One way of looking at it. It is now thirteen years since I wrote and self-published “Persistence.” Writing your story is a beautiful exercise in laundered reminiscence, willful indulgence and self-justification. That was fun, and now I want to take one last look before I disappear off stage.

The book did its job. I printed and sold around 100 copies which went out into the world and was passed around. I still get the occasional query. I know that trying to get it commercially published would be a depressing failure and I didn’t want to go through all that. I wanted my story, which is about a moderate career in art to get out into the world, perhaps that would also affect or give pause to those contemplating this strange business as a profession.

In 1993 I was hopeful that my life would change for the better but it didn’t. I am still struggling financially but keeping my head above water. Nancy and I were able to travel somewhat and that was a joy. Now that I am in the seventies (gag) I am beset with the demons of older age, medical problems of a serious survivable nature. But I am still able to go to the studio every day, my creative optimism is not in arrears in all, not a bad deal.

In 1996, I hit a stride wherein a whole bunch of terrific images that were short, short stories in vernacular, urban settings came out. I was without representation at the time and they were happening so fast I made them relatively small (18” x 26” etc.) and sold them over the Internet but didn’t make much money but it was a terrific run that lasted a couple of years. Then the artist contrariness set in and I went on to whole other ideas: an art deco cat series, a series about lawyers, flowers, cacti and other mature images including clouds and earth paintings. Nature painting is truly challenging and great fun. My friend, Jim Doolin from LA, made some sensational paintings of the desert. I like the works of Maynard Dixon and Ed Mell of Arizona. I feel they have conquered the great earth-sky conundrum in spectacular ways. What nature painting did for me, as did all the other diversions along the way accomplished, was to keep my curiosity alive and my seething cauldrons of creativity (!) boiling. I am also helped by the reality that by now I had no public artistic record to defend or bother with. I was alone and lonely and free.

I realize that much of the life of the artist is maintaining optimism. The outer world wants security and repetition and predictability. In order to stay alive you have to not only change but also kick over the traces and do something outlandish once in a while to clear the pipes and keep yourself fresh. You keep the naïve view of a child while living the life of crusty old fart. So, I read a lot, take trips around the U.S.A. or Europe when it’s affordable. I went back to the piano and took lessons, started my own band (Ain’t Misbehavin’ Jazz Band) that played in local bars and retirement homes. That was an interesting diversion; art is a solo act but music is almost always collaborative business so you have to sublimate your ego and work with others to make it happen. Much, much different than painting.

I also noticed that my short, short story images were becoming more surreal. Perhaps that was a natural progression or evolution or simple boredom with dealing with the obvious, wanting to hide more material in the image. Trouble with being surreal is that just about anything goes. You have to make sure there is some coherence that keeps you out of just “being wacky for wacky” sake.

When you think about it, much of the artist profession is ”Alice in Wonderland”.  You think I am kidding.  There is no manual for this business and I am not crazy enough to write one.  It is similar to most professions in that what you hear on the outside is delectable propaganda.  You never get the truth about a job until you are too far into it to easily back out.  Perhaps that is the way of life.  If people knew what was ahead they would run screaming in another direction.  I don’t think the art dodge is more vicious than any other human endeavor (well…maybe being on a faculty), it has more to do to the fundamental underpinnings of art itself: being relatively incomprehensible.  No one ever has a total take on it.  We all have our little bit of info and that’s it.  When I started I thought all the heavyweights writing and talking appeared to know something.  They didn’t then and seldom do now.  Art is like grabbing a greased pig in the dark.  Also, everyone gets co-opted in their own particular way, language is almost an impossible translator of visual phenomenon, money is not a measurement of worth but you hear it used all the time.

Aesthetic experiences are ephemeral, not logical.  The result is that people wind up throwing opinions around and hoping something sticks to the wall.  Art people want to have an impact so they concoct gossip, innuendo, fantasies they peddle as fact. The art world always needs action, otherwise it shrivels and dies.  Ergo, you have this vast furball of misdirection, lies and marketing ploys which besides adding to the confusion creates a world where just about anything goes.

