(no title)

Darkthrone
23.5" x 12"
oil on wood, 2010

A slow season in Top 100 world, it's summer, there's a world cup going on, there's my job at the gallery. Unexpectedly a new exhibition was scheduled when it should have been the slow season. Too busy, can't even watch the world cup games because they are played at times when I have to work. I've seen just a few minutes here and there, 15 minutes Brazil, 10 minutes Japan, I didn't see Portugal at all. I got up early this morning to see if the New Zealand team would perform the haka (see April post: Sports and Music) but they didn't. Doom and gloom all over. Haven't been in my studio much, hardly made any Top 10s, hardly found any new music to listen to. To catch up on making a painting for music that already secured a Top 100 2010 spot, I painted this Darkthrone. Last year I used the same image (from a photo by Peter Beste) but painted the two Darkthrone members, Fenriz and Nocturno Culto separate. My composition compared to Peter Beste's is cropped and that's my favorite part of it. I don't know why I did it (I never crop my figures) but I like it. I tell my students that if you work on a painting or drawing and a crazy impulsive idea comes to your mind, to never reject that idea but to explore it. That idea is your unconscious telling you how to make the work worthwhile. I also tell my students that they shouldn't think too much about what they are doing. Thinking about a crazy impulsive idea for sure ends into a rejection of it. I proudly tell them that this is probably the only class they will encounter in college in which the teacher discourages thinking. Descartes turned inside out, "I wish I was a mole in the ground, so I could root that mountain down".