All posts by Bob Keller

One Day at a Time

Journal

I should stipulate that the two previous posts are journaling, just simple life reminders, unlike most of the posts here which are essays. I have published them as private so you’re not seeing this anyway.

I didn’t get to this in the morning as planned so I’m a bit pressed for time since I need to get to my Monday night meeting tonight. Also I just got distracted by a video about removing yellowjacket nests from the ground. We have one near our house so I’m pretty set on removing it. Yikes.

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OK I’ve got to go now. Update tomorrow.

Neurodiverse

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I guess that’s what the kids are calling it these days. I have ADHD, which when I was a kid in the fifties and sixties I was just called a problem child. My weirdness must have made it hard on my parents. I’m not saying neurodiverse folks are all weird, but I definitely was. I did well in school, mostly because I was good at test taking and could read and write pretty well. They got a lot of positive feedback from my teachers, but that was always followed with “but….”. I was the class clown and could be very disruptive. I’ll go into this more in another post.

This morning I was getting ready to do some spiritual reading and meditate. I realized I wanted to have my water bottle with me so I went up to the main level and got it out of the fridge and headed to the lower level to get ready. On the way down I thought about the paintings I have in progress and went down the basement to look at them and think about what to do next. I spent maybe 10 minutes doing this and then came back upstairs to meditate. That’s when I saw my guitar so I sat down to run through some mixolydian scale drills. I caught myself pretty quickly and headed back to the chair where I had everything ready. Everything but my water, which I had gone to get fifteen minutes earlier. I couldn’t find it. I looked everywhere on the two middle levels, even went upstairs even though I knew I hadn’t been up there since I got my water out of the fridge. I looked everywhere three of four times, muttering things like “What the fuck is wrong with me?” Finally Becky reminded me that I’d gone down to the basement, which is of course where I found it. Just an example of the shit that goes on in my brain every day.

Question: How many ADD folks does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Let’s ride bikes!

So the weather is again beautiful. I like to say that Minnesota weather is like the little girl with the curl on her forehead. When it’s good it’s really good, but when it’s bad it’s horrid. Fall weather in Minnesota is the best weather. I guess nothing good lasts.

Yesterday I went down to the Northrup King Building to pick up some paintings from Follow the Muse and talk to Daphnae about upcoming shows.

Today I plan to send Daphnae examples of some paintings for the upcoming designer showcase and to complete my entry for the Extremely Minnesota show at the Robbin Gallery. I might also get to renewing my membership in MAA and the Hopkins Center. I also will do my shoulder exercises, which I skipped yesterday because I had some pain going on and figured it needed a rest.

That’s all I have.

Best Laid Plans

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No dirty rice last night. One of B’s pickleball friends dropped off some spaghetti so we had that instead. Tonight.

Walked about 3 miles around the neighborhood today, the weather was beautiful and looks like it’s going to be great today as well. Did my shoulder exercises with a little bit of pain. Two days ago I was almost pain free but the last couple of days there’s soreness around the limits of my ROM. Couldn’t sleep at 1:30, got up, read and had some tea. Went back to sleep and didn’t wake up until 7:30, which is great since I’ve woken up around 4:30 the last few days.

Still trying to decide which pieces to enter into the Extremely Minnesota show. Most of the ones I’ve done recently have already been shown at the Robbin. I have a few though, I have some time.

We’ve watched two excellent series in a row. Black Rabbit is really good, Jason Bateman and Jude Law are terrific as dysfunctional brothers running a New York Restaurant. Then last night we watched Hostage a tense British political espionage drama. We watched all five episodes in one sitting.

Not a lot accomplished yesterday, I did fix the dark screen problem with the TV. And started journaling again. That’s an accomplishment. And I made a list of appointments I need to make.

Today I’m going to figure out my XtMN entries and I have to go over to Follow the Muse to pick up some paintings that were in a show in Austin. Hoping Becky and I can go to brunch and make a day of it.

Here’s a list of the appointments I need to make.

  • Colonoscopy
  • Eye Doctor
  • Diabetes check
  • Dentist

Peace.

