Me, Myself and Morandi

I’ll be in New York mid-October, and one of the things I’m most looking forward to seeing is a major Morandi show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of my art heroes, Georgio Morandi (1890-1964) painted simple still lives - inhabited by vases, bowls, bottles and jugs - almost exclusively throughout his long career. His restrained style, subtle use of color and focus on a limited set of objects has always fascinated and delighted me. Although I can’t seem to help but to be a “Maximalist” myself, I secretly long to paint spartan, spare, subtle pictures. Maybe it’s simply the attraction of opposites. In any case, I often think of Morandi when I struggle with how to move forward in the studio, how to stay true to my vision and keep things lively without feeling like I am walking in a circle, imitating myself.

For many years, I moved through bodies of work somewhat quickly, holding onto the assumption that in order to evolve as an artist, I needed to continue to change and re-invent myself. I would push to where I felt that I had explored a format or a set of images, then dutifully move on to something new, working to take whatever I had learned into new creative territory. This approach served me well for quite a few years, but I began to feel unsettled, and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I had my Morandi Moment: I realized that what I in fact needed to do was to do essentially the same thing over and over again, but do it better. Find the subtleties, push deeper rather than wider. Walking in a circle is fine, as long as it becomes a kind of an upward spiral. I come back around to the same place, but it’s different, it’s with a new perspective. The images I use fade away, morph, regenerate, and are made anew as I discover new ones.

The risk in working this way is, of course, that the casual viewer may only see the “same old” when they look at even the newest work. The slow, quiet evolution is evident mostly only to me and a few close friends/observers. Although as an artist I must pay attention to what others think, write and say about my work, essentially it is I who must decide what is most important. And in the long run, it’s all between me, myself and I ….and maybe Morandi.