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I Don’t Know What the Fuck I’m Doing

The past 2 weeks I feel like I’ve been having “existential” conversations more than any other kind. Every time I open my mouth, the words “I don’t know what I’m doing” make their way out.

I’m reading a shit ton about food. I can’t stop listening to Anthony Bourdain and David Chang. I almost dropped 1200 bucks on a complete set of lucky peach. At work, I knead bread across from a pastry chef who used to exclusively crush it on the line at restaurants. Now she stretches pretzels and pipes madelines across from me every morning in a bakery basement. The pair of us reminisce about sweating through service, getting screamed at, getting shit thrown at us, and kind of loving something to hate. We miss good food. We miss the industry. There’s something super addictive about it. The closest thing I have to community right now is us remembering the club we used to be a part of.

When I get home, I sit at my desk surrounded by doubts translated through stacks of unfinished projects. Its almost impossible to feel accomplished with creative work. I’m in a vacuum of insecurity and unassuredness. There is no immediate pay off if there’s any at all. Lately the “pay off” has been minuscule. When something does happen, (ie. commissions, selling at auction, hell, even a lot of likes on instagram) I can never stop to appreciate it because its a small blimp of recognition. Its not a career. Its not a community. Its nothing sustainable. Its horse shit. This industry is horse shit. 

I am depleted of money, energy, and inspiration. The worst part is I’m honestly not trying my best. This is not my best. I’ve done this before time and time again. The extremely flawed reasoning is, if I try and nothing happens, I have now failed. If I don’t put in all of myself, then its not 100% a failure because I’m in reserve. 

My problem isn’t that I’m trying and failing. It’s that I can’t even bring myself to try hard right now. Half of my ass is in the ring and I’m looking around to see if its enough for applause. Its fucked up. Its lazy. Its nothing I want to put my name on. Its not who I am or want to be. But I’m hoping that being honest with myself and putting a name to it right now will inspire movement. Either in or out. 

Just fucking something.

written in the kitchen. waiting to go to a bridal shower down the street.

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Things I Hate but Secretly Want

pretty hands: I currently work at a bakery so I’m elbow deep in dough most days. I was a competitive rower for a number of years. I’m a rock climber. I push paint around from time to time. My mitts are dry, callused, sprinkled with cuts, scars, bruises, and the occasional burn. Nail polish is always a fat no and I’m past the salvation of hand cream. When I shake someones hand and I notice they’re particularly supple, or manicured, or possibly even striking, I get a little angry. But of course I feel incredibly self righteous about this. “I use my hands and you don’t” plain and simple.

money: People who don’t have to think about money every waking hour make me so upset I could shake. But in all honesty, and I mean this 100% seriously and maybe an extra 15% of bitterness, it must be fucking nice. 

Guilt free down time: Nappers are time wasters. People who watch TV are passionless. Who the hell has time to read anymore? I love grinding. I love working. I’ve mentioned it maybe 100 times over. Working like a masochist feels super fulfilling in a fucked up way. If the day ends with me dumping my now useless body into bed, or better yet, being so tired and withered I don’t even make it to bed, it was a success. I am spent. I have truly given the day my all. But god fucking DAMMIT do I wish I could park my ass on the couch for the entirety of the day for a guilt-free, rousing game of The Sims. Or maybe watch a movie. For once I’d like to burrito myself in a blanket and not make myself feel like shit for it.

Hobbies: Because of point 3, I never allowed myself to have a hobby. Dabble. Play. Hell, let myself be straight up mediocre or even bad at something. I wish I could laugh at my humanness and not feel so shitty about it. Knitting could be cool I guess.

I’m trying to cleanse myself of these components that make up a true hater. A lot of people give themselves space for vanity, money, and relaxation. I’m not better or worse because I don’t make them a priority. I’m actually really fucking obnoxious for being so bitter and jealous. I’m essentially a jaded 80 year old in a 23 year olds body. I’m not proud of it. I’m truthfully trying to grow out of it. 

Or maybe into it?

written while uncomfortably digesting an entire mushroom pizza

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Why are food and art  a part of the same conversation?