Of course, as a newby I bought into this whole bag of snakes like every other fool before me until I was eventually able to catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain and being thinking for myself.  I would hope that would happen to most every player in the game eventually.  Once you get beyond the lies you feel more confident about your own values and ideas (which is why you most likely got in this business in the first place).  You survive ignorance and dependency and ultimately see the potential of art as a field wherein you can explore and project yourself, you can test what are the dimensions of your talent, you can be a part of the creative world.  Now that is something!

Now that you are all independent, let me make a short list of things to consider:

l. Your character.  Are you really up to this? Can you spend years alone in a studio without compliments or reinforcement?  Can you divide up family and financial considerations?  Can you deal with the loneliness?  It is a long list that gets way past just being able to “paint”.

2, Your Idea.  Do you go with au currant and get the immediate support and feel good or spend years developing yourself (it took me about fourteen years) for the long haul?  What happens when you crash with what you started or some other hotshot steals or comes up with your idea?  Hmm.

3. Creativity.  Now that you are living with creativity instead of playing with it, things change.  You are bubbling up ideas 24 hours a day.  Can you catch and edit those ideas as they fly by your mind?  How do you deal with a block or a dry spell?  Time for the shrink.

4. The marketplace.  A critical place.  It is absolutely important that one understands the basic nature of business itself, which about people who are strangers forming temporary partnerships to exploit each other over something either knows little about.  It is a mixture of greed and fear.  Ethics seldom show their civics class head.  Expediency rules.  Your character becomes your fate as the Greeks would say.  Shy people seldom do well. 

So I say all these things, and I mean well but my experience is that reality never slowed anybody down.

Go ahead.  That’s what I did.

Getting back to my own journey, my first desire was just being able to do it.  Then I wanted to do it well. Then came the first corruption, which was the desire to do it well and be noticed for doing it.  That was followed by the desire for people to support me in this crazy endeavor.  So on and on it went and ultimately, I got a part of it.  Everybody gets a part of it but we all want more.  You want you long, long efforts in that white box to mean something to somebody else, it is as if you want a job being yourself and have some stranger pay you for it.  It always doesn’t work out that way.

A big career comes with big prices.  You deal with a scummier class of people.  You are tempted to move beyond your own value system.  Mr. Faust becomes your friend.  You discover that there are at least two simultaneous games going on, the inner game (yourself) and the outer game (the career etc.). The outer game is all about the attainments of success, fame, money and all that.  Of course, we all need money to support ourselves , so justifying a rationale to get it appears quite rational.  The inner life is very damn good but seldom is appreciated.  It is also hard to define but you when you have it.  It is worth protecting.  I think it was Garabedian who once told me “keep the good stuff to yourself”.

So in order to function in art you are stuck with something like:  going out and kicking ass and then coming home and meditating about it?  Everyone has to work this one out

I have been thinking about what I have gotten out of a forty year career in art, in painting, in concocting images.  It has been quite a ride.  Just about everything that could happen has happened (save great fame).  Actually it has been a quite rich affair.  I have met some magnificent people along the way, formed friendships of a lifetime.  I have had heady moments of large satisfaction whereby a collector of mine has come up or related to me in some way how much an image of mine has meant to him and his family.  Ultimately I think you are in the human business as much as the art business.  Art isn’t visual musak if you make it powerful and strong and interesting.  By doing it or pursuing it you feel that you are close to an elemental, non-specific life force that is impossible to describe.

There is something, I wouldn’t necessarily call it good, about striving with minimal success.  Or maybe no success!  You learn a hell of a lot in the struggle with yourself, about life, that give you a lot.  Success doesn’t teach you much other than you want more of it.  You also have a passport to life and its people.  It isn’t a job that bores you to death.  You don’t have bad bosses.  You get to do interesting things every day.  It is a profession which makes existence interesting and varied.  It also gets better as you get older, your mind gets sharper and you can see connections you never conceived of when you were a whippersnapper.  Artists don’t retire, we grasp for each moment to keep on doing this because it is so much fun.