Back to Journaling

Life

It’s Friday, September 26th. I’m going to try to start using this blog again, as more of a personal journal than an attempt at public entertainment. I considered other platforms for keeping a new journal but decided that since I’ve put so much work into this over such a long time, I would keep it right here. I will password protect some of these posts that are for my eyes only.

Right now Becky is recovering from foot surgery for a broken metatarsal and also a bad cold. She seems to be getting over the hump. I’m still working on rehabbing my shoulder since I fell and tore three rotator cuff tendons back around Christmas.

Yesterday was pretty unproductive. I didn’t sleep well the night before and was kind of dazed all day. I was able to get a two mile walk in and do my shoulder exercises. Becky pulled it together enough to go out with her “whine club” which was really good for her since she’s been so cooped up for weeks. I stayed home and watched a chilling combat movie, Warfare, which documents the fate of a Navy Seal platoon in Fallujah during the Iraq war. Every time I see one of these gritty war movies I think about how I would react in that kind of situation. I don’t think I’d do well.

My goals for the day are to meditate, work on some art and art promotion tasks and cook my version of dirty rice for dinner.

One day at a time.

Walking

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My daughter is getting married this coming Sunday. They are staying with us up until Saturday. I will be writing more about that later, but in the midst of all the social tidal wave crashing down I have been cut adrift. The happy couple are at the groom’s parents for dinner and the mother of the bride is out with some friends. So I decided since it was a beautiful evening I’d take a walk around the neighborhood. My usual route takes me along Bassett Creek in Northwood Park.

The East Bridge

The trail crosses the creek in two places on beautifully patinaed iron red bridges. The park is the flood plane of the creek and is the lowest area around, it’s very broad and open so you get a great view of the sky all around. As I was crossing the East bridge, I saw a little blue heron perching on a dead branch in the river, poised to make a meal of who ever came down stream. I was above it on the bridge so it didn’t notice me. I waited lone enough to see him nail a fish without leaving the branch, just a lightning stroke of the beak.

I headed home in the twilight. Felling blessed.

A rose by any other name.

Art

Yesterday was the artist’s reception for my joint show with sculptor and glass artist James Tracey. It was a very successful show, we had a great turnout, and I had lots of fun conversations. I even sold a few paintings.

Hell is Empty and the Devils are All Here

The most commonly asked question or comment about the work was about the titles. In the past, I never really titled my abstract work. I’d name them things like “Abstract Number 3,” “Abstract with Green and Yellow, or sometimes “Untitled.” Is calling something “Untitled” actually giving it a title? In some circles the thinking is that abstract art should remain pure, with no context to it that gets between the viewer and the art. If you paint a mother and child in front of a window at twilight, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes the view is responding for the most part to the context, not the image as a purely visual experience. Titles can also influence the viewer’s perception of the work, get between the art and the viewer. Now I’m not saying that I subscribe to that school of thought. At least I don’t have a premium membership. I have the free budget plan.

When I started doing these latest paintings a couple of years ago, on a whim, I started giving them titles, and to be honest, I felt a little guilty about it. Like I was going against one of my beliefs about art, that representatives from the cult would come knocking on my door. That’s the kind of crap that comes to mind when you study this stuff in college. But then I started having some fun with it.

Folks asked how I come up with the titles. Various ways. Sometimes they just pop into my head when I’m working on them, like divine inspiration, not always having very much to do with the image itself. Other times there’s something that the image evokes, like a Rorschach test, and I base the name on that. In other cases, I’m stumped for a name. I spend too much time staring at the painting trying to pull some kind of an idea out of it. Sometimes I come up with a theme but can’t find the right words. Then I have a trick up my sleeve. Shakespeare. I look up Shakespeare quotes, sometimes using a keyword but often just scanning through lists until I have an “that works” moment.

I do have a concern that giving the work a title pushes the view into seeing the work a certain way, again getting between the viewer and the image. And although I’m not totally comfortable with that, people seem to have fun with it. I think the titles bring people into the work. When I watch people looking at art, I can tell the ones that just don’t get abstract. They just pass right by it, hardly giving it a look. If the title can make them stop for a second and try to figure out the reason for the title, I’ve pulled them into my schtick. Which is a good thing.

