PAINTING IN CYCLES

robert mangold

Every day I feel good about getting older unto old. It's the best part of my life. I have good people in my circle, love all around. I ran into Matt in the grocery store yesterday with his two kids. As we spoke, I forgot something and remarked I like the forgetfulness that goes with old age. I said I like blank mind. He said, "I'll look forward to that," in irony. I do enjoy that information falls out of my mind. I think of it as a groundhog hole. I'll be talking, or writing, and the next thought just falls down a groundhog hole. Gone. Writing, I can look at the previous sentence and bring it back, but talking, I have to ask, What did I just say? Answer usually comes back, I don't remember. This tells me how important what I have to say is. So what's the point talking? When the groundhog hole swallows a thought, oh well. All the better that it's gone. Whoever is listening isn't hearing, so why talk? Because I'm expected to talk. Never on a subject. Never. One runs the mouth while the other daydreams waiting their chance to talk, jumps in and starts talking while the other daydreams and waits for a chance to talk. I don't even encourage conversation anymore. Quips. Brief notations, letting off steam. Somebody has something to say, I'll listen, and I'll talk making it a point to come as close to saying nothing as I can think of at the moment. It's like I'm in a sitcom everywhere I go. We tend to talk in sitcom punchlines. Not tuned into that medium, it's difficult for me to talk like a sitcom. When I try, it sounds silly. Sounds silly on a sitcom. I've never held the sitcom with canned laughter as anything but the lowest form of entertainment. I'd rather watch underwater terrapin races. I used to try to talk frivolous sitcom talk, just to have somebody to talk with from time to time. Now, I'd rather have no one to talk with. I'd rather stay home and be quiet, enjoy quiet mind. Talk less: forget less. 

robert mangold

So much is changing within that I sometimes wonder if I'm not rounding the last turn in a running race, where the runner goes wide open and runs the feeling out of his legs. This cycle I'm in is so fulfilling it makes me wonder if I'm nearing the finish line. Yet, I tend more to see it as I've finally come to a place in the life where my heart is open and mind uncluttered, no desires, no wanting anything but a new book, now and then, and wanting to give the donkeys a comfortable and happy life, Caterpillar too. I want to be an attentive friend to my friends. I want my art expression to be fulfilling in the doing. I'm way past caring about attention as an artist, a reputation, shows, money. I don't want any of it. I stepped into that world some many years ago, but jumped out like the frog dropped into boiling water. Too much jealousy, envy, hierarchy, judgment, pretend. I'd rather my friends have my art than anybody else. I'm not driven enough to pursue art as business. I've stopped painting in the past every time art turned into business. I wasn't going there. Every time I started painting again, it was a completely new style, new subjects, new mind, new cycle. This cycle of doing single-color abstractions feels the best of any before. It's like everything I was doing before was learning art. Suddenly, I'm pursuing an interest that is the natural next thing. Natural for me. Natural because I've leaned toward abstraction all the way along, am in bliss at a museum surrounded by abstractions. A wonderful abstraction can take my breath more than much that is figurative, though exceptions abound. I think I've learned how to breathe life into a figurative painting. Now is the time to breathe life into abstractions. I did not hold abstraction as a goal I was consciously working toward, though am able to see in retrospect the super-conscious had been progressing in that direction. 

