previous posts. The wall of the bluff collapsed, time and time again as it was battered by storms. But amidst this destruction there was beauty. The wall of clay was transformed each time by the waves and the rain and the saturation and it flowed like magma. It would glow in the sun or radiate coolness in the shade. The surface became this magical, otherworldly landscape.

The wall had this orange-red inclusion that I believe to be iron related. It was quite beautiful against the cool bluish grays. The texture at times could be fluid and at others be blocky. Each storm redefined the surface.

The real loss for our beach was also the number of trees washed away. Some massive poplars that were at least 70-100 years old, some fifty year old oaks. For most of the summer just walking the beach was as obstacle course. In many areas the water went right up to the base of the bluff, so there was no beach.

I began to build my annual stone wall, partway through the summer when there was enough beach to actually get something to stay. I was trying to protect two trees that had been exposed right on the edge of the waterline. So I built a mound in front of them and then a wall extending in the only direction that there was any free space. This is the result.

Every week or two a storm would wash a section of the wall away and I would rush to rebuild something to protect the bluff-line. And the Beachwork evolved from there.

In this image you can see two protective piles of stone that also serve as storage for later use if they don't get washed away. You can also see how close the water is on a day when there is no wind.

I was trying to get enough stone to do four windows across the long wall and this is how far I got before the Fall storms came in. Nothing compared to previous years' monstrosities, but I was working against some pretty steep odds.

Then the storms. One after another, they pummeled the beach and the stonework. After one particularly vicious three day blow, this was all that was left. If you read the National Geographic from this month you will get an an understanding of the mechanics of what is happening on the lakefront. So as the living manifestation of Sisyphus, I had a couple of weekends to bring closure to the season of building.

This is where I leave the 2020 version of the Stonewave. I capped a second window. I filled a couple of holes and that is that. I think the beach will be safe for the rest of the Winter, as ice has begun to form along the shore, but I don't want to discount the possibility that we could get a screaming Alberta Clipper that would wreak havoc. But that is what it had become, down there. Good riddance to this year and may the next be a better one.

 

Five New Studies

Getting to the end of the year. Lots of painting lately. Working on the Birth of Venus project. Start the finished works over the holiday. These are some studies from the models who are working with me. Lots of stuff that I like. Lot of different light. We'll see how it goes on. Lot of power, lot of beauty. I'm impressed with their work.

 President Biden has now been confirmed and that worthless piece of shit...number 45 still cannot give it up. He only has about a month to continue on his destructive path and I have no doubt he is capable of mass carnage and wreckage. But we'll get by.

Life in the Time of Cholera

The day after the election nothing is settled yet, but there is hope that the old, fat, orange tyrant will go down.  Figure painting has become my refuge. For a while, as I'm working I can feel alive and free of the stupidities of American leadership and the shadow of Corona.

I don't know if the quality of the photos will turn out once they are posted. They are showing up on the post quite fuzzy, so I may have to repost them.

 

More studies with the model I've been working with. I'm really liking the results. She is a natural talent and it's easy to get enthusiastic about it. The images are shot in natural light and it has been a challenge recreating that light. But when I've gotten it right, it has been educational.

 

Architectonic Views of Florence and Cliff Palace

These are the latest paintings from the series of paintings that make use of architectural elements from buildings in a specific city. I'm really enjoying the process of putting these things together.

In this painting, I broke the rules a bit and incorporated some landscape components. Don't feel like talking, but here they are.

 

Little Lifelines to Sanity

So I've been spending a lot of time figure painting during the "isolation", I have been painting 4 or 5 hours a day usually on a couple of different projects, but the figure stuff is just really engaging. So many problems to solve. The model is a young woman that the Pre-Raphaelites would have killed for. She has this amazing thick, curly hair that changes color in the light and runs anywhere from golden-yellow to auburn and her skin is almost almost luminescently pale. I know the photos are not doing the images justice, but I will reshoot them at a later date. The first couple were in natural light and it was like channeling John Singer Sargent. The second image when you see the painting in real life the body seems to glow, so I was really happy with that result. The last painting was the pose from Bronzino's Exposure of Luxury that we tried to recreate. and I think we managed fairly well. So we move ahead trying to stay alive. I went out to Colorado for a week to climb and hike and that really helped, so we just keep trying to stay ahead of the ax-man.

