German reunification twenty years later

I remember following the news for almost four weeks with great intensity as East Germans were successfully escaping to the west and when the Brandenburg Tor opened on September 11, 1989, it signaled the end of a divided Germany. I wanted to fly to Berlin, taking my son with me and for us to be part of the history in the making. However Armont was only one year, a month, and three days old at the time when the fall of the Berlin Wall was marked officially down on November 9, 1989. To personally mark the event, I started a 36 x 36 inch painting, which for me represents my own beginning as an artist, even though it would take another ten years before I would pick up my brushes again, and seriously returned to the profession of painting.

The Berlin Wall – Section 276, January 17, 1990

Multi-Medium on canvas, 36 x 36 inches (91.44 x 91.44 cm)

The abstract painting noting the fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the few canvases that were created spontaneously, reaching for whatever paints and art materials I had on hand. Using acrylic house paint, model craft spray paint, children’s crayons and of course oil paint, I went at the canvas as if lead by a mysterious hand guiding me through the various stages and the multiple layers until it was completed. In the end The Berlin Wall – Section 276 also represents what I encountered in 1974, when standing before the wall for the first time.

I grew up in the shadows of the Berlin Wall as construction started August 13, 1961 while living in Southern Germany, attending a private boarding school until my return to Californian the following year. I found myself in Berlin nine years later attending the HFBK as a guest and once more in 1974, when I decided to take a train through East Germany rather than flying to Berlin.

 My East German passport stamps

The train ride took several hours, stopping at most towns along the way. During our trip into the DDR, our train was boarded by East German soldiers with submachine weaponry and remained posted at each end of the compartment until we reached the West Berlin border. We were also treated to East German propaganda, handed out by the DDR Cultural Ministry personnel upon our first stop after entering East Germany. The experience is one I am grateful for, despite the lapses in memory which is also weak on a number of other points, especially the details of what the landscaped looked like, other than empty.

I still have a number of those booklets and smaller pamphlets that were handed out that day. They are in some box that have not been opened since they were packed when I moved out of my San Francisco apartment to get married some twenty-two years ago. I did find my out-of-date passport, turning to the page the East German border control stamped my arrival, departure into their land. With the subsequent arrival and departure stamps on the same page a few days later, as I returned to the West the same way I had left, with a long train ride though East Germany.

The Berlin Wall remained closed until September 11, 1989, six months later on March 10, 1990 Germany reunification took place.

Postscript:

At Four Seasons in a Life you can see photographs of the remaining Berlin Wall and it's refurbishing by the original 86 international artists in time for the celebration to mark twenty years since its downfall.

A discovery turns into an artistic vision

Over a period of three years I have photographed the telephone poles in the city of Berkeley, California, because over time fliers of advertisements are transformed into remnants of paper tidbits to which I am drawn because of their abstract nature.


As new fliers are stapled to the poles, old ones are torn off, leaving behind fragments held in place by which they were fastened. It is these snippets of randomness that have evolved from just being a captured photographic image, by becoming an artistic vision, a concept that is replicated on canvas or on a wooden pallet.

The eye that sees you, 2006

By not only gathering photographic evidence but also actual source material from telephone poles and from billboards, especially walls that were plastered with posters; larger pieces of art could now considered possible.

HOWL, 2008
Multi-Medium on canvas, 36 x 36 inches (91.44 x 91.44 cm)

The transitional period from working with just representational photographs to actually attempting a painting or a collage painting occurred in stages that continued for almost four years, beginning with HOWL, a painting which took 2½ years to complete.


Just before HOWLwas finished, another canvas was started, using materials torn from billboards in Berkeley and Emeryville and applied in a more graphic design application, rather then using the embodiment approach as with Orderly Confusion.

Beauty Re-defined, 2008
Multi-Medium on canvas, 24 x 24 inches (60.96 x 60.96 cm)


The key distinction between the first two paintings lies in the usage of the collage material as being the initial surface upon which the painting is build and the word ‘BEAUTY’ is spray painted on. In comparison to HOWL, the illusion of torn materials were first painted, then newsprint was adhered to, only to be torn off, before adding the local newspaper covers simulating posters.