antoni tapies

Painting figuratively, I used in my mind abstract principles, whatever that means. Though I was painting a recognizable subject, I saw it abstractly. This series of abstractions came out of seemingly nowhere. One day I was messing around with some shapes, rectangles in rectangles, and saw something I'd like to try, using cardboard. It started as two colors, but the two colors killed the cardboard as an element. One color makes the cardboard the subject. I like that it is two planes that look like one with a light line and a dark line. I've seen so many styles of abstractions, that when I looked for something that could be my own, somebody else had already done it. Antoni Tapies turns me on about the most of any abstractionist I'm aware of. There are many I love, but Tapies has my full appreciation. The few of his I have laid eyes upon have pulled the breath right out of my open mouth. I especially remember one I saw at the Carlos museum on the Emory campus in Atlanta, largely black. A luminous black. I can gaze at Tapies paintings on google images and be in awe, but seeing one, face to face, is a very special moment in my life. Another, Robert Mangold, who makes a canvas of a beautiful color applied perfectly smoothly, and a pencil line in varieties of shapes, circles, rectangles, ovals in wonderful ways that are unique to the given piece. Recalling one I saw at I think it was the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, a canary yellow I'd never seen before. It was a big rectangle. The pencil line a rectangle where the left and right lines were not parallel and missed meeting by about an inch. At the Mint in Charlotte, I saw one in a pale olive, a square canvas with a pencil line of a circle. Where it started and met at the bottom missed by about an inch. It's that space in his art eye of that period where I find his "art," what van Gogh called It. I found a book of Mangold paintings and never tire of looking at the images. I never dreamed I would one day be making abstractions of one color. 

robert mangold

Of course, there was immediate concern I'm imitating Mangold. It's not imitating. Like I saw his art in the small gap where lines fail to meet, I see my art in the lines of light and shade made by the edges of the cardboard in relation to light source. I love giving light and shade a part in my "art." The first one I made using cardboard, I didn't see those lines of light and dark. Used two colors. The second one used two colors too. The lines of light and shadow are rendered absent. All one color, those lines around the cardboard are the life in the piece. This is to my eye. I don't anticipate someone else seeing this. Its why I'm telling it. The cardboard shape becomes the subject. I like that as the oil paint dries, it shrinks into the texture of its surface. Paint wet, the cardboard looks like the same surface as the plywood. Dry paint the ribs of the cardboard show; that it is cardboard is apparent, as I want it. Cardboard is so common it's like the most common. Yesterday at the dump I looked at the cardboard pile, surveying big pieces for something larger I might want to make in future. I love about cardboard that it is the most common thing in all our lives. We all know cardboard. I love the commonness of plywood too, especially scraps. I see influence of Mangold up front, which I don't care about because it's not like Mangold. I see Tapies influence and Motherwell influence. My way of making an abstraction is as new to me as it is to someone looking at it the first time. I'm looking for what I see influencing these new pieces I'm having a ball making. If I can make something that takes my breath like standing before a Tapies, I feel like I have touched art. With each one I'm making now, I feel that awe upon completion. I'm following that awe to see where it goes.   

antoni tapies

*

DRAWN TO BALANCE

robert mangold

Today I participated  in the great American delusion. Voted. And laughed at myself. I only did it because the republican strategy to inhibit voting by non-republicans tells me there must be something to it or it would not be so important to republican strategists for me not to vote. Politically, I am an anti-republican, not a democrat. The only politician in DC I have any use for is Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, Socialist. He is the only one who speaks for the American people. The democrats suck up to the rich just like the republicans and support the rich for their favors. I can't afford to call a politician and say I want certain legislation passed and you'll have your reward. I cannot afford freedom of speech. I felt like the local elections were somewhat important. Democracy works somewhat on the local level. I vote to vote against republicans. Only. Just to register one unit saying no to the politics of ignorance. My mind returns over and over to CIA director Casey saying in 1981, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." The CIA's disinformation program is complete. This makes it easier every day for me to live in the world, not of the world. In town today I stopped in the coffee shop for a pound of coffee, saw someone I was happy to see and we engaged briefly in conversation. It wasn't long before I learned I'm expected to talk as if I'm high on Zoloft, everything is pretty, everything is lovely, PC to the max. I encouraged the end of the conversation first chance. I found my spirit is gone from the place. There's no place for me in there anymore. The right people have found it. It's too PC for me. 

