A poetic-essayistic exploration of the idea of what if no one listens, reads, sees the art? And its opposing notion: what if audiences truly listen?

What do you write about when you have nothing to say?

From Scrooge to George Bailey, to the modern comedic and heroic stories (including Elf, National Lampoon’s Christmas, and Die Hard), a consideration of the lessons that Christmas stories can teach us about the creative process.

Is generational affinity good for the artist? Is it good for creative work to have some sense of an affinity towards one’s generation? The disparate cohort and a sense of connection to various creatives from various times. The milestone occurrences and crossovers of concentric aspects of life, these might be valid as commonalities.   A sense of grouping together of periods, works, and individuals as from a time and a context.

Notes on a dream, pulling a spaceship out of a swamp
Powerful dream. How do we bring a creative work into existence? Sleep dream. Dream come true… You know the whole thing… You’re trying to catch it. Will the notes look like the thing?   Explains an aspect of the creative process.   We are walking in the woods and we see what looks like a half-sunk spaceship in a swamp. The strategies we use to get it out…   Writing: improvisational or planning? Improvisers use pre-planned things. Outliners have to improvise while making the outline… is there an outline for an outline?   Whatever process we use is the way we make sure the spaceship doesn’t sink… And the perception of complete control…. That’s even a way… that perception is a way, that’s the yarn, the magnet…   compared to music theory and grammar: maybe grammar could be called language theory? What is style? Is it the culmination of the how and the what?  Descriptive vs. Prescriptive grammar. Style is our own vocabulary developed as we get the spaceship out of the swamp.

an exploration of the common grounds of three questions:
Why the self portrait? Can we create art and not reveal who we are? Should we do commissioned work?

Can you perform with just a notion of technique and without a sense of sincerity? Working with purity: either just passion or just technique… as a comparative structure to inquire into the question. Is it better to have feeling or a technical sense of the work? We can find examples of great performances of both. Sometimes as we learn more effective techniques in creation, we might get more of a reaction but we can feel more about the technique than the content. Authorial intent: can we know the intention? Do we need to? The audience’s reception: that’s the counterpart to intent of the author. And then the idea of expression. And communication.

Can we separate content from technique? What is the meaning of the lighthouse? One question here is the technique. One is the content. Perhaps they are one in the same. What is the meaning of the lighthouse? Symbolism: pre-figurative plus derivation of figurative meaning. The lighthouse is a structure that allows for people navigating to know that there is a place. A lighthouse is located in public. It is a public good once it is built. Free and open to all to find their way.   In painting, the lighthouse becomes a look at painting techniques again and again. The content stays the same and the technique becomes experimental. Breaking down technique into phases and parts. This has been a technique exploration for me, as it has been a subject exploration.   It might take practice and help for audiences to understand how to begin to appreciate technique instead of content.   The meaning of the lighthouse for me is also a practice not only in technique but also in inventive rendering rather than representational rendering. Tendencies: towards rendering from representation or from imagination. This process has helped me work less referentially. And has enabled some traction with referential type of work in an imaginative way, without direct representation as a reference. The work with the lighthouse has been as an actual guide for me in expanding a particular type of painting process of representational invention.

What is a mask? Literally and figuratively. Do creative pursuits construct a truer self? Or do they allow for a mask to be constructed? Or perhaps another persona? What is a mask? Masks that we can see. Masks that are hidden. A mask conceals important parts that we rely on in order to identify a person from the outside. The mask hides the face but creates a new face. Recognizability is both obscured but renewed. A mask is like a key into another portal of a persona. A foundation for presenting another persona. A transformative device for understanding who someone is. Identity isn’t it necessarily it. Outside and inside might not always coincide. The features of the face converge into a whole. No particular part is more important. But once a significant portion is covered up, the recognition of the whole becomes difficult. What is a face? Explored as a portrait painter. A technique is a way for the artist to make what they’re trying to do accessible to themselves. It’s almost the opposite of what a mask is. My technique to convey the face is to start with the nose because it helps me to triangulate the face. A face is: the features converging within the margin just enough to convey a recognizability. The mask then is a cover up in part or whole of a recognizable form of communication. Well then what is the possibility for the individual to become a truer or more masked self via creative production?

We can view Halloween as a festival of creative participation. Anyone can participate to any extent or no extent. It allows for a creative way of engaging across genres. The levels of participation can be judgment free. Freedom of acquiescence It’s about the idea enacting the representation of beings that don’t exist in this world or are looking to invade the living world. And we come to this with a sense of nostalgia and joy. A wholesome scare. Sounds contradictory. Dealing in the plate tectonics of the subconscious.