Before HOWL was considered completed, the first four lines from Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem Howl were added, bringing together the social implications of the newspaper image and purpose of the painting to which it had evolved into. Though Beauty Re-defined was also finished with a handwritten commentary, it however reflects graffiti by the hand of a stranger.

Orderly Confusion, 2008
Multi-Medium on canvas, 10 x 10 inches (25.40 x 25.40 cm)

The smallest of the painting in this genre series also represents the truest forms of embodiment textural qualities of the telephone poles one finds in Berkeley. In order to achieve true embodiment and visual authenticity, an integral part of this collage painting, actual pieces of ephemeral material were collected from telephone poles I had photographed, along with various rusted and almost new staples and then reassembled in a design of my choosing. Paying careful attention to duplicating reality, any painterly evidence had been carefully disguised as not to draw immediate attention to it.

So far each piece of art has had its own individual approach, interpreting how to define what had been seen and photographed and Pangaea is no different, despite its much cleaner and highly refined graphic layout.

Pangaea
Multi-Medium on wooden pallet, 24 x 36 inches (60.96 x 91.44 cm)


The materials used came from telephone poles, billboards, and a large number of posters that had been plastered on walls at a number of different construction sites and were carefully torn from these locations with the intent of using only specific pieces of interest from the actual posters.

Since no other materials other than the collected pieces of papers had being used, careful attention was being paid to the interaction of each piece and its overall placement in the composition as a whole. Making sure that visual movement and points of key interest was given with no more and no less of attention then the piece next to it, even though one item by far outshined all others and remains the main focal point in the composition.

There are plans for a few more collage paintings, especially one very large endeavor, measuring 4 x 6 feet (121.92x182.88 cm) in size and utilizing source material and paint.

The Artist Journal

Symphony Nr. 1 — Red Dawn, 2008 O/C

July 22, 2007 was the day I started painting again after a five-year absence. It was on my daughter’s sixteenth surprise birthday party that I pulled out a 36 x 36 x 1½ inch canvas which previously had been given five coats of gesso, was now finally being covered with various shades of acrylic crimson including a variety of other rich and deep yellows. The painting would later be finished in multiple layers oil paint that was thinned down with Winsor & Newton’s ‘Liquin’ in order to produce a smooth glass like surface.

After a couple of weeks the painting would be named ‘Symphony Number One—Red Dawn’ and this would be followed by two more paintings of the same size.

Symphony Nr. 2 — The Nocturnal Suite, 2008 MM-O/C

Two weeks later after having started ‘Red Dawn’, I began —what I consider now to be the most important tool in my arsenal of paints and brushes—a journal.

The next nineteen months these journal entries would not only reflect the progress of a painting, its technical challenges or ideas for others but most important of all, I began writing about creative issues and questioning what was my purpose for creating art in the first place, other than an internal urge to do so. Ultimately this then lead into my developing a personal mythology, including a set of symbols imbedding through the use of materials that then would begin to define my work, a process that still continues to this very day.

The journal does more than just record the events the artist sees fit to acknowledge, it is the very process of writing that one might consider to be the most valuable.

Symphony Nr. 3 — The Clash of Titans, 2008 MM-O/C

Consider for one moment that we contemplate our next step in a painting. There is no interaction of that thought other than it remains being a thought, while acknowledging the thought by putting ink to paper, we are engaging in a process where thought and writing are interacting as if in a conversation and the act of contemplation no longer remains a solitary event.

Keeping a journal or notebook will over time appear less as an unpleasant task but more like as if meeting and old friend and catching up on events over a cup of tea or a glass of port or wine, especially if a beautiful leather bound book is selected and a pen that not only feels comfortable, but fits in the hand effortlessly and glides over the page with ease. Even going so far as to set aside a time and place to when and where one has that conversation adds to the experience.

Give it a try and I promise you will wonder how you ever did without it.