Art

random blog post

It has been awhile since I’ve tickled the plastic ivories of my trusty laptop. Life gets busy. Or rather, life IS busy. Full stop. 24-7.

As a younger man, I never imagined myself having a full blown family. I did not regard myself as responsible enough or ‘together’ enough to manage the ups and downs of parenting and everything mundane in between, let alone maintain a career as a painter. Still, at some point (points… three of ’em), however, I became a full blown family man. It seems like a blink of an eye since my average day was concerned with nothing more than painting, cooking tasty meals with (sometimes with multi day prep involved) for Sarah and I and whatever other parentless vagabonds who drifted into our always-open-door-policy house, walking the dog and finally, choosing two movies from the corner video store in Cannington (Brockbuster… in Brock township) for the approaching night on the couch.

Cut to today and I don’t think I could adequately describe the flurry of action that occurs during my (daylight) waking hours. There is no start and no finish. A task followed by a task and then three more tasks, some of them in the middle of the night (many of them, in fact). Somewhere in there, I am lucky enough to be able to get in the the studio and pull off some coffee fuelled painting from time to time.

Please, dear readers, read no note of woe here – this is merely observation – make of it what you will. It is easy to look back on such times of bucolic pleasantries and have a note or two of nostalgia creep in, but I quickly remember the boisterous vitality that now pumps in our house’s veins. It is a lot, but it is a loving lot, so I do not lament a little loss of the Life of Riley. There may be stark contrast between the lifestyle of no children and the one with tonnes of children, but the two cannot really be compared, at least not whilst also maintaining sanity. So different are those paths that when they diverge, they never meet again and one can sometimes scarcely remember what it was like to sleep in to whatever time you once deemed appropriate.

Hangovers, once a pleasant excuse for some sweet, sweet sloth, are now scorned and avoided with alacrity. No one wants to feel the guilt of still-boozy cheerlessness at 7 in the morning with three children sitting,  wanting your special crepes while you monotonously moan and groan into the sink, trying to soothe your head with the soulless echo of your own sunken and savage torpor until the coffee is ready. No, you learn from that mistake and many more.

Such adjustment does it require to be a parent to three little children, that you can sometimes barely recall who you thought you were before the cherubic onslaught. Well, lemme tell ya, you weren’t who you thought you were. At least I wasn’t. It turns out that there is nothing better in the whole world than being smothered in your offspring while reading bedtime books. Difficulty may arise (it will) in your day to day scenarios but there remains a soothing undercurrent if you are tuned into it and can tap into it.

All 5 of us got sick over the last couple weeks. The hacking. Oh, the hacking. The wracking, stacked to the rafters hacking. After the eye of the storm had passed over us and we were contemplating the few days previous, Sarah and I both agreed in timely fashion that as shitty as it was, it was also cozy and insanely cute at times. The wood-stove worked overtime and frozen (albee’ em organic) meals were thrice employed and then reheated as leftovers.  We hunkered sump’n fierce.

The only painting I did over the two weeks of holiday action was some sporadic experimentation with abstraction, changing a large colour field into a different mode everyday. I may show the results in time if I feel them worthy of display. It has been fun, at very least, watching a painting morph and change daily into something unplanned and spontaneous – one moment feeling excited or even elated about it and the next feeling hesitation and deflation, but all the while reminding myself that I am not after specific results but instead am chasing whimsy and attempting alchemy. I’ve said before that if I really felt my mojo working in it, I may abandon representative painting altogether and embrace the abstract. For now, I’m merely playing and trying to keep the visual child in me alive.

Now that the ill-cloud of sick has lifted we are slowly emerging back into routine. I have gotten well into my next commission, and I’m chomping at the bit to get in to more pieces that exist only in in the ether of my imagination. If I can just get in to the studio at some point…..

Postscript note… This post was written in the depths of winter. It is now April and there is still snow on the ground. Grrr.

Happy ‘Spring’ everyone.

D

8x10 oil painting

A donation piece for the Waterkeeper Gala coming up

 

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Commissioned Oil painting in progress by painter, David Marshak

The Versimillidude – Art Speak and Pretense

Greetings,

Time for what has now become a bi-monthly blog post. I intend to blog more frequently if not weekly, but Julia/Julia this is not.