robert mangold

I'd rather watch the race with my friends who cuss and drink liquor and smoke cigarettes and laugh at Rodney Carrington humor. After half an hour in the coffee shop, I'm anxious to get with friends for the race Sunday to wipe off exposure to political correctness in its most objectionable form. PC is so incredibly fake I've become intolerant of it. It has been so many months since I've exposed myself to the politically correct ones, the ones who say all the right words, and if you miss one, you're out. They're acting like they're on tv, editing themselves of words not acceptable on television. I take my mental remote and click the power button to off. I'm on the verge of becoming assertive ignoring PC in my language. It's like everybody is a preacher's wife. I used to find them funny, but now I find them severely tiresome. I suppose I'll have to let my taste for Ethiopian coffee fade away. I always have to settle for Kenyan, anyway. Kenyan is just as good, but I prefer Ethiopian. Can I get it? No. I don't like the vibe in there now. It's a vibe of correctness. You have to dress right, talk right, like in a Sunday school class. If political correctness is evidence of being a liberal, I'm not a liberal. They make me ashamed to call myself a liberal. I don't want to be in that company anymore. My friends and I don't judge each other. It's not easy to be in an atmosphere where I'm judged for how I speak. I attempt to speak clearly, but that's not good enough. I don't walk the PC tightrope; therefore, I'm out. I may check one of the other two coffee shops in town to see if I can get some Ethiopian coffee for home. 

robert mangold

The grocery store has some Starbucks coffee in bags, though Sumatran is the closest I can find to what I want. French Roast I've found fairly close. Maybe I'll go back to drinking tea like I did before discovering Ethiopian. Coffee shops are a middle class culture thing, and I am not of middle class culture. If I'm going to give myself over to walking somebody else's line, I'll go to church. It was a strange experience today. I went by Gill's Jeans n Things for a couple pair of sweat pants. Gill and I talked for at least an hour. I enjoy conversation with Gill. He is an intelligent guy with a great range of experience from India to Hong Kong to San Francisco to Sparta. He came here about five years before I did. Married a local girl who was in San Francisco and she brought him home. Gill has been a great addition to the community. We had lively conversation, no judging going on between us. It was especially notable to cross the street after talking so freely with Gill for an hour and feel judged the moment I walk in the door. The atmosphere is so correct. Attempted to talk with someone I'd wanted to talk with for some time, and came away disappointed. PC to the max. Beyond word correctness unto tone of voice correctness, to subject correctness, the list grows longer. I catch myself wanting to say something outrageous like, I'm the lowest down emeffer you'll ever meet. Not my scene when I'm thinking such thoughts. I want to stand up and rap all the forbidden words multiple times apiece. From there, I went to the voting place and made my anti-republican stand. I felt like a subversive at the voting monitor. After filling car with gas, I spent some time not being judged, then spent some time being judged, and went to vote in a state of balance. 

robert mangold

I'm at a time in the life when patience for television mind is dim. I find myself withdrawing from people who live by a checklist of rules and turning my attention to people who are simply themselves with no pretense of being something they're not, just people living our lives. I was overwhelmed somewhat by positive mindlessness. So positive. I was sitting there thinking, balance is what I want, not sweetness and not gloom. I want to be free to flow with positive thinking when I feel it honestly, and go with gloom when I feel it honestly. I'm not afraid of gloom and depression. I've found my times of depression in the past have been very active in learning about self, fulfilling know thyself. I've found that grief lasts six months. It's painful and I don't like it, but I also don't mind it. When a friend dies or a cat dies or a dog dies, I experience grief. I don't shy from it. I embrace it and go with it. I feel it honestly, so I allow it. I never deny it. I still miss Tar Baby every day, five years after. I hope there is something to meeting departed loved ones on the other side. I want to see all my dogs and cats again, and all my friends on the other side. I have so many dear ones over yonder, it makes me anxious to get over there with them. I was spoken to the other day, in a non-judgmental way by a friend, about how casually I talk about dying, leaving the body. I supposed he never knew anyone so casual about it. I couldn't explain why. It's just an attitude that comes from scriptures that know the secrets of life and death. I see the moment of passing out of the body something so wonderful there is no looking back. First, freedom from the weight of carrying this heavy body. I imagine it like carrying two heavy suitcases for hours and finally putting them down, letting go of the handles. What a relief it must be to rise from the body like smoke from a cigarette. I see more and more the saying from Paul, Death, where is thy sting? Sorrow is for the ones left behind. I tell my friends to feel no sorrow for me. I'll be going Home. Nothing to be afraid of. I've come to like it in this world, so I feel no hurry. It is what it is.   

