Tuesday, January 15, 2008

aahhh a new year




man diggity dang e orangutan. so before I go on to rant about god knows what I will upload a couple of images...some are old .. some are new. The first drawing is pretty old...gathering momentum in the confines of my sketchbook. The second one is a fun small piece I did for Amanda. She told me I could whatever all I needed to know was that she's got some Cherokee going on, loves tea and elephants. So this was a treat and usually every time I draw native americans I feel a strange connection and I keep thinking like they're talking to me and saying things that I can't really understand or that perhaps I do understand but it's more of a subconscious thing. The last is some tripped-out ballpoint freakout I had in Alhambra back in the day. It's a drawing of Mary and Jesus after getting bashed in the face with a rock...a dirty self-righteous deed carried out by the Roman soldier on the bottom right. Truth is there are limitless windows into litmitless alternative realities but since we usually follow certain patterns of thinking our perception is limited... which is really really sad. This has been the cause of much frustration over the past couple of years and the only actions I can take that allow me to feel better about this is to dive in and immerse myself in an environment evolving out of the moment. Losing yourself in the work can be problematic, especially with so many distractions all the fucking time. A thousand tiny invisible hands trying to tear my flesh apart, numb my mind and dim my light. I had a great conversation with David about hypocrisy and I still believe that as civilized human beings one of the hardest things to do is not be a hypocrite. All of us deep down inside ourselves know right from wrong, we know what we want yet we fool ourselves constantly by false appearances and are at the mercy of systems designed to create followers. As I type this I'm aware of my own hypocrisy and it makes me upset but not as upset as to feel like tearing all foundations apart...perhaps one day an event will happen that will push me over the edge and I will be completely true to myself. To be true to my innermost enlightened self I would have to give up almost everything that I've learned to value the most... a difficult near impossible thing to do. But that's for the truly brave soul, perhaps one who doesn't believe he/she has anything to lose and all to gain.
I know reality is more complicated than left, right ... black,white ....right or wrong. We view things in simplistic terms. If we were able to use our brains to its full potential perhaps we would be able to visually and conceptually handle the limitless connections of history... the limitless connections of ourselves with each other, our planet and cosmos... perhaps we would be able to handle the vision of seeing someone and literally seeing naked reality manifest itself in front of your eyes... without any filters... you would see something that right now we are just not capable to understand....and we suffer because of this and will continue to suffer until some day we can shed all the baggage that we've accumulated.
We have so much potential... the sad but true thing is to create we must destroy. Destruction and creation are "two sides of the same coin". That's why first as artists we learn how to draw and once a person reaches a certain level of skill in order to evolve that person has to forget all he learns otherwise you may be able to be a great draftsman but that's about it.
There's more to art than just having technical skills. The real deal happens in the mind and how someone psychologically reacts to a work of art. In this journey I am alone and at the same time I'm not because there are others who know this and I've got thousands of years of collective memory to work from. I love you all and I hope you're on the path of self-discovery. Happy 2008!!
-Reinier

4 comments:

William Fenholt said...

I like elephants too.

verdadverde said...

i love elephants too! they've got superpowers

Rustam F. Hasanov said...

Deep thinking=deep drawing. The drawing on the bottom is a revelation. I am amazed at how you unwind your mind in these little blog entries you yours. Destruction is not always civil, and it's fruits are not always edible. The futurists wanted to burn every single painting in Italy and recreate art based on their own Ideals. Christians destroyed almost all of Greek and Roman sculpture and painting when they took over. I think more than half of what we do is pointless, but we should consider what we let go of carefully. Take your art for example. With your ability you are free to render your own world. If you were to cut off your drawing hand, recreating this would would be burdened by lack of draughtsmanship. Unless you are ambidexteruous that is. Everyone is an experiment, and should try to do what they consider is for the best.

verdadverde said...

I completely agree with you. The library of Alexandria was vast with knowledge we'll never know and most of it was destroyed by ignorance. It's just sad to realize that to be where we are in a society like ours, the people that came before us had to do so much damage and so much damage is being constantly done and we benefit from it. For example, it kills me to know that for us to be here on this land....people were massacred, lied to and were downright nasty and inhuman ( survival of the fittest?? )...a whole way of life, that of the native americans, was slowly annihilated. The Seminoles here in Florida put up quite a fight and took to the swamps and it took the US gov. years to get those "pesky suckers" but they got em and now to make up for it they get the "amazing" privilege of not paying taxes... AWESOME, this was their land to begin with!! ...and it wasn't taken by being diplomatic...blood was spilled. I mean why even worry about that right??? People want to be happy and to be happy you can't let things like that get to you. We just accept or deny without really feeling the weight of the issue because it becomes an abstract thought and who wants to be bothered with a burden one can't understand?

"'Take some more tea,' the March hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.'
'You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter. 'It's very easy to take more than nothing.'"
(Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)