Today's Painting

Christian Marclay
22" x 7", oil on wood, 2014

Today's painting features a do-over (actually a continuation) of a November 7th painting portraying the avant-garde artist Christian Marclay. For every musician featured in the top 100 an illustration is now done, and the time has come to revisit those paintings that are a part of this year's series of one-hundred that are not particularly to my likings (a painting, even though it exists on line on this podium, like Marclay's portrait, isn't considered finished until the exhibition takes place showing all hundred).  All finished paintings will be shown at the the Top 100 Archives Gallery in Fort Myers (home soil) in early March . Since Marclay is closer than any other individual musician in the list (be it with a few degrees of separation—courtesy of Mr. Jade Dellinger, director of the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery) I felt obliged to bring the portrait of Marclay to a state I'd be comfortable with.

The recent "Today's painting" string I will keep going as long as I physically can. To be in the studio for many hours several days straight has been a blessing. Painting has taken precedence over thought, and within this process creativity has been allowed free reign. Paintings are good, in my opinion, when, within the process, surprises are happening that seem to appear out of nowhere, visual discoveries are made that could never have been thought up without a hands on proponent, that are beyond easy interpretation. For this to happen one needs to be alone behind the easel for an extended period of time. Like an experience on drugs, this is a different state of consciousness, that you can't explain but can recognize. In this frame bad paintings don't even exist anymore, and 'bad' you immediately recognize as being superficial. It is not so much good and bad, on which evaluations are based, but real and superficial. Within an hour the 'bad' painting of Christian Marclay was transformed into a 'good' painting. The surprise in it, admittedly, was somewhat premeditated, inspired by seeing an image, an appropriated selfie by Miami artist Marilyn Rondon.