robert mangold himself

*

CREEPING UP ON ART

frank stella

How was I driven to art? I had no access to any kind of information about art. My dad had a natural talent he never developed. He fussed around some, not much, showed me how to make perspective. My mother took an art class when I was in my first couple years in San Diego where they went for a factory job when WW2 was cranking up. Two paintings she made in that time were always on a wall somewhere in the house. They were beautiful. A psychic many years later told me the artist in the family was my mother. It was suppressed in her by the rooster she lived with that went cockadoodledoo only. That was all he knew. He had to be the big man superior to an ignorant woman and run her painting down until she finally got it she's a failure. Fifteen to twenty years ago when I was visiting in Kansas City, I wanted to borrow mother's car to drive to the Nelson Art Museum. It is automatic custom in the family that nobody lets anybody else drive their car. She said she'd like to go, and she drove. I probably found the greatest insight of my life into who my mother is during that museum stroll. She was drawn to Remington. I wanted to stay with her, but I also wanted to see the art she couldn't connect with. They had a great show going on at the time, a big Frank Stella show of wall sculpture, and a good collection of other new things coming out of New York at the moment. I was at home, loving everything I saw. I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted because she was getting restless. None of it meant a thing to her. I understood. I was that way at the Art Institute in Chicago at age 19. The difference was, I wanted to connect with it and she did not. Nothing outside her experience is of any interest to her. I've always known that. Among the Impressionists she took to a Monet city scene with snow. It stood out. Incredibly beautiful. I got stuck in front of a small Kees Van Dongen painting of a woman in a white slip, black hair an upside-down U, pink skin, surrounded by RED, Coca-Cola truck red. I was in awe. Stood there stunned. Mother waited for me to get over myself. She didn't see anything. She probably thought I was thinking it was sexy. I thought nothing of her absence of interest in the modern. It was totally outside her experience. There was much I wanted to see that I let go for her sake. I get lost in the modern and she's in a foreign country. We were connecting in that time like we never had before, talking about things we'd never talked about. Not secrets. Just anything. We never talked before. The talking in the house went from parent to child, did not include from child to parent except for something like, Can I go out and play?

 

frank stella

 

We went into the oriental rooms that I wanted to see as much as the modern, but wondered how she could handle it. Big Chinese painting of a social scene in some palace garden. She fell into awe. She looked at everything she saw like it was familiar, the way she looked at the Remingtons, though this was the first time for the Chinese. I could stay in that space as long as she wanted. I started watching her, she was in such a state of awe. She saw a life-sized head of a Chinese Buddha carved of sandalwood sitting on a pedestal that put it up face-to-face level. She automatically drifted toward it, reached out her hand and jerked it back about an inch from the face. "I forgot. You're not supposed to touch anything." I thought: Whoa. That was magnetic. Throughout my lifetime she has been the same as a Fundamentalist nun. I wondered if she'd had a recent lifetime as a Buddhist monk in China. Like I said, she only connected with the familiar. Nothing like anything in that room had she seen before in this lifetime. No way it could be so familiar from any experience in this lifetime. Of course, her church doesn't allow such heretical thinking as past lives, so I don't mention it, like I learned very early, don't mention anything. This is somebody locked into a belief system as secure as a bank vault. This is why I imagined entering the Chinese space, we won't be here long. Not only foreign, but a pagan religion. I remember thinking when she reached to touch the Buddha's face, she doesn't know it, but this is the same as her Christ. They are one and the same. I felt like she saw that subconsciously. It told me her reverence is real. It's concealed under a huge system of dogma that I do not hold for real, that I spent fifteen years shedding. I thought the only way she could see the divine in the Buddha head would be if her reverence for the Christ were real. She was more interesting to me in there than anything on the walls. I felt like I understood her religious zeal. It's something she carries with her from lifetime to lifetime. In myself, I tended toward the shamanic from lifetime to lifetime until the modern world where art and poetry are the only places I find comparable to access to the spirit world. I find it natural that our souls would come together, though, like in this lifetime, they just don't intersect. Her fanatical devotion drove me away from her, and keeps me away like a stiff-arm. I sometimes think she uses it to keep people away. She's been a solitary many times in the past.