I listen to the Dave Chang Show more than I do any other podcast. It covers a huge wheel house of topics that I’m almost always interested in. Because Chang is a chef, obviously a lot of his guests are also chefs or at least semi-related to the food biz. 

More recently he hosted Jerry Saltz, Pulitzer-prize winning art critic. Most of it was Jerry expanding on points from his 33 Rules for being an artist and giving Dave Chang a full fledged therapy session. But it was all super lovely to listen to. It is so validating to hear Chang be candid about his own narcissism and how it conflicted with his self doubt when he was up and coming. They talked a lot about food as art and the chef as an artist. I buy it.

Workaholism is something that comes up in a bunch of episodes. This past weeks episode with Joe Beef Chef-owners David McMillan and Frédéric Morin was so meaty I had to listen to it a few times. All three of these big deal chefs talk about going through heaps of horse shit in previous places they’ve worked but loved all of it anyways. 

I couldn’t help but think about being an undergrad and seeking out professors that would fucking tear into me. And I mean really give it to me. I felt like I couldn’t get a proper education unless my mentors were making me cry regularly. The hurt felt like love. I knew that my professors were giving me the shit they were because they knew it motivated me. It sounds really fucked up in a “he hits me because he loves me” type of way but it was out of mutual respect. Probably.

For some reason David Chang and artist David Choe are buds. Its actually how I found out about Chang. Both of them talk a lot about Asian-American identity, addictions, and art and food. Neither one understands the others craft fully, which makes for a lively conversation that’s helpful if you, too, are an outsider to one of these industries. 

This podcast got me thinking about why I personally enjoy both of the culinary world and the art world. From what I can see, these two industries are almost identical because of the following:

Money: You need it but seemingly never have it. And everyone in the upper echelon seems to have it. Fuck loads of it. Celebrity chefs. Brand name artists. Not only does everyone up there have fame and money, but even just one rung down from those brands is about a multi-million dollar difference in worth and influence. Either way, both art and the culinary arts run on money and that sucks. So don’t think about touching either of those irons if you think burning your hand is free.

Grind: Fuck an office. 9a-5p? Try 2p-2a. Or how about 7a-3a. Kitchens and studios are where the fucking grind is. Repetition. Discipline. Loneliness( and somehow also camaraderie in being lonely?!??) Cooks and artists work really fucking hard and if you need me to explain why, than I need a whole post on just that.

Judgement: Your career depends on it. Food critics. Art critics. You can say that you cook/create for yourself but ultimately, if you want to do it full time you’ve gotta put it out there to the masses. And full time whatever means you’ve gotta make money. Which means you need people to like you to fund your whatever. You need to care what people think. (there are few exceptions to this but that’s also a topic for another day)

Alcoholism: If you have never hung around with kitchen or FOH staff after service, than your liver is probably better off. HolySHIT can industry people drink. My time as a waitress was filled with a lot of handshakes in the form of wine and fernet branca. Working in or around a kitchen gives you a reason to drink. And then there was art school. Three words: Gin and Kombucha. The only thing art students do more than drink, is chain smoke.

Cult or Family Mentality: You spend most of your waking hours around the same people that subject themselves to the same horse shit that you do. You’re blood brothers. Kin. No one outside of either industry understands being poor and asking people to force their uneducated, completely biased opinions on you so that you can maybe one day generate an income from that shit you like to do. They get it. And they’re just as fucked up in the head as you are.

I always really enjoyed working in a restaurant to counter-balance my art making. Being in a studio for days at a time can drive you crazy. The fast-paced, social environment a dining room provides offers a nice contrast(but can also drive you crazy). But despite those environmental differences, both art and food have all of the above in common, which is probably why I cant seem to slip away from either of them. The only people who I have stayed friends with over the years are from service jobs or art school. Those two pools of freaks are a specific breed.

You could draw endless parallels to art and food. Some say that food is an art. I’m certainly not denying this, but I’m interested for different reasons. Everyone who works in food is a similar kind of masochist. We all want to suffer. It gives our work more meaning. We got to where we did with scars which is somehow more heroic than coming out smelling like roses. Maybe you think that’s brooding self-righteousness but honestly, fuck you. We do it with no sleep, too.

written while trying to shake off last nights melatonin. 

