Onion Netting #2

Eagle Creek

Onion Netting

5 days of Sediment

Concrete

The Great Moth, on its last legs... makes a final effort to survive.
The sun is setting, let our thoughts be with this noble creature as it toughs out the night.
Or perhaps it will awake from its slumber and live strong to fight again.
Today was a warm one. Perhaps it is nocturnal.
Enlarge the photo by clicking it to See the Fur on this Giant Moth.

Subterranian

My brother Joel has made some awsome videos. You can view them on You tube.
Check them out at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geT8Btib6IM

Gell Crates No. 1 & No. 2

Acrylic on plywood board
5"x5"

The strawberry "punnets" paintings have taken a turn towards uncertainty. I couldn't go on painting them as I was. I changed what I was doing. SO I made them smaller. In these paintings I attempted to conlfate the space around the crate with the structure of the crate. When I was making them I thought about building a puzzle. I also wanted them to appear very simple, like a diagram, that undoes itself.

Blind no.2

Acrylic on Board
6"x6.5"

This is another blind at the nursing home painted from memory. The rooms are all the same in terms of layout, except for the things that people bring into them. Today this room was full of the residents, nick nacks. After the residents pass away the rooms get cleaned out, and made new for the next resident to move in.

Working

At work...

Revisit with Spectral Spots

Charcoal on Paper

This drawing was made one year ago. I thought it was finished, but I was wrong. Recently I unrolled it from the strorage tube and proped it against the wall. I left the room, and returned to find these spectral dots, or rainbows on the drawing. The rainbow dots made me excited, because for several weeks I have been wondering why I have been making works in black and white. I have been thinking that there is color in them and that I am anticapating its presence. So that the lack of color leads to a feeling of anticapation. Which is exactly what happened. Not only was there color but it was in the sturcture of a spectrum, white light separated by a prisim, in this case the window, into the primary colors of light. Wikipedia describes it more physically.

"Dispersive prisms are used to break up light into its constituent spectral colours because the refractive index depends on frequency; the white light entering the prism is a mixture of different frequencies, each of which gets bent slightly differently. Blue light is slowed down more than red light and will therefore be bent more than red light."-wikipedia

Blind

I started working at the Nursing home, affectionately known as "The Home". It is like entering another dimension. I go to work at 2:00 and work untill 11:00. I have made many friends, both with residents and co-workers. In the "Home" there is an alarmingly compressed sense of joy and dispair. Habits, and ordinary ritual progress monotonously so, as if it is the only hope to maintain ones history. An atempt at maintaing ability. Behaviors, and personalities are magnified. When I walk into some ones room it is as if there entire being which they have developed over the years is injected into every volume of that space. What I once considered to be small tasks become points of intense focus and determination. The environment is extremely psycologically potent. I am going to attempt to write about my experiences there, as a way to decompress and remember. My experience at the "Home" is in service to the experience of others, which merits contemplation. Because the life experience of the residents is so much vastly greater than my own. My off time is mostly spent recovering. It is not possible to paint while recovering. I don't expect to. However I have made one painting in the past couple weeks called Blind. Actually it was painted in one day, but the idea for painting was pondered for several weeks. The Vertical blinds are from the Home, and common in many Hospitals. I find the pressure between the inside and outside of the "Home" to be very strong, psychologically. Many people want to go home, and are waiting to go home, but feel stuck. In the painting I wanted there to be a question as to whether the viewer is inside looking out, or outside looking in. So that there is an occilation between locations, which is what is happening in the residents head.

Piano.No1

Acrylic on Plexi
14"x13.75"

Succulent.No.1

Acrylic on Board
4"x4"

In & out

Acrylic on Plexiglass
14"x13.75"

I painted this looking through the living room window when the light inside the house was equal to the light outside the house.
The window compresses all the values together while leaving small points of dark, and light.