 

frank stella

 

I, with my own soul history, get taken into Fundamentalist zealotry, somebody with unremembered by the conscious mind experience in the spirit world. They didn't mix. I was taught that everything I do is a sin and the only way I can live in God's favor is to have hands cuffed behind my back, sitting down, being quiet, watching television. By the time I got out of their house, I was the human cannonball. A puff of smoke and a boom. I'm flying through the air as far as the momentum of my intent could carry the kid that didn't know up from down, left from right. Passed all the tests in school. Went to church with perfect attendance by duress. In this atmosphere, in high school I customized cars in my notebooks during class. When I got my own 49 Ford, I customized it in notebooks every day. Made them like 49 Fords I saw in custom car magazines. All through jr hi and high school I put model planes together, then cars, then customized the plastic cars. By senior year I had a few little trophies from model car custom contests in the city. I even used the extra parts to melt and shape the plastic with a hot x-acto knife at the kitchen stove. Mother didn't mind. It kept the kid busy and quiet. I dreamed in that time of designing new cars  in Detroit. I loved car design. This was the Fifties, the age of the land yachts. Every year a custom car show came to Wichita and I was there. I loved it more than anything in my life. I knew a kid who worked at Daryl Starbird's custom body shop and I wanted to work there with all my mind. But then, like with everything in that time, bottomed-out self-esteem didn't allow it. I couldn't ever learn to weld. I couldn't do that kind of advanced work. I could never learn to paint a car perfectly. A guy in a wheelchair had a hobby shop nearby and I thought we became friends. I confided a grievance around daddy. Next thing, all hell broke loose at home. I don't mean partial hell. He'd told daddy what I said. When the shit storm subsided I took a great big cardboard box, filled it with every car I'd made, my entire junk yard of spare parts, everything involved with model car making, tools, glue, the works. I took the box to the hobby shop, put it on the counter and walked out the door never to be seen there again. Never touched another model car. I guess that's how I handle betrayal. I had hillbilly blood then, just like I have it now. I'm not bad and I'm not mean, can't kick anybody's ass and don't want to kill anybody, but when somebody pushes me into a corner, I come out of the corner with Xtreme prejudice. The person pushing me into  corner never wants to see me again. They're the people that have seen my dark side.

 

frank stella

 

Not long out of the Navy in my first Charleston attic apartment where a multi-level parking lot now stands, I don't remember the circumstances, but a young woman I'd become acquainted with was in a really difficult time in her life and I listened over a course of several days. She made out like I did something miraculous when all I did was listen to her story. And she listened to mine. Maybe nobody had ever listened to her. My recollection is so dim I can only see her face. She had to leave, go someplace else. Before she left, she gave me a book of Salvador Dali paintings. I never saw or heard of her again. Don't remember her name. Half a century ago. That book was the kickoff that gave my subliminal and completely uneducated interest in art that was vague as a dense fog the opening, the door to the world of art besides advertising art, the key that had me soon reading about contemporary art going on in NY. Pop was happening. Julien Beck's Living Theater was happening, off-off-Broadway was happening. Warhol's silkscreens, films and hangers-on were happening. It was an exciting time to be following by way of the Village Voice and books and magazines. I went through MoMA the first time like a provincial Italian Catholic might walk into St Peter's in Rome the first time in the 18th Century. Whenever I have gone to a city, no matter where, I go to the art museum first and sometimes only. I don't care about anything else a city has to offer. The only place of interest in Raleigh NC is the art museum. Washington DC, only the art museums. This is how I discovered art, by books and museums. When I talk or write about art, it is not with authority. I see art from a subjective feeling. I'm remembering a Robert Mangold painting about the size of a door, horizontal, the most gorgeous yellow I ever saw, and an odd parallelogram drawn with a single pencil line that wasn't quite parallel. It stopped me and held me until it was tattooed in my mind. I've never seen it reproduced in book or google images. Don't need to. And one of Mangold's at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, a square, soft almost olive, gorgeous, a pencil line circle that misses coming together at the bottom by about an inch. I bought a book of Mangold's work. Every image takes my breath. By now I've read and seen the entire modern period in its expressions in Europe, America and Asia. It is driven by a curiosity around the only subject that has ever interested me in this lifetime. Every place I've ever lived has been a wasteland where art is concerned. I'm used to it. I keep my own library of art books. I follow my own interest. I don't care that the world around me is watching television. It's what Americans do. So I stay on Waterfall road with my art interest my own and pet donkeys. The only thing I really want anymore is to be.    