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NH Sucks and Thats a Good Thing

I just moved. To NH. And it blows. Theres a ton of art around me that I don’t respect or accept as art. Its a hobbiest type of art that I just cant digest as art. Theres so many people I have zero interest in being friends with. I have no money. No friends. No community. No job. And no interest in making it work.

But somehow it all feels like a good thing. And I’m not at all looking at the bright side. I’m looking at all the shitty things as just shitty things I need to let myself go through.

Maybe its the depressive masochist within me, but I think this is a really incredible time to work on my art. And myself. I don’t have any noise to distract myself. Some days I may push myself into a dark hole of asking myself too many questions. Depression happens when you isolate yourself. But The first year out of school I put a bandaid on all of my very normal, very human pains with lovely jobs and friends that functioned perfectly as distractions. I was climbing and traveling and pedicabbing and doing all of things I loved. 

Which sounds great, but art was seriously frustrating me and I had no reason to sit down and deal with those frustrations. Because everything else I was doing had instant gratification and immediate pay-off for the work I was putting in. (athletics, friendships, social hardships etc.)

But now that art is literally the only thing I like here, and my mind is the only thing I have to draw inspiration from, I think it’s time to make some things happen. Completely focus on why I do this and revel in the reasons why I hate it. 

I’m fucking crippled with the fear of what I might make and thats kind of exciting. I haven’t scared myself since I went through puberty and figured out that sitting in depressions is the most self righteous masturbatory thing you could do. I’m still afraid I could get stuck there but honestly, depression is the most exhausting thing I’ve ever gone through and sometimes it comes back but I get so tired of my own bullshit that I just can’t sit in it anymore.

Now I’m rambling. Bottom line, NH sucks and that will do just fine for now.

Bring it.

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Why Working in service makes you a gentle asshole.

I’ve pretty much only worked in service. It was originally because I thought I liked people. 8 hours of serving others was a good contrast to my self-serving studio time spent in isolation. Turns out its also really good money with wonderful perks of free food and drink, and meeting lovely people that you can commiserate with on a completely different level than any non-service worker could ever keep up with.

Most of my friends work in service. Maybe this is because it’s always been my choice of office space but I also think it’s because this line of work attracts certain types of people. People that want to talk, engage, and give you a wonderful dining or coffee-consuming experience. These are the types of people that like to work really really hard. The industry doesn’t give a dollar value to this type of work. The consumers do. This means that us service workers (most of us) will deliver the type of service with think we deserve a living wage for. But most nights, its not always within the limits of our control.

We’re H U M A N. So if I’m having an off night and I do the normal human thing of tripping over my feet and spilling some shit, or forgetting that stupid thing you asked for, like a black napkin (I get it but I don’t) instead of the white we neatly fold on your table every time you get up from your chair, because I’m racking my brain to try and remember whether or not I fired your neighboring table’s second course while also running into the kitchen to make sure I didn’t murder some little girl with an allergy to brazil nuts while her sister is throwing bread crusts on the floor. (taking note to pick that up before it gets re-set for the next guests). Please, try to have a fucking heart. Don’t just think about the service your waiter is giving you. Think about the service they are giving the whole dining room. Because you are not their only concern, sorry to say.

I get it. You go into a restaurant and you want to feel like you are the only guest in the place. But please accept that you are not. You are one of 200+ people that we take care of. You matter, but not as much as you would like to think.

I’m just ranting now. Lets circle back to the title.

Why this whole shebang makes you a smarter and absolutely justifiable prick:

1. You literally get paid to deal with peoples bullshit. You are a S E R V E R. derivative of the word S E R V A N T. People feel entitled when they walk into a restaurant because we are all culturally programmed to view our servers as servants.

