A good day’s work in the studio, I believe.
Tag Archives: abstract
Paleo process
Yesterday, I woke up and this was on my easel.
I had the feeling in my guts that it was a nice start but not finished. That was the results of a couple days worth of work. I started with a piece of plywood, coating it with a mixture of gesso, matte medium and shaving cream until it hardened. I spent a day letting myself listen to music and applying colors in oil and acrylic paints; some of the paints were very wet and thinned while the others were dried and I just scratched them on or rubbed the dust into the surface. So that’s what I woke up to.
Approaching the easel, I felt a deep inner connection with something primal, so it seemed natural that I should try to mimic ancient cave paintings.
These were too brilliant and not right in my mind, so I began to ‘age’ them by washing the image with highly diluted white acrylic paint.
Several hours of watching paint dry and several coats of washes later, I felt satisfied with the results. I then slept on this feeling and woke up this morning to check the results. Just to be certain that I was deliberate in my intent, I rested on this piece all day and I feel very confident and pleased that it is indeed finished. Here are the final results.
One feature of this process that is important to note; surface is very important. In order to emphasis this, I will give you a close up detail of that facet of the work.
And yet another detail.
Thank you for viewing. 
Love
This piece was definitely the culmination of everything I have ever learned and experienced. I created it over a three day period and really feel like my feet are firmly on the path of expanding artistic commitment.
It serves as a portal that closes chapters from the past and opens to new chapters yet to be written.
A new step
Taking the Celtic knots I was drawing last winter combining it with the material experiments of DJ Random’s Didactic Mixtape; I am setting off in a new direction of style. No longer do I fear that the abstracts will kill me, it feels bold and powerful to harness the raw energy of the universe. Increasing the scale of the work also is giving me more of a sense of freedom and joy. This piece may or may not be complete, but it is at a point of pause. 
A Better answer
I just had a quick exchange I was meeting for the first time. I gave him my business card and he asked me a couple of pointed questions. As I was heading out the door at that moment, my responses where concise and somewhat pithy. For instance, his best question was “How do you know a painting is finished?”
I gave him the thumbnail of two different workflows, one which has a very clear objective which defines the moment the work is finished and the other which is more experimental and exploratory. The second method I said I knew I was finished when I “was bored of working on it.” This is a very misleading way of talking about my work.
The real truth behind knowing when a painting is finished, no matter the work flow, is process. Whether the subject matter is clearly chosen or is allowed to form itself, paint is a tactile and plastic media which is subject to changing shapes on it’s own as well as under control of my hand. Therefore, in order to determine if the painting is indeed complete, I have to relinquish a great amount of control over the results.
Every moment I am working on a new piece, I have several internal battles waging at once.
“Is this stroke necessary?”
“Should I put that color here?”
“Has a story developed?”
“Does thus reflect my emotional state, right now?”
“Should I stop?”
“Is the painting satisfied?”
During the course of this process, I can hear the answers not through an internal voice or an audible voice but through visual feedback. As I sense the control shift away from my conscious decisions into the subconscious or innate aspects, this feedback becomes the pleasureful experience of watching an infographic fill up in real time.
There is a palatable moment of release, which lends itself to parallels and connotations with sex, when control returns across the threshold which separates the ego-driven mind from the intrinsic self. Experience has taught me that continuing to paint passed this moment greatly increases the opportunity to overwork and even destroy the beautiful thing which just unfolded itself in front of my eyes. Joy becomes labor. Thrill transmutes into a chore and the love making becomes dutiful rutting.
Thus, I am finished. Therefore, time for a coffee, a smoke and some miserable attempt to recount the experience using words.
I gave him the thumbnail of two different workflows, one which has a very clear objective which defines the moment the work is finished and the other which is more experimental and exploratory. The second method I said I knew I was finished when I “was bored of working on it.” This is a very misleading way of talking about my work.
The real truth behind knowing when a painting is finished, no matter the work flow, is process. Whether the subject matter is clearly chosen or is allowed to form itself, paint is a tactile and plastic media which is subject to changing shapes on it’s own as well as under control of my hand. Therefore, in order to determine if the painting is indeed complete, I have to relinquish a great amount of control over the results.
Every moment I am working on a new piece, I have several internal battles waging at once.
“Is this stroke necessary?”
“Should I put that color here?”
“Has a story developed?”
“Does thus reflect my emotional state, right now?”
“Should I stop?”
“Is the painting satisfied?”
During the course of this process, I can hear the answers not through an internal voice or an audible voice but through visual feedback. As I sense the control shift away from my conscious decisions into the subconscious or innate aspects, this feedback becomes the pleasureful experience of watching an infographic fill up in real time.
There is a palatable moment of release, which lends itself to parallels and connotations with sex, when control returns across the threshold which separates the ego-driven mind from the intrinsic self. Experience has taught me that continuing to paint passed this moment greatly increases the opportunity to overwork and even destroy the beautiful thing which just unfolded itself in front of my eyes. Joy becomes labor. Thrill transmutes into a chore and the love making becomes dutiful rutting.