 

frank stella himself

 

 

  

WHAT FRIENDS DO

robert mangold

Coming down from a week of mental agitation, emotional spinning, stress throughout the entire body. Yesterday I came down with a case of intense weariness. Went to bed early, got up late. I was glad to feel the weariness yesterday; it told me the emotional intensity of the last several days is waning. It tells me the wired feeling is subsiding gradually, is on its way out. My neuroses flew to the surface and made a mess of me, reviewing childhood rage, the only recourse I had to keep balance as an individual. My mother's reaction to daddy's madness was to stay in the kitchen and sing hymns to herself while he was berating her from another room, which was so ongoing. By the time I was out of college and visiting parents for a few days, I was ready to confront him, kick his ass and tell him to shut his damn mouth. But by then, I was seeing it was her solution to his bullying personality. She buried herself in church to "make our marriage work," the same as I buried myself in a bonfire of rage to survive. There was nothing I wanted to do to make anything work with him. Their example of marriage was such that I never wanted to go there. Made a mistake and tried it. It didn't work, and I set out to go it alone, against the way of society, but I didn't care. I knew he was in me and I would do what he did. Didn't want to do that, didn't want to subject anybody I cared about to a bullying personality.

robert mangold

 

I have spent my life coming to terms with daddy in myself, avoiding situations where his training would rise to the surface. I have dealt with it until who I am does not have access to that bullying nature anymore. Still, when somebody with perceived authority pisses me off, the rage within overtakes mind and body. I don't like it, primarily for the memories that surface. I tell myself, I can't change the past, but I can be somewhat self-aware and not put my worst thoughts into action. I've not wanted to reproduce and pass that bullying spirit on. I've not wanted to subject anybody to it. I have used the adult part of my life to heal the child within. It has worked well, in my own estimation. The learning and the practicing what I have learned has made a difference. I have no impulse to bully anybody. Though when I see somebody being bullied (a woman by her husband) that rage within pops to the surface instantly. I remember it in the man and never have more to do with him. He's not the kind of people I want in my life. Another blessing of this neurosis I carry is that it keeps people of a berating personality out of my life. It keeps authoritarians out of my life. That's a redundant sentence. Authoritarians tend to be berating personalities, or anyway, in my experience. I've known several women who lived with a berating man. Some were bent by it and some seemed to like it on some level, like it makes them feel secure somehow. It's too particular to the individual to look at in general.
 

robert mangold

 

On the driver's license test, I was asked if I had any psychological problems. The answer was to be yes or no, true or false. I started to say what I would say to anybody, realizing at the same time the way to get through this experience is say and do as little as possible. My impulse was to say, "That's so subjective it's not even a question." I rolled my eyes uncontrollably, which I knew at the moment was not going to go in my favor. It was not my place to question authority. This was not a discussion group. Yes or no. I said no. If I'd said yes, it would have required long explaining that we both need to define what we mean by psychological problems. I realized what he meant was have I ever been institutionalized. He probably doubted me when I said no, but went on with the next question. My entire life has been a psychological problem. I mean everyday life. Every day is a psychological problem for anyone self-aware. It's swirling around in my head right now that a bully authoritarian was the kick-off of my own self-awareness. What can I feel but gratitude? This is where it becomes a psychological problem, being grateful for what I hated by way of understanding. Phew. That's a tough one.