I was recently talking to a friend about the time when I was delivering a piece to a gallery in the west end of TDot for a trial run. My work was anomalous and I knew it. It became clear to me just how much my work stuck out when the gallery assistant sat me down to ask me some questions about my practice and her first words were “why such versimillitude?”. I was not taken back as I knew what artistic neighborhood I was sticking my painty toe into. I have no idea what my response was, but I do know what I wish I had said;…

[cue dramatic theme]

[cue the voice of god]

“Because… I am… the Versimillidude.”

Seriously though. I do not mind the question.

I have almost always painted in a highly representational manner. Still, I would urge anyone to stop short of calling my work ‘photo-realism’. I am occasionally in awe of such work, but often it leaves me cold and I actually don’t aspire to the sheerest levels of verisimilitude (easy to remember this word and its meaning ‘cos it sounds like you’re saying ‘very-similar-to’ or even better ‘very-similar-dude’). You still somehow have to incorporate some soul. I can’t say whether or not my work has soul, it is not for me to decide – I mean, sad clown paintings have soul don’t they? Elvis on black velvet? I dunno.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the question. Usually, the whole idea comes up not in the form of a question, but rather as part of a more pedestrian statement that always begins with ‘Wow, it looks like photo’ or even better, ‘it looks like a picture‘. I repeat, there is nothing wrong with that remark in and of itself. It can always be taken as a compliment (which is surely how it is meant).

It is hard to talk about though, in part because I have a problem with art speak. I not like it in a pram, I do not like it with some ham… Um… I do not like it on a peak.. I do not like art speak. I enjoy talking about art and the practice and really anything related, but I cannot navigate a conversation in actual ‘art speak’. For anyone who who knows what I’m talking about, you are either good at it and enjoy it, or you suck at it and usually go to the bar when a deeply intellectual, ‘art speak’ conversation begins, so you can begin to drown your anxiety with good simple whiskey.

So, what is a good example of this dreaded art speak that I… speak of? Grants and proposals. Oh yes. Have you ever read over a long arts proposal?  No, you haven’t, because unless you are getting paid to do it, you cannot sit through the endless pages of pretentious drivel cloaked in the duplicitous garb of cultural import. Someone wants to paint or do installations or clip mousetraps onto their digits or worse and they want money to do it. But instead of plain sentences and direct meanings, the language must be very specific. it must drip with pretentiousness. I can’t even illustrate it for you with words because it is beyond my capability. You need to read some of the more high minded art criticism to even get a sniff of what I mean.

None of this means that there is no validity in such language and dissection. I am not so much condemning as standing apart (at the bar, having a whiskey) and listening  in wonder when artists and makers and critics begin to converse with each other about the arts. Chests are beaten and plumages displayed in these intellectual jousts… But, what the hell are they talking about? Is it important? Is it just time-wasting-fluff? I can’t always tell.

Maybe I’m just jealous.

Maybe… But what I do know is that nothing feels like doing good work. When you are striking the iron and it is hot. When the muse is riding your back like a crazed monkey. That is the whole dealio. Any amount of dissection can’t do any better in explaining it than I just did. It is ineffable. So, while I’m glad that art writing exists and I’m glad that there are those who can actually write grants or proposals and get some money to fill a gallery with red shovels, I will keep painting away while not really being able to clearly express exactly why I paint what I do and why I paint it like I do. Hopefully, someone, somewhere will write something about it that I will not understand.

Best of the season to everyone,

The Versimilidude.

P.S. Here is a commissioned piece I am working on.. It looks like a picture! And for good measure, a photo of our happy winter chickens.

Commissioned Oil painting in progress by painter, David Marshak Chicken Coop at the home of oil painter, David Marshak

 

 

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Drawnonward article in the Creemore Echo

  • http://www.thecreemoreecho.com/2012/09/drawnonward-goes-big-for-creemore-festival/
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DRAWNONWARD GOES BIG FOR CREEMORE FESTIVAL

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