studio index: It's a good day for painters/it's a good day to be in the studio painting, so pardon the brevity of this post...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

It's a good day for painters/it's a good day to be in the studio painting, so pardon the brevity of this post...

The MacArthur Foundation gave two of its awards to painters this year...Mark Bradford (yes, I consider him a painter) and Rackstraw Downes.

I am particularly thrilled about Mark Bradford; I saw his work in person a couple of years ago, and I was blown away, undeniably. I actually can't think of a contemporay artist whose work has so impacted me physically and conceptually. He has been hugely important to my thinking on the studio ever since.

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Notes

Within an ephemeral present, we return through memory to things, places, and events in the past in order to find purpose and direction in our lives. Meaningful time is elliptical time.
Vigen Guroian

I have concluded that the whole misfortune of men comes from a single thing, and that is their inability to remain at rest in a room.

Blaise Pascal

May your imagination know the grace of perfect danger.

John O'Donohue

The amount of life I can put through my eyes is the amount I can see.

Ivan Albright

When I painted a chair recently, I noticed that I put the paint on indifferently, smoothly but without particular attention. The results were satisfactory but not in any sense beautiful. Does the attention in itself with which paint is applied in art actually change the effect of the paint? Does the kind of consciousness with which we act determine the quality of our actions? It would follow, if this were true that the higher the degree of consciousness, the higher the quality of art. I think it likely. Training in art is, then, a demand that students increase the consciousness with which they employ techniques that are, in themselves, ordinary.

Anne Truitt, Daybook

It was suggested to me that I would want to preface this reading tonight with a short statement about my philosophy of writing. Of course I don't want to do anything of the kind. My approach to literary problems is very much like the one Dr. Johnson's blind housekeeper used when she poured tea for him. She put her finger inside the cup.

Flannery O'Connor