 

robert mangold

 

The clearest example of the subjective good this neurosis has done for me is in my friend Justin. I've known Justin since he was a baby. His mother and dad were my friends. Justin's dad treated Justin the same as I was treated, but worse. I'd have killed my daddy if he'd done to me some of the shit Justin's daddy did to him. I mean it. I was on the verge of killing him anyway. All that stopped me was knowing I would not get away with it and he was not worth however many years I'd be in prison. I'd ride out my time, let him feed me, let him give me a shelter as payment for his mental, emotional and physical mayhem. From that point on it made me laugh inside that he was feeding the enemy. In Justin's childhood I acted as his witness, an adult in his life who saw and knew what he was going through, was sympathetic, empathetic and understood. We couldn't talk about it and I couldn't intervene on his behalf. If I did, we couldn't be friends anymore. Justin and I were bonded by the time he started school. I couldn't change any of his circumstances, but we could talk in code enough that he understood I was pulling for him the way you pull for a NASCAR driver to win the race. I realized early the only thing I could do for Justin's benefit, knowing where his dad's behavior was pushing him, would be to assist him finding his own self-awareness.

 

robert mangold

 

His daddy's behavior was such that the guys who were his dad's friends in Justin's childhood are now Justin's friends and have nothing to do with his dad. Every one of us is grateful Justin is not in prison. Each one of us did our part in whatever ways we saw could help. In my case, I prayed him up. His mother and dad fed and sheltered him and I prayed for him, from the heart, the kind of prayer that is heard. I claim that part of his parenting, which is every bit as necessary as the other. His grandmother and mother prayed him up too. In Justin the man I see our prayers were heard. A few weeks ago, a neighbor who openly hated Justin's dad, and was wary of Justin as just like his dad, said to Justin in my hearing, "Justin, you have become a good man." I had to turn and walk into myself for a moment of solitude. When someone tells him he is by surprise a good daddy with his kids, he answers, "I learned by negative example." A year or more ago a neighbor in Whitehead started bad-mouthing Justin, telling me what was wrong with him and how he's just like his daddy. I was heating up inside and had to stop him. I said, "Before you go too far, I need to tell you Justin is the same as my own." It stopped him. He took back every word he said and I said, "Thank you." I knew when I said it that it would be all over Whitehead next day. That was how I wanted it. I don't know how he took what I said, but my meaning was that in my heart Justin is blood. We're the same as brothers.

 

robert mangold

 

Now Justin's baby is my friend. His fabulous wife Crystal is my friend. His two kids by different mamas are my friends. These are people I value deeply in my heart. I feel like Vada is my grandbaby. A child I would die for without thinking. She makes me aware of the beauty in little kids. Most I love it that I see so much of what Justin was like in that time of his life. At thirty, he is still the very same Justin I have known since early childhood. He has retained himself throughout his ordeal. He's giving his own babies a happy childhood. He doesn't spoil them. He lets them know he means business when it's necessary. He explains to them why they get in trouble. He gives their questions straight answers. Vada clings to her "Dadu," for loving him so much. Justin and I have talked many times over the years about the absurdity of our daddies. When I grew up, mine automatically expected me to be his friend. All I could think was, What? Justin's dad kept at him after he turned 18. Finally, his daddy provoked Justin in front of about thirty witnesses to fight. Justin pleaded with him not to start, saying, "I will hurt you." He had too many years of rage in his fists to hit lightly. Daddy swung and missed, Justin drilled him and gave him a punishing ass-kicking without being hit one time. When the police came, daddy said Justin started it. In chorus, the crowd of witnesses said, "No he didn't." That moment gave Justin healing like ten years of psychotherapy. In his teens when he could drive he would drop in at my house for "the calm down place." Now I go to his house for the calm down place.  

robert mangold

 

 

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COLOR IN MIND

robert mangold, curled yellow figure

It's Christmas morning when kids all over the Eastern time zone are opening presents and playing with Santa toys, or not. Rain is wetting the snow good at 33 degrees. Occasional gusts of wind thrash the window with splashes of water. Heavy overcast sky, an actually beautiful shade of light gray. To mix the color with paint, it looks like a touch of black in white would get it, but the only thing that would do is show it's definitely not it. Then a whisper of blue, of red, until it gets close enough that to get it right you have to feel it. Painting a cloud is not just white paint, and not just a touch of black for the gray underside.

