Highest Definition

I recently saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), by Peter Jackson, who shot the movie at 48 frames per second rather than the typical 24.

High Definition. Crystal Clear.  Focus so sharp, it cuts.

It seems that more and more, the public is wanting to view movies, television, and video in the highest definition possible.

We gain a lot by viewing things in HD: vibrancy, clarity, beauty.

But there is something in me that is bothered by this idea that cleaner and clearer is automatically better.

I want to know what it was like before eyeglasses were invented, when you had to do the best you could with the eyes you had.  How much ambiguity was in the world back then?

Our eyes are limited in the kind of information they can provide us.

But isn't that what makes us human? Limitations?

I question how far we should go to make our art transcend the human body it originates from.

When I go to a movie, I want to be enveloped in the story like I was there with the characters when it was shot.  I want to have a shared experience with the film.

If the film looks better than how I see things in the real world, there is a disconnect.

Is it possible for a picture to be too perfect, too slick, overproduced?

When I paint, sometimes I want to hide the brushstrokes.  To make it smooth.  Then I realize that if I don't want to see brushstrokes, I shouldn't be painting with a brush.

Our hands can only do so much with the tools they are given. 

But isn't that what makes us human?

Limitations?

Thoughts on Productivity

A telegram from Dorothy Parker to her editor, 1945

"I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew. When Natasha bites William she's saying only part of what she wants to say to him. She's saying, William! Wake up! Remember! But that gets lost in a haze of pain, his."

-- Donald Barthelme, "Jaws"

new, terrible obstacles seem unsurmountable 

when rising up

but then, after showing teeth, fall back 

and circle, distracted.

on days when i cannot paint am i still 

a painter?

on days when i do not make anything 

am i still one of the good ones

leaning imperceptibly into the green?

my identity as a maker grids everything, 

allows for the job,

the sadness. makes poverty bearable, 

though it still hurts.

everything hurts but not as much as we 

think it will. a little less.

or, if two things hurt, the relief of one, 

especially before relief was expected,

feels better than anything.

the gods which guide my happiness are 

carved from rock and far away, 

faceless walls of sediment shifting 

in their beds, drybrushed.

sleeping on the couch does not 

make it easier.

sometimes i think that because i have

not yet done all that i am capable of

i am nothing. this is the kind of shit that 

gets me into trouble. 

but you see where it comes from. if we are

makers above all (are we?)

and we do not make, or do not make

the best we can make, 

then all of our losses lose their reasons.

we want to feel like this is worth it. 

but that's only if you 

think of a loss as one half of a ratio, 

when really it's more like 

the animals we sleep with, 

who have no reasons for being born 

but still give us comfort and 

companionship in the night. we love them

for being with us.

we can love our losses in this way too.

i believe i am worth the same no matter 

what i do. a steady line. 

i learned that in a self-help book but it's true. 

there is more in what i paint than my life

as a painter and i pray for the day 

i lose track of my hands like i've always 

dreamed of. 

then i will be, not new to myself, but old 

like a god, like a huge forever iceberg in antarctica,

and i will navigate around myself like an 

off-course fishing boat, 

big men standing on the deck, looking up

and then, slowly, down.

Why Is It "Bad"?

Ralph Pugay, Liondix, Acrylic on panel, 12" x 16", 2010. www.ralphpugay.com

Why do we feel the need to call our paintings "bad", "naive", "hobbyist", "crafty"?  
Why can't we just let them be what they are going to be?  
Is it because we are insecure?  
Is it because we want to make sure everyone knows that we are self-aware?  
Does it legitimize the paintings?  
Does it make the paintings humble?  
Does it make the paintings pretentious?
When we make a humorous painting, is it automatically sorted into one of the categories in my first question?
Who does this sorting?
Why are we uncomfortable laughing at a painting?
Is it because it lowers the entire art form?
Is this a bad thing?
Is painting not supposed to make us feel those emotions?
Does a painting have to be witty or conceptually intriguing if it is also "bad"?
Can a strong concept make up for poor aesthetic choices?
Who is evaluating this balancing act?
Must we always tip the scale one way or the other?
What is the difference between painting and illustration?
Is an illustrative aesthetic "bad"?
Why do we have to put "bad" in quotation marks?
When will irony die?

Thoughts on Ambition

Pablo Picasso, Guernica (detail), 1937 / My old dog Cooper

i'm in my childhood bed and my feet are cold

there's a watercolor on my desk but it has too much color on the edges, it looks like it's coming apart, the yellow on the bottom falling off the edge in a flat sheet the color of dog piss

soup in a bowl on the floor is the same color, a slice of it cooling in the spoon

the walls are full, josh hartnett, george clooney, the guy from the o.c., oh alright i know his name, adam brody

mulder and clark gable in white shirts

a painting my mom made of me as a girl looking out the window with red light at my back

my face is blue, the curtain is white and slippery in my small hand

these days i feel like a child waiting for my life to begin

there are things you can't do as a child, you have to wait

i knew it wouldn't come easy but i thought it would come easier, time after school laying itself out like a quilt

for awhile i sat in the sun and worked on my tan, i felt stronger

"gathering my strength like a consumptive in the sun," like diane cluck says

preparing for something unknown that would require a whole warm body and the appearance of athleticism or at least 

health, emotional flexibility

endurance

now i'm a little brown and my breasts are two white triangles, which i like

but the sun is further away and i have to wear socks at night

once again i search out the heat like a snake

in parking lots, corners of rooms, small squares of sunlight, flickering

i'm jealous of people i know who are getting shows, good jobs, i'm happy for them but i feel so far from a world in which that is possible

this bed with the red sheets, red walls, yellow lips of a man from a cut-up catalog, dark green fleece and the copper folds of his face like the gleaming back of a horse

i make paintings almost every day and when i look at them later and see the gray against the pink in the drape of a blanket i feel a surge which is love for a thing that is mine and not mine

but how do you fill a life, especially one so sick with ambition

rising in my throat when i lay down

unemployment, a long half-sleep

although last time i went to the art institute i didn't feel the itch of what i haven't done

i let all those people each have their moment in my day

not like they really need more moments but it isn't a tally system is it

some of them did what they had to do and it's beautiful

here are two gold-colored bookends shaped like shells, i will bring them to my new apartment when i have one

pay my rent with newspaper clippings from my grandmother in colorado and the pieces of my bottom lip that i have bitten off

bringing tears to my eyes

i read that as a girl margaret atwood wanted to write the great canadian novel and then she did

sometimes i go a whole day without touching anyone, even the dog, because i am using my hands to fan my fire

isn't that what those great painter men did all their lives? was it lonely for them?

i think it feels like selfishness because it is selfishness

for me and them both

though what is selfishness and what is just keeping warm

i can have grace sometimes when i need to and i must call upon it now like so many of us

ruined pride keeps us bobbing at the surface

debt a black rock

what are my abilities and are they in me like diamonds or do i call upon them and have them come to me from some 

other place, the field or the street beside it?

a grocery store on the corner has a picture in the window of marilyn monroe, does that mean i am home

today i did not make a painting

does that i mean i will die tomorrow

i want us all to have success, the best kind and on our own terms

i want to love all the people who are better at everything than i am

if they are good enough to let me