That , is no BS. I know of two strong concepts that have kept me going through the good and bad times.  I think you have to have a core of something like this to survive, and these are mine:  (1) I have this.      desire to know what an image or idea I think of would look in reality.  It is an obsession.  So you pursue it, you never get it right so you wrestle with it, you beat it up, you move it around until you get something you can live with.  Years later I will look at one of these things and say to myself, ”I did that?”  For me the action is making these  works in the private world of the white box (actually , the cluttered white box).  After a day of thrashing at an image I sit in my chair for hours thinking about it.  After a while, thinking and looking takes up more time than painting.  It is all about decisions, and it is private and secluded territory, and I go home quite weary but happy.  In bed that night I think about how I am going to start the next day, click on the mind and click off the light and let my head work it out while I sleep.

(2) I am pulled by a very strong wish to see what I am capable of.  I have heard that the desire to prove competence is a basic human desire.  I have tried and succeeded to some level in other areas like teaching, aviation, music, maybe a little wordslinging  but nothing drives me as much as to see what I am capable in this strange profession.  You have to spend all your energy to move yourself out into outer space where you can actually see what you can do.  My conclusion now is that I am pretty good at it, better than most but not as good as I originally thought!  But it is also a judgment that I face every day so what I think today might not be relevant tomorrow.

I also try to make a painting be the best that I can do.  I used to destroy a lot (40% or so) but now it is less as I get better.  I find working up to my limitations feels right for me, it also allows me to rebuff criticism if someone doesn’t like what I have done.  I’ve done the best that I am capable of, that’s it Somebody doesn’t like it, they can make their own painting

At this stage I also have a whole pile of paintings on hand which one could call an achievement, perhaps it is.  I don’t know.  I am focused on the one I am doing right now and that is the achievement I am looking at.  So I guess it is all a process, you are sailing down this river, going through the rapids, looking around the bends, having a terrific time paddling your little boat, somebody on the shore sees you go by and you wave and on you go until you disappear.

Finally, I would like to say that it is virtually impossible to do this gig just by yourself.  Along the way there have been outstanding who have assisted me in so many various ways.  Some teachers, a few dealers a lot of friends, one therapist, a couple of artists, some strangers but particularly, one very special person.  The one who has been there for so long helping, assisting, giving unstinting support and love is my partner in life, Nancy.  She is my wife, she is one of the most magnificent people I have been blessed to be with.  There is no words or images that adequately express my gratitude and love for this rare and extraordinary woman who is such a large part of my existence.

So that’s a recap of my story.  Thirteen ;years of pretty good stuff.  I have a fantasy of doing a final dog and pony and looking out at the fresh faces in the audience and wondering how truthful I would be about this profession.  I don’t know if I would recommend it to anyone unless they were very tough and very motivated.  I don’t know if my story is relevant to anybody starting out but I have felt a need to set it out because as I said way back at the beginning, heretofore I haven’t seen a story about the art profession that gets anywhere near what it is.

I don’t even know that the act of oil painting will survive but there are still catalogs of art materials from big stores so some people are doing it for now.  Other media are coming along at terrific speeds that appear to make it redundant.  Digital and Photoshop are moving into where painting has gone before.  The ability to change and modify images totally is now within computer grasp and you don’t have the smell or the logistics  to deal with. But , you also lose the romance of ze paint!

All I know is what I have experienced or read about.  I don’t understand art in large global or unified field theory terms.  I couldn’t be on a panel whipping out big theories.  I couldn’t write a screed about what it all means either.  I set a course a long time ago to get into the intensity of myself and see what would happen and that story is what I have to tell.  As far as art goes, I have learned that we have a responsibility to make the best work we are capable of, to challenge ourselves and our time, to give of and share our vision.  Art styles and ;movements are for those who have no ideas themselves.  What civilization needs from art is a continuing and changing vision of life that is curious and perceptive, one that gives us pause to reflect, to enjoy the act of reinventing  and learning what life has to give.

That is the fun of art and that is why it is worth doing.

……this is what was on the typewriter:

"With all this illness around me, I am having problems. One is the weakness itself which precludes me from doing much work (about five to ten minutes at a time), then what it implies, that this is the end of the road."