XYZ.no.1

Acrylic on Board
4"x4"
NFS

This last year an art critic/Historian named James Elkins lectured as a guest speaker at the U of O. THere were many dissapointed students and teacers for various reasons which have faded away. A year later I came across his acclaimed books in the magnificent Powells bookstore. I picked one up called "What Painting is". His writing is accessable and so are his insights. The premis of the book is to speak about painting throught the language of alchemy the psuedo science. For about a year I have considered painting to have alchemical qualities and am excited that an art historian would approach painting throgh the eyes of an alchemist. So it is apropriate that Mr. Elkins is not what he seemed.

"Water and Stones the unpromising ingredients of two very different edeavors...In Alchemy, the Stone (with a capital S) is the ultimate goal, and one of the purposes of alchemy is to turn something as liquid as water into a substance as firm and unmeltable as stone. As in painting, the means are liquid and the ends are solid. And as in painting, most of Alchemy does not have to do with pure water or pure stone, but mixtures of the two."
(James Elkins)

Yamhill.no.1

Acrylic on Plexiglass
14x13.75
NFS

A painting of The new studio on Yamhill! I need to give a shout out to Taggart and Jenny for so kindly letting me paint in their sun room for the winter. Thankyou. When winter came last year I exclusivley turned to drawing with charcoal on paper. This winter agian I have done away with color. It is hard to say for sure if this is becuase of the season (seceretly I think it is). During the winter time I make reductive decisions. Spaces that I paint are internal ones. Naturally it is a time to hibernate. However this does not mean it is a time to be lazy. There is a lot of work to be done. Mostly with trimming away excess habits, and patterns and laying the foundation for a new path. For me Winter is the time for building a foundation. Ideally only traces from the last series of paintings should linger. Upon reflection during fall I became lost, and confused enough about painting that I can finally continue again with a new project.
I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand. (chinese proverb)

Alberta ParkNo.1

10"x15"
Charcoal

I go to Alberta park to run. It is roughly two city blocks long by one city block wide. The trail around it is made of bark chips which is soft to the foot. Instead of running there today I brought my charcoal and paints. There are some giant trees there which are not only good for drawing but also for running under. In the summer they keep out the sun, and in the winter they keep out the rain. Recently we had a wind storm. On that day, about a week ago I decided not to go running there because I didn't want to get hit by a falling limb. Sure enough, when I went there today there were giant limbs all over the ground. Dogs were sniffing them, maybe they were smelling squirl tracks.

Split in Two

Ball point pen on Scrap Paper
2"x2"
NFS
Most of the time my doodles end up forgotten. However after finding these three I thought that they represented, in a round about way, the biological process of Mitosis. To make these drawing I start out with one simple shape and keep building slightly different shapes together until a whole is formed. It was by pure luck that the series shows a shape splitting in two. I make simple drawing like this before I fall asleep or while I am at work during slow periods. I like watching them grow because their final form appears as a surprise to me. In this sense the process is akin automatic writing.

Double Tree

Water Color
4"x4"


I painted this painting in forest park, an amazing place where I go to as frequently as possible. There are two simular trees because I was thinking about how the patterning of the branches seemed so similar but chaotic. To simplify painting it on paper I just decided to literally paint the tree twice to start a pattern. I am also interested in copies, and reproduction, both mechanical, and sexual. Miranda says "The reason men make art is so that they can reproduce"...
Painting and copies have an interesting relationship. There are strong associations with painting being original and or unique...In a different vein, copying and mimicry is a very good way to learn, which is how many people learn to make paintings. Something to consider.

Kitchen

Guache
8"x11"

To purchase email collinjanke@hotmail.com

I am reading a book called the "Daily Practice of Painting" writings between 1962-1993 by Gerhard Ricther
He says a lot of paradoxical statements which has the effect of describing contemporary painting very specifically.

He is in an interveiw and is asked:
"Do you take the view that art and painting are becoming superfluous, because what is needed now is direct social and political involvement? Some artists have regarded this as sufficient reason to throw away thier brushes.
Certainly not. Eating doesn't become unimportant, making love doesn't become unimportant. All children paint, all Lunatics paint, for me there is no future in giving that up. Not becuase I am sick, or becuase I want to make money at it-painting has become the thing that makes my life possible."

-Gerhard Richter