The Shape-Making Impulse

yellow-porch.jpg!Blog
Yellow Porch, Richard Diebenkorn

Today’s post is from the me with my head under the hood. Here are a few thoughts about what happens in the making and the molding. Sometimes that part of the process takes precedence, when it is helpful to step back a bit to see if you can see a larger arc, a better sense of where you’ve been and where you seem to be heading. These three quotes speak to much of what I’ve been mulling over lately.

Element 1:
This list was found in the papers of Richard Diebenkorn after his death in 1993. (Spelling and capitalization are left untouched.)

Notes to myself on beginning a painting

1. attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued — except as a stimulus for further moves.
3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.
4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
5. Dont “discover” a subject — of any kind.
6. Somehow don’t be bored — but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
6. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
7. Keep thinking about Polyanna.
8. Tolerate chaos.
9. Be careful only in a perverse way.

Element 2:
The great question now is how to preserve and even honor the age-old stability of painting without falling into the trap of a frozen academicism. Richard Diebenkorn, in his figure and landscape paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, suggests a provocative balance, one worth reinvestigating. The bottom line is that each artist must now begin pretty much from scratch, obliged to develop both a personal conservatism and a personal radicalism. This is the painter’s predicament.

–Jed Perl

Element 3:
What matters is the shape-making impulse, the emergence and convergence of an excitement into a wholeness.

–Seamus Heaney

studio

8 Replies to “The Shape-Making Impulse”

  1. Thank you for these wonderful posts…love this blog 🙂

  2. I feel in tune with what you evoke. That shape-making impulse is a compelling one. Today, after tense finishing and mounting, preparing for tomorrow’s lunch and visiting photographer, I was ready – even desperate for any shape making. A definite start point but with no clear direction – just determination.
    The shape making was successful, even tho’ I shall have to start again once tomorrow’s lunch is over. The shape is right, but it has yet to find its context.

    1. deborahbarlow says:

      Thank you Olga for sharing your adventures in shape making…

    2. – I was ready – even desperate for any shape making.

      Me too, after a day of intellectual slogging and piled-up laundry. Finally an image that seems to cohere, to congeal. How harrowing to slog and thrash! How healing for an image to swim itself up toward the light.

  3. I love the list in Element 1.

    1. deborahbarlow says:

      Richard Diebenkorn is larger than life for a lot of artists. I’m so glad you connected with it too. Thanks Di for your comment.

  4. Ann Dibble Call says:

    I’m not there, yet; but even with the written word, the shape-making principles can apply. How serendipitous!

  5. Your studio picture brings a warm smile, Deborah… and all three of your elements are quite resonant. Diebenkorn works seen at the Phillips last month left renewed inspiration for doing the work, how freshness can carry forward. Heaney’s quote is lovely!

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