Thus, I am finished. Therefore, time for a coffee, a smoke and some miserable attempt to recount the experience using words.
Since the earthquake, the hurricane and the Labor day weeken
Since the earthquake, the hurricane and the Labor day weekend has passed, this seems like a good moment to catch up on the amount of productive activity I have been pursuing.
First of all, I have been reinvesting time into experimenting with transmitting my vision through social media. For a long time now, I have considered manipulation of media a broad job description for an artist. So, it is only natural that I allow myself some time and space to dabble in this. One of the more prominent projects in this area is participation in a competition to be the face of About.me on a billboard in Times Square. You can vote for me at http://about.me/Nathaneckenrode. I like this service enough to use it as my about me page for this website.
Painting wise, I have been furiously smashing together colors on paper. This has yielded a nice stack of pieces that remain to be documented. There are a couple more steps in the process for finishing these. When I am ready, I will show them.
On that note, I am combining these two points together in my search for an online gallery where I can show and sell my works. This is a good process for completing the puzzle. There are some concerns about being able to use my own domain with the store and other business side issues, but I am relatively at ease with the capacity to make a decision in the near future which will allow me to advance along these lines.
Next, there are a couple of performance pieces which I am participating in. The first is Zefrey Throwell’s Midtown Games:250m relay and is being held September 15th. The second is called Bow and is organized by Eric Clinton Anderson and is scheduled for October 3rd.
Finally, I have a show schedule for December in Halifax, Virginia. This will be in a gallery run by artists and is very exciting to me as I will be showing my work to my hometown for the first time, ever.
This is an acrylic on paper work called “Sue is my Secret weapon” I believe the dimensions are 18″x24″ but I could be wrong, as it’s not right in front of me as I write about it. enjoy. Love your life.
First of all, I have been reinvesting time into experimenting with transmitting my vision through social media. For a long time now, I have considered manipulation of media a broad job description for an artist. So, it is only natural that I allow myself some time and space to dabble in this. One of the more prominent projects in this area is participation in a competition to be the face of About.me on a billboard in Times Square. You can vote for me at http://about.me/Nathaneckenrode. I like this service enough to use it as my about me page for this website.
Painting wise, I have been furiously smashing together colors on paper. This has yielded a nice stack of pieces that remain to be documented. There are a couple more steps in the process for finishing these. When I am ready, I will show them.
On that note, I am combining these two points together in my search for an online gallery where I can show and sell my works. This is a good process for completing the puzzle. There are some concerns about being able to use my own domain with the store and other business side issues, but I am relatively at ease with the capacity to make a decision in the near future which will allow me to advance along these lines.
Next, there are a couple of performance pieces which I am participating in. The first is Zefrey Throwell’s Midtown Games:250m relay and is being held September 15th. The second is called Bow and is organized by Eric Clinton Anderson and is scheduled for October 3rd.
Finally, I have a show schedule for December in Halifax, Virginia. This will be in a gallery run by artists and is very exciting to me as I will be showing my work to my hometown for the first time, ever.
This is an acrylic on paper work called “Sue is my Secret weapon” I believe the dimensions are 18″x24″ but I could be wrong, as it’s not right in front of me as I write about it.
enjoy. Love your life.
Rapacious Pedator
The Tropical Storm which shut down NYC this weekend, allowed for completion of some much needed updates to my technological infrastructure. I celebrate with a digital painting.
Self-examination as Mandelbrot set
Once the initial veil of reality is pushed aside and the realm of impossible is opened up to be an active part of the field for patterns to play out and develop, a smaller and more focused inspection of these patterns can be very revealing. The complexity which was exhibited by the larger, Big Picture view of life or the human game shows is found to be reproduced on this new level of inspection. The focus on a single pattern within the self shows that the forces which create the pattern, the masses of self-justifications, do not become any less despite focusing only and a ‘single’ aspect of the larger pattern. In fact, it is in this deeper, more introspective inspection that the details begin to emerge as being even more complex than originally conceived. A single thread can be plucked at and pulled to allow the pattern to warp and deflate, thus releasing some of the creative power that had been used to pop it into existence. This eventually leads to the point where the external actions begin to reflect a new attitude which is projected upon the field and thus allowing new patterns to be created. The new patterns are no less powerful as illusions of reality than the old one, however the important difference is that they have become projections of an inner landscape that is much more at peace with the process and therefore more open to opportunity. Hence the impossibility is turned upside-down and suddenly is the very fabric from which everyday life is created.
Blue Reflection
The Secret of Om
I started this painting as a process piece, laying on the background colors as a wash. Then as I slipped further and further into the trance of accompanying music, I began to play the canvas like a drum. The resulting textures in the wet paint inspired further action. I began to seek active motion with thicker and thicker paint. The result of diving deeper into the motions and rhythms of driving metal music pushed the boundaries between subconscious and conscious creation. By attacking the canvas as a adversary, I found that a release of images and emotions produced a sensation of meditative purity, as if the heart of the universe had been captured and pinned into a case like a butterfly specimen.