All that's saying is, it's not as simple as it looks. Like everything else. First thing I always learn when I take something for easy is, it's not. Whether or not I paint worth a damn is not the important part to me of painting. Everything I've rendered in paint has taught me a great deal. Foremost, it takes awhile to fill a canvas with paint, whatever the size, and make it look like something. Each one is a project that is ongoing for however long it takes. I told myself early on, it's not because it's supposed to be this way or that, it's a process, like reading a long book. It doesn't do to hurry. I like it to take a long time, like months, because my way of seeing what I'm doing changes and I get a broader perspective of what I'm reaching for.

Patience may be the most important part of painting, like in shoveling snow. Without the patience to hover over one detail until it's right, there's no getting it done. Artist Robert Mangold paints a canvas in one color, always a shade of a given color you've never seen before. He'd be called a colorist in the minimalist period that came after abstract expressionism, the same time as pop. With a single pencil line, a fairly big kindergarten sized pencil, he made a circle on a square canvas like the one in the permanent collection at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, a soft kind of pastel olive green that's not olive.

The green is one I've never seen before, that is, to notice. The circle drawn in one pencil line almost touching the sides, comes back to the beginning center bottom of the square, missing the beginning about an inch. In that 1" space is a dynamic tension that raises one line on one color to art. To see a sample of Mangold's work, you can google his name. When the google page comes up, click on images in the upper left. You'll get pages and pages of images by him, articles about him, pictures of him. I don't mean to promote him, by any means, as the greatest of the greats. He has an interesting eye that I happen to appreciate.

All I'm getting at, is something so simple can be so beautiful, like the 0 in zen ink drawings. They get their tension in the nature of the brushstroke, the white streaks that flow with the black. Mangold got the same tension with a pencil line by not meeting the beginning point. It's a totally visual moment with feeling. My own particular feeling was awe in a big way to see something so simple have such a strong impact as I felt standing before it, wanting to close the circle, wanting not to close the circle, an alternating current visual sense. Back and forth. Standing at the top of the stairs of StPeter's in Rome, looking up the columns to the ceiling overhead, which looked like it wasn't far away, then having to adjust focus seeing it's not as close as it looks, it's a long ways up there. The refocus has an emotional element in it that swirls around awe. Made me feel like an ant.

Passing through this space gives a feeling of humility automatically, so stepping inside the cathedral almost equals stepping into glory. It feels like a sacred space whether or not you're Italian, because Michaelangelo understood what the French call a trick of the eye can do to bring a work of art to life. Inside the big chapel, where God and Adam reach to touch fingertips overhead, it looks at first not too far away. Then again, eyes need to refocus a time or two until you realize what looks like its life-sized characters just out of reach is actually gigantic characters a very long ways away, scaled so they'd look life-sized from standing on the floor. There again, refocus generates an awe factor giving one the feeling of humility in the presence of the Most High, who is also the same size we are. I imagine Michaelangelo reminding us what Jesus said, 'ye are gods.' Perhaps he was saying, God is vast and far away, while at once the same size as us, and approachable.

It's real art that generates awe for whatever it makes you feel. In the National Art Museum in DC, I was walking toward, if I remember correctly, the Manet room, seeing the painting of the dead matador through the doorway on the far wall. I started in that direction, and on my right it was like somebody flashed sunlight from a mirror in my eye. I was passing the doorway to the Gauguin room. The colors on his canvases I saw through the doorway glowed like the light was inside them. I made a right turn and stepped into a space surrounded by these colors with light in them and felt that awe again. The light in the colors does not translate well in photographs. I didn't know Gauguin paintings glowed. I looked close to see if I could find what made them glow. All I could see was he felt it and made it what he felt, using his own tricks of the eye to get there.