2. Our wages are based on whether or not we prove ourselves as human. It doesn’t matter how. All you have to do is separate yourself from the register. Make the transaction less transactional and more hospitable. I’ve experienced better tips both out of elation and out of pity upon recognizing that I too, am a person:

Elation: Congratulations, your guests are real people and they ask you about your life outside of work, where you live, etc. You have proved yourself as more than a servant. You are a free-thinking being with ethos. Big tip for you and your giant synapse-firing brain.

Pity: Oh no. Your life sucks tonight. You sent a table the wrong dish and all the shit in the world is hitting the fan and its showering your entire section with the awful sent of your sad sad doo-doo. Luckily one of your tables understands that you are a human being. A sad one, but a human none the less. Big tip for you because you just turned yourself into charity.

But in all seriousness, this one blows. We are objectified until we prove otherwise.

3. Our money isn’t guaranteed. Which means we know how to work our fucking asses off. We literally earn every dollar we get. We also know how to recognize when someone else is doing the same. There is this wonderful mutual respect between service workers especially when a server is the guest for the evening.

4. Health insurance. Yeah. That shits coming out of pocket, baby girl.

5. But why does all of this make you a prick? HA. Because people are pricks. And dealing with their horse shit doesn’t make you entitled to be one, but it sure as hell points you in that tempting direction with the bitterness of a thousand ex lovers watching their significant others float off into an instagram sunset with their new boo. We are the bottom of the totem pole but we make a $40+ dollars an hour doing it. So yeah, maybe we’re bitter. But at least we’re rich and we fucking earned every penny of it.

Service workers have the most people smarts out of any other industry. Our rent depends on it. So if you are not a service worker and you have service workers in your life, Let me bestow this people skill upon you: There is a reason your service friends are always tired, bitter, and want to go out for a drink on a Tuedsay night to complain about sparkling versus still water. Indulge them in this.

“The customer is always right” was supposed to be a tool for service workers to aim for a certain level of hospitality. It was never meant to fall into the hands of the consumer only to abuse and manipulate the workers because they, as customers, are always right.

We should all aim to be better people in general but also, please, for the love of god, learn how to be a better customer.

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“Conceived after a weed-addled period of writer’s block, ‘The Ooz’ – his swampy, 19-track new record – is a blackened document of paranoia, relationship breakdown and more sleepless nights. His vocals – guttural, electric and still the star of the show – seep from the cracks of songs sketched from jazz, punk, hip-hop, bossa nova and the ambient drift favoured by Dean Blunt and Frank Ocean.”

If you haven’t listened to this album yet, holy shit. Its exactly how the review describes it. Just ambient, guttural beauty. UGH. I love it. I’ve been trying to make pieces that are more “portfolio appropriate” so I’ve been reading articles and using them as a prompt for an illustration. If you’re not given work, give it to yourself. Am I right?

This album is as real and as fake as our existence. It starts out with some pretty easily digested tunes and quickly disintegrates into ambient whispers in other languages. As the track list goes on, it makes less tangible sense and fades into a lucid dream. Where the hell are we and how did we sink this far down into whatever the fuck this is? I feel like its extremely reflexive of my internal dialogue and the sense it makes and doesn't make. 

Big fucking fan. More of that please.

Written in a torrential downpour

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My therapist is S T U P I D

I broke up with her over email. I feel pretty guilty about it, but its not my fault that she just don’t under-fucking-stand what it means to want more from life than leisure.

I have been seeing this woman for a few months now. I was under the impression that she was giving me stupid, dead end advice because she didn’t know me well enough to have something helpful to say. Needless to say, this was not the issue.

I was raised with the understanding that hard work will always get you through. Working through bad critiques, high rent, shitty friends, and athletic endeavors all takes effort. And as long as I’m willing to put that effort in, I can call the day productive even if I haven’t yet overcome these challenges. Trying feels good. Fucking sue me.

Way back when I first decided I wanted to pursue art, illustrator family friend Dale Stephanos told me that choosing art was the best thing I could do for myself because we live in a world where people decide to contribute to society in practical ways. Which, don’t get me wrong, is great. I’m thankful for it. The world needs police officers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, and construction workers. Power to all of you because I would ruin the functionality of society if I went into any of those fields.

