the risk of seeing

“I don’t try to be prophetic, as I don’t sit down to write literature. It is simply this: a writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, ‘I don’t look like that.’ And Picasso replied, ‘You will.’ And he was right.” 

James Baldwin

where the artist comes in

a drawing by Rembrandt

[The artist] must show people more—more than they already see, and [she] must show them with so much human sympathy and understanding that they will recognize it as if they themselves had seen the beauty and the glory. Here is where the artist comes in.

Charles Hawthorne

Martin Shaw on the paintings

Here are some kind words from an articulate painter/story teller friend of mine:

Mark Horst carries a quiver full of painterly gifts. His startling work reveals wild pinpricks of the eternal, often in the subtlest of images. Make no mistake, the paintings sometimes hold our feet to the flame-a door between a collectively understood image and some new paint-spirit that comes hurtling through. Not always a comfortable experience.

That door is also a gateway between the tacit and the explicit-his sheer feel and technique is obvious, but there are other energies at work here too, some ancient condition of the soul.

Horst is one of the few new painters to hold the paradox of tradition and innovation within him- there is brilliance here.

MARTIN SHAW, author, teacher and painter.

thoughts on painting from Mike Kareken

Michael Kareken, "Auto Salvage Yard #6", 2012, 18" x 24"

I studied painting with Michael Kareken at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design over five years ago. From that distance, these are a few of the extremely helpful comments I remember him making and which often echo through my studio when I’m working.

1. When you’re up against an empty canvas, pick a color and start. “Don’t over think it.” When I was feeling anxious about starting a painting—this was so helpful.

2. “Cover the canvas as quickly as possible.” I remember MK saying this to us when I put down a few strokes and then started worrying about whether they were accurate. 

3. When mixing color, don’t go overboard. “If you need to use more than three colors (from the tube) to get where you’re going, start over.” This was so helpful to me

4. If you’re not sure where to go with the painting, “start another painting” just like it. That way you can try out the direction you’re contemplating. I found this to be one of the most enormously helpful and liberating habits in my painting practice.

5. Kareken said to me: “paint what you think looks good”. if you like a photo, what is it you like about it? Paint that.

Most of these comments relate to MK’s fundamental insight that painting is a relational practice. You can’t paint the painting in your head—get paint on the canvas. A mark can’t be perfect outside the context of all the other marks on canvas. A color can’t be right or wrong in the absence of other colors so don’t fuss.

I think the other basic insight here is that painting is a process and that you need to eliminate—ruthlessly—any thoughts or habits that get in the way of keeping the process moving. There’s nothing precious about the painting itself and you could paint it again and push it in another direction or just start over.

For me, this was great teaching.

Michael Kareken, "Suspension", 2012, Ink, 30" x 36"

some quiet paintings

"I.B. looking in" 14x18" oil on canvas

In November I finished a group of smaller paintings. I wanted them to be small and intimate, to have a quietness. So, at least at the beginning, the colors were pretty calm and the edges pretty soft--sort of a modernist reference to Vermeer. I had to use smaller brushes then I have for a long time—so that was good. I had to paint slowly and for some reason I didn't get tired of the work--which sometimes happens to me. For the first time I had paintings framed. I wanted to shelter the image, to protect it's solitude. I notice that as I painted the colors got stronger and the edges harder, as if I was reverting to some kind of painterly habit.

"I.B. looking out" 14 x 18" oil on canvas.

I notice that as I painted the colors got stronger and the edges harder, as if I was reverting to some kind of painterly habit.

"I.B. with avocados" 14 x 18" oil on canvas.

alive...

Nothing that’s alive holds still. Life is in motion and our seeing is always fragmented, never complete.

I want to paint life the way I see it.  My goal as a painter is not to “freeze” a moment. I want to bring life and breath into an image. For me, a good painting keeps opening up. It involves the viewer by letting the eyes do some of the work.

Painting is something I do with my body, and it shows. I paint with energy and I don’t try to hide that. You can see how the brush moves and how the paint was put on and scraped off. Painting, like life, is messy.

I usually paint the human body. I find the human form both irresistible and impossible to paint. And so every day I struggle to respond to its exuberant wild skittishness, its burden of grief and praise, its extravagant, quivering life.

the purpose of art--an excerpt from JFK's words about R. Frost

excerpted from a speech by President John F. Kennedy honoring the late poet Robert Frost.

A nation reveals itself not only by the men (sic) it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers …

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation's greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us …

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses, for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, "a lover's quarrel with the world." In pursuing his perceptions of reality he must often sail against the currents of his time …

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, make them aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him …

In free society art is not a weapon, and it does not belong to the sphere of polemics and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But in a democratic society the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist, is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation …

I look forward to a great future for America—a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral strength, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.

And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world, not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.

And I look forward to a world which will be safe, not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.

from sadness to plenitude

"I looked down no. 1" 36" x 24" oil on canvas. 2012

In 1971, Pablo Neruda spoke to the Paris Review: "My poetry has passed through the same stages as my life; from a solitary childhood and an adolescence cornered in distant, isolated countries, I set out to make myself a part of the great human multitude. My life matured, and that is all. It was in the style of the last century for poets to be tormented melancholiacs. But there can be poets who know life, who know its problems, and who survive by crossing through the currents. And who pass through sadness to plenitude."

I would like my art to engage the challenges of life and to cross through its currents, but I think this must happen naturally and in stages, the way our lives grow and mature.

interesting review of a recent show

Here's a well written review of my recent show up in Santa Fe:
http://santafizz.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/serial-killer/

"Art of Man" interview

Firehouse Press and its illustrious editor E. Gibbons has included a number of my paintings and an extended interview in its most recent volume of "Art of Man." You can order a copy here and if you enter code NXY3Y88L you get 15% off your purchase. Order away!