The Course of Empire

The painting below is the most recent in a series of works that takes architectural elements from buildings in a specific city and then deconstructs and superimposes them. The end result hopefully is that you could recognize the city. These two paintings from the series are also making use of Thomas Cole's Course of Empire idea. I've taken the elements and combined them with natural elements to suggest the collapse of civilization. The top painting is Tikal, Guatemala. The Classic Maya city is submerged in the jungle that currently surrounds it. The bottom painting is Rome under water. I'm liking the creation of these images. It is labor intensive, but I think they are pretty visually intriguing.

Birth of Venus Project

Right before the Corona virus thing I had begun working on a project where I was going to have a model pose for some iconic figure paintings from Art History. Knowing that most of these figural images were constructs, often not even utilizing live models and the end results were often physically impossible or anatomically improbable. The first one I wanted to do was the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, with its improbably long neck, dislocated left arm and sloping shoulders as well as it's engaged leg being far too far underneath her to keep her upright. So this is the result. I had hoped to make some corrections to the painting, but with everybody in quarantine, this is currently on hold. I do like the painting though and I did several other studies from the same model. I've included the ones that I like best.

In the Corona Era

So we are a month or two into this Corona thing and I am not going to comment on it as I am sick of every conversation being about this topic. I have time in my remote teaching schedule to catch up on some things, like updating the blog, filing paintings, transcribing and recording my sketchbooks digitally, etc...So this is the latest update on my Sisyphus project. The photo directly below is of last year's project. It climbs up the bluff about 60 feet, it was about the same distance along the base of the bluff. A couple of posts ago I recorded its destruction, but I wanted to add a postscript.

This photo was taken from the base of the structure after the bottom of the bluff was washed out. That stack of surviving stone is about 12 feet off the beach, balanced on the sheer wall of what remains of that section of the bluff.

Once the stack collapsed I began to salvage stone and tried to build a new wall to protect the base of the bluff. Got a pretty good section laid in and it washed away in the next big storm like it wasn't even there.

All of that stone tumbling down the bluff was also washed away, leaving only this little pile on the top of a ledge which was the highest point of the sculpture.

That would disappear with about twelve more feet of bluff leaving this bare wall of clay exposed. All told I would guess we lost about thirty feet of bluff. The base eaten away, the upper portion collapsing only to be washed away...rinse and repeat and there it all goes.

But I must say, this clay wall is really quite beautiful and it has already ended up in one painting and I'm sure it will be used again in the near future. A little consolation, I guess. If you are one of those fuckheads who still thinks climate change is some kind of conspiracy or something...please, please, please, don't reproduce. Let's just get those genes out of the pool now. I am writing this as snow falls out my window on May 8th. 100 year old trees were washed away by the dozens along the shoreline and lie up and down the beach, tossed by fifteen foot waves like they were matchsticks. Oh and by the way, Michelle, thanks for your comments. I started a new project for this year further down the beach. Hopefully it will still be up the next time you pass through.

Life Painting

Been doing some figure painting from models at the studio of one of my local artist friends. These are the third iteration of paintings done on the spot. Happy with them. Figure painting is a challenge and each new problem is a reason to keep painting. I hope to start pushing things into the creative realm in a couple of weeks. 

Sisyphus Revisited Again and Again

So the last fall ended with a sixty foot wall along the bluff and a sloping incline of stone running up the bluff surrounding an oak tree and stair-stepping its way up.

 The winter locked up the shoreline with ice-dunes and the destructive winter storms were checked by the dunes. In all of the years I have lived here I have never seen the dunes this high. Easily 20 feet mounds. This photograph was taken from the top of one of the dunes.

During the Spring I spent most of my energy just working upward. This photo was taken in April as I was making some serious progress upward . I kept going pretty steadily all summer. Significantly higher than this photo records.

 Fall 2019 storms began to wreak havoc on a regular basis. The sixty foot wall disappeared in sections and was regularly replaced only to be washed away again and again. I was just desperately trying to keep the oak.

 Finally, in an act of liquid malice the lake just absolutely pounded the shit out of the bluff and took that oak and about a half dozen larger trees along the shore and swept them away like so much chaff and left only the structure that stepped up the bluff.

 In one final act of destruction another storm sucked out a huge chunk of the bluff and everything came down. It is hard to imagine the force of these storms and what they are doing to the shoreline here.

 And then Sisyphus started again...I have yet to go down to see if the first storms of 2020 have swept this new start away, but what are new years for?