What Dale was saying is that not a lot of people dedicate their time and lives to being truly great at something. Craft for the sake of craft. Realizing a dream and passion because every fiber of your being tells you that is what you need to do. I feel passion to the point of a breakdown for many different things and people in my life. It hurts most days that sometimes all I can do with that pent up emotion is just fucking weep about it. Other days I push paint around to it. Is this healthy? I don’t know but fuck my therapist for trying to talk me out of it.

I REFUSE to lead a dispassionate life. I love and hate to the point of vibrating with rage when someone tells me I care too much or try too hard. I feel insane as I write this, but I would much rather live a painful life filled with every gradation of feeling, including and especially deep deep dissatisfaction and hatred for my failures and sunken attempts. This may lead me in and out of depressive states but it sends me up to indescribable highs of creativity and production and just fucking euphoria over making something. Anything at all.

SO. My therapist thinks that all of this means that I am judgmental towards others for leading their lives in directions of practical paths as opposed to passionate ones. She also decided that I judge myself for the days I am less productive or indulgent in my simple, goal free pleasures. I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR WANTING TO BE WORTH MORE THAN A PAYCHECK AND DENT ON THE COUCH.

Demanding more from myself does not mean that I demand that of others. Be a secretary. Be a therapist. Clock in and out and then go home and watch TV and make dinner and be a fuckin human being. Dude. Live the life you want and need to. Live for the weekend and vacation time. Power to that shit. But just because thats not the life I see for myself DOESN’T MEAN I AM JUDGMENTAL OH MY FUCKING GOD.

Isn’t therapy supposed to validate you and your feelings and life choices instead of condemn them and make negative sweeping generalizations?

Asking for a friend.

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on being human:

I’ve been watching a lot of "Girls” lately and its a horrific show. Really, just terrible. Lena Dunham is insane and all of her friends are just as psycho and it upsets me that this is supposed to be a “portrait” of our times. As in, I am supposed to relate to them as a millennial female. I really cant stand it and I resent the fact that I’m on season 3 with no intentions of stopping. 

I’ve also revisited a lot of David Foster-Wallace in my recent reading. Its super upsetting to read about how tragic it really is to be a human being. Whether you're a terrible person or just someone that has to deal with them. I feel like a whopping combination of the two depending on the day. 

My favorite authors also include Jonathan Franzen and Paul Murray. Tom Robbins, if I have the band width. They all write about people and their lives. Sometimes through extremely fantastical narratives (Mr. Robbins, I’m looking at you). But still getting to the root of something, and I don’t always have the energy or attention span to figure out what, that defines a part of the human experience. 

Franzen does this in a really really painful way. I mean just plain brutal. He has this unfair, brazen way of plot development where he sets up a casual sexual encounter that is grotesquely believable to the point where if the character doesn’t get any, I truly feel saddened. Not in a masturbatory way but in a way that makes me feel their loss. He doesn’t make up characters in his head and then send them through of life events just to get to page 632. His characters are so minutely fleshed out that they could live down the street. None of it is pointless set up because it all reads as real life where nothing should be registered as pointless.

I used to think that I liked all of the above things combined with a pretty intense distaste for fantasy and scifi (literally as entire genres. not sorry) because I was boring and had no imagination. I would describe myself as enjoying “mundane” subject matter when my friends and I were trying to decide on something to watch, shutting down their suggestions to watch movies that had comic book characters, outerspace, or creatures that were not proven to exist.

I like narratives about normal fuckin people. Even in 2 dimensional artwork. I don’t care about magic the gathering. I have an endless appreciation for the people that slave over those paintings because I don’t have anything even close to that skill or patience, but the subject matter isn't my shit. But artists that make me feel validated for just flapping my eyelids and breathing? YA. I’m into that. Lisa Yuskavage, James Jean, Andrew Hem, Fucking Matthew Barney, Marina Abramovic, and whoever the fuck. You get it.

Maybe I’m a narcissist. SURPRISE! ALL OF MANKIND IS. We like to look at projections of life, emotion, and stories because we want all of the above. Watching and reading and looking at supposedly average people live their lives is a really amazing way that we people deal with living. We project what it is to be painfully normal. And it feels good to let that be okay.

