Hats off to the Villain

Milo Russell: A brief note on Integrity

I received an unexpected email this evening reminding me of this comment, which was originally posted on Hungry Hyaena 12/8/05:

I had a venerable teacher that gave me a solid lesson in the life of the blue-collar artist. "I've seen more movements come and go than someone who took Exlax," he began. He is an obscure painter--an old widower whose work has never garnered wide acclaim. He has been painting since the early part of the last century, and his work has a strange searching quality to it-- an obsessive, ritualistic groping like someone that repeatedly scours the same patch of earth for something irreplaceable that was lost. His name is Milo Russell. His painting is always the same: a man or a woman seated in a room, perhaps a table and a plant, a window or a painting on the wall. Over and over and over.
He is a shy man that cringes at the thought of openings. He is the antithesis of the scenester, hype-artists.
His lesson was this: All that matters is to maintain one's integrity. Know what you are about and do it unrelentingly. Do it when it is unpopular. Do it when nobody else understands or believes. Do it when they love it. Do it, but keep your integrity (To me this also evokes the structural definition of the word integrity, not just the moral/ethical meaning. In this case it means 'soundness' and without it boats sink and buildings topple).
Perhaps you will die lonely and destitute, but, really, what philosophy can save you from that possibility?
As a workaday painter myself, I hold this advice as I would a jewel.
Fame? Glory? Wealth? Vain aspirations of an over-indulged populace.
I want only to make a living.
Right now that means peddling my wares in the common market. As I struggle to pay the rent, I dispatch my creations to desktops, kitchens, and bathrooms. There they will be groggily stared at while urinating or inspected while waiting for the water to boil. They will be tiny bridges between me, the viewer, and the great unknowable.
I may never Make It Big or Blow Up, but I don't need to. In dirty pants, with cold fingers, I am content to crawl in the bilge and patch my leaky hull with modest, little paintings. Perhaps I will make it through another month. Perhaps, someday, I will be able to simply float.

Image via Savedge Art & Technology LLC

From my fortune cookie.

"Don't be fooled by first impressions."

Fake bricks, N. Williams Ave, Portland, OR

Cityscape Paintings

Somewhere, sometime ago, I signed up for some mailing list. You know the story.

For some reason I never unsubscribed because, well, I figured I must have had some reason to sign up in the first place... even if I can't remember it now. Usually, these emails go straight into the trash along with all the others like them. Today, however, I read one on a whim.

The email instructed me, among other things, to spend one hour a week researching the competition. To watch them and learn from them. To Google terms that I associate with my own artwork and see who comes up. Good idea.

Below are an assortment of artists whose work came up using the simple search terms "cityscape painting." Obviously, I have selected for taste.

Paul Balmer

Mike Hernandez (wow... check out these dog drawings)



Kim Cogan


Anonymous Argentine Painter from here



I could keep going. There are so many talented painters out there that it can get a bit daunting. I suppose that it is a solid reminder to work harder... and then work some more... and then keep working.

It Out-Herods Herod. Pray You, Avoid It.

Tonight my children hunch

Toward their Western, and are glad

As, with a Sunday punch,

The Good casts out the Bad.

And in their fairy tales

The warty giant and witch

Get sealed in doorless jails

And the match-girl strikes it rich.

I’ve made myself a drink.

The giant and witch are set

To bust out of the clink

When my children have gone to bed.

All frequencies are loud

With signals of despair;

In flash and morse they crowd

The rondure of the air.

For the wicked have grown strong,

Their numbers mock at death,

Their cow brings forth its young,

Their bull engendereth.

Their very fund of strength,

Satan, bestrides the globe;

He stalks its breadth and length

And finds out even Job.

Yet by quite other laws

My children make their case;

Half God, half Santa Claus,

But with my voice and face,

A hero comes to save

The poorman, beggarman, thief,

And make the world behave

And put an end to grief.

And that their sleep be sound

I say this childermas

Who could not, at one time,

Have saved them from the gas.

Poem by Anthony Hech via Poetry Foundation; Photo by Michael McDevitt.

A Walk Through History

It's kind of embarrassing to confess, but it never really occurred to me to consider the historical context Michael Jackson. I mean, sure, thinking about the Jackson Five invokes a certain amount of history, but I never seen Michael Jackson as being part of a long tradition of entertainers. He's simply been a ubiquitous, if often absurd, pop presence for as long as I've been alive. It's kind of like how I grew to be 19 before it even occurred to me that there was a person inside the big dog on Sesame Street. I'd never really thought about it. Dumb, huh?

Well, this video does a great job of establishing that link and without added clutter of words.



Thanks once more to the folks at Monkeys For Helping for dishing out another serving of the good stuff.

The Daily Compulsion

Some little birdie thought I'd like this... and that birdie was dead right.