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Earlier this week I had the privilege of experiencing Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Sanders Theater in Boston. I had heard them quite a few times, as their ambient, meditative sound is easy to hold a soft focus to. I do a great deal of painting and driving which makes this group the perfect soundtrack for flow state endeavors. 

Experiencing them live was something I was not prepared for. 

I’m not a religious person. I resisted my parents christian idea of God, Good, and Evil growing up with my own gravitation towards faith in people and the idea that events will unfold in the way the universe intends for them to. 

But the haunting and empowering thrashes of strings and percussion at this concert felt like a call to worship. The way the theater was set up felt like a church, with everyone filing into their own stadium style pew space with gothic architecture domes peaking above our heads. There were moments I looked around the room to see people rocking back and forth in an embrace with themselves or others, subtle rhythmic head nods, euphoric neck rolls, and a humble hang of their face in their hands. There was this one man across the balcony from me who would get excited as the song would build and slowly lose the ability to stay seated. The climax of each song had him jumping up and down, throwing his fists in the air. 

Everyones individual responses felt justified. It didn’t matter who was crying and who was smiling. We were all there and reacting in whatever way we needed to. All of this while super 8 images of protest footage flashed in tandem with cymbal crashes and kick drum stomps. We were in a vacuum of stimuli.

This concert made me feel justified in being human. I was allowed to feel whatever I needed to in a room full of strangers doing just the same. All of the people on stage were creating sounds that were other worldly, yet so human. I felt as though I were drifting into my own personal universe surrounded by my universal. I have never felt so understood. 

This concert gave me permission to feel anything within or outside of my spectrum of emotions and has sparked a creative awakening that I’m not quite sure what to do with yet. 

My eyes are open but I don’t know what I’m looking at.

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On Process:

I used to hate process more than most things. I would arrogantly bypass thumbnails and sketch phases and chalk it all up to “having a good eye.” Yeah. I was an asshole.

It didn’t make sense to me as to why I should waste hours on studies when I could just use them on the final to make it ten times better. HA. I repeat. HA. College me seems so dumb even though it was less than a minute since I graduated. I’m not even embarrassed about it. Its too fuckin funny.

The funniest part is that I thought I could bypass these godforsaken studies because the image in my head was enough reference to go to final. I’m laughing my ass off as a write this because I was just so. fucking. stupid.

All of the above would be followed by crippling self doubt and anxious frustration over the fact that nothing I made looked the way I wanted it to in my head. I didn’t realize that this was okay until maybe a few months ago???!!?!?

It took a nice combination of podcasts and blogs of other successful, working, illustrators pointing at the same shit I was stepping in and screaming “SAME” for me to realize that it was actually encouraged for the final to never look like the shitty picture in your head. Because that picture is b o r i n g. It’s premeditated. I think it was a post by Greg Manchess on muddy colors that really solidified the fact that surprising your audience is great. Surprising yourself is better. 

Every piece of work that I had done in school was precious. Which is stupid. I know that the above final isn’t too far off from the color study. But all that glowy white shit around her sets the entire goddamn mood. If I hadn’t been slightly buzzed enough to bust some white gouache all over the flowers I spent too fucking long on, than this piece would have ended up in the garbage and I would have started over. Which is something I compulsively do every other fucking piece.

SKIP TO HERE IF YOURE FUCKIN BORED:

Just do a study or two and poop all over it. Smear that shit around and it may not be beautiful but it will be way more fun than following the fuckin blueprint in your head that wasn’t good enough in the first place.��

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On loneliness:

After graduating, the number one thing that I noticed was how savagely lonely the real world is. No one cares about what I do during the day. It would be a huge stretch for me to ask someone to give a shred of a shit about how many miles I run or don’t run, or to congratulate me for going two days without sleep because I manically decided that I needed to finish all the paintings I started in the last six months.

I’m a piece of garbage millennial. I desperately need people to care. I need to be validated. I need a room filled with people for me to compare myself to so that I know how well or terribly I’m doing. 

Overextending my hours awake only felt like dedication when I was in a studio surrounded by fellow hard workers doing the same, or when my overtime was contrasted by an empty room causing me to wrongfully judge my peers for not caring enough to be there. Now, confusing my circadian rhythm to push paint around for the sake of my own self congratulatory work ethic feels fucking stupid.

It feels stupid and it feels lonely. This goes for leisure time as well. Binge watching hours of The Office feels lazy when I’m alone. When there are people making couch dents next to mine, its suddenly not time wasted. When I drink a bottle of wine by myself its considered budding alcoholism. But when I’m pouring two glasses with the intention of drinking only one of them, its being social. What the fuck is that?

I drew this sketch of my friend Ben and my partner Nick while we were drinking wine and watching Independence Day. Painting this page a few days later was a reminder of how I should be able to do the exact same things alone as I do with other people. My idea of time wasted or well spent shouldn’t be dictated by the presence of others. Self judgement should come from self. Not a reflection of others.

posted while burntout listening to Radiohead

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Some inspiration: Lisa Yusakavage

I’m in love with this woman. 

Just look at the fucking entrance to her website.

Yuskavage circa 1995 is my particularly favorite flavor. Its all pages upon pages of bodacious lady curving all over the place. Those booties and boobies transcend that rectangular canvas like a mother fucker. 

I would say that the content is simple, but theres nothing symbolically simple about nude women with eerily doll-like features spreading their legs and leaning into their slightly pornographic sexuality. 

Theres a lot of ownership in her paintings. Both of the female form and of color relativity, and value structure.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!!??!?! I know this image is mostly monochromatic but holy FUCK does she own that lighting. Edge to edge, booty to wall, I’ve never been thirstier for negative space. This composition is commanded by value.

Its really wonderful how she revisits compositions that function this well and push around different color to form a completely different image. 

Those last two images were done in 2004 while the yellow one was done a year later. This woman does not let it go if she’s on the verge of something. Worked through 3 times, she achieves the “final” image but still publishes and puts out the pieces that got her there. Her studies are finals too. Everything is special. As someone who nerds out over process work more than the framed shit, I truly appreciate this. Lets forget this whole finalized horseshit and frame our sketchbooks. 

Last thing I’ll say, and then I promise I’ll shut up about her (for now), she hits big numbers in auction, she’s in contemporary art museums all over the place, and her work is greatly stylized with curious narratives. When I was in school I struggled with choosing between fine art and illustration and felt like I had to lean into one or the other. Lisa Yuskavage is a prime example of “fuck that noise.” Contemporary concepts, content, and context with the charm, personal voice, and storytelling of an illustrator. Yes please, more of that.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. fuck.

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I’m not afraid of change. Quite the opposite. Staying the same person and doing the same thing day in and out is terrifying. I don’t want to find a routine and stick to it. I want to run the fuck around and explore until my legs give out so that at the end of it all I can say that I wasn’t complacent about any of that shit.

But I still think about middle school sometimes. And how I would listen to Welcome To the Black Parade with more decibels and frequency than my neighbors were cool with. All while cutting up old magazines, asking my friends to get naked so I could draw them, and drawing hot celebrities obsessively. THAT I’m cool with staying the same. Same shit different year. Right?

[stoiked]

This is the start of some shit that I’ve actually been pretty against. 

Fuckin blogs. 

I know people that run food blogs and I think its ridiculous to take pictures of everything you put in your mouth that has a shred of health or aesthetic appeal. Thats not to shit on anyone that has a food blog (by all means keep posting food porn), its just not my shit .

and neither is this blog, to be honest. This is for me to vomit as much art as possible. My own, other peoples, whatever the case may be. Maybe none of this will end up having anything to do with art at all.

Graduating art school, or school in general, releases you to so much loneliness that no one warns you about. I lost my community. I’m not looking for any gold stars, validation, critiques, or friends. I just need to get the juices flowing, learn to be comfortable with throwing my art out there, and maybe see something at a different angle and brightness. 

This is the beginning of something. But I still don’t know what the fuck it is. 

Cheers if you made it this far. 

posted while watching parks and rec.