Let’s Talk About Me

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Before I go much further into my thoughts about art I’ll tell you a little about what I’m doing with my art practice these days and where I come from as an artist. Yesterday someone asked me what my art background was. I’m afraid I rattled on for way too long telling my circuitous career story. I won’t bore you with that now, although I might bore you with it in a later post. I’ll just say I was that kid who drew all the time, my parents encouraged it and kept me in art supplies because it kept me still and quiet. They didn’t call it ADHD then. I majored in art in college and went on to work in just about every art related job from animation to zookeeper (I managed a group of designers). I retired from that management job in 2009 and have done some freelance design work since then. In 20017 I decided to start painting again, something I hadn’t done since the 80s. I cleared out a corner of my basement and set up a tiny studio and started slinging paint.

Right my work has a split personality. One side of that split is my representational work. I’ve been doing landscapes, portraits and still lifes in what I think of as an impressionist style. I use acrylic paint, and lately I’ve been using Golden Open acrylics for this style. I like them because they dry more slowly than standard acrylic paint so they can be pushed around and blended for a longer period of time, which really helps creating soft edges and smooth transitions.

This is one of my most recent landscape paintings

I don’t consider these to be the primary focus of my work. I enjoy doing them, I like the challenge of representational art and I also believe that the discipline involved really helps develop my ability to see.

The other half of this split personality is my abstract work. I’ve been interested in abstract art since I was in college. Much of the work that I did in college and in the early 70s was abstract. Then as now, the process is improvisational, I start making marks, look at what I have and respond to it with more marks. My current process involves putting down a thick impasto layer using Golden Heavy Gel Medium mixed with color and sometimes a little pumice to create texture. I often press objects into the wet gel to create different textural effects. Then I start working in layers, sometimes using opaque paint and sometimes glazing. Lately I’ve been sanding the surface to bring up colors from previous layers. I repeat the process until I’m happy with what I see. Sometimes I repeat the process until I’ve ruined the painting. There’s always a risk involved, I think a big part of creativity is not being afraid to try something, even though you know there’s a possibility that it’s going to be one step too far and you’re never going to be able to make it as good as it was before you took the leap.

One of my abstract pieces

That’s a little bit about what I’m doing right now, in the future I’ll be talking about individual pieces, problems and solutions, and what’s at the front of my mind in terms of my practice. More to come.

I Don’t Know Anything About Art, But…

Art, Uncategorized

Some time ago I set out to start writing about art. This creates a strange paradox for me. On the surface I should be well qualified to write about art. I’ve been creating art since I could hold a pencil, I majored in art in college, I have a pretty broad knowledge of art history, and most of my work life involved art in some form or another. However, somehow I feel like I know nothing about art. I haven’t paid much attention to the fine art world for years, and I really struggle with understanding some of the avant garde trends of the last half century. Actually I couldn’t even come up with an example of current avant garde art. I am clueless about aesthetics and haven’t read a word of art criticism in probably half a century. I only darkened the door of the Walker a couple of times since they moved into the new building. I rarely go to galleries and I very rarely have a conversation about art. So that’s where I’m coming from as I start this endeavor.

So here’s the approach I’m thinking about. I will be spewing my thoughts about art in general. I’m also going to use this as a journal to record my thoughts about my art practice and feature some artists, contemporary and from the past, that I admire and that inspire me. And of course there will be a certain amount of shameless self promotion.

A long time gone.

Art, Uncategorized

It’s been over three years since I’ve posted here. It’s time to start writing again. I’ve been thinking about doing some writing about art. One reason for this strange urge is that I want to explore what I think about art, and I think about it a lot.

On one hand, I could be considered somewhat of an expert on the subject. I’ve been creating art since I could hold a pencil. When I was very young, my parents gave me pencils and paper to keep me from drawing on the walls and in the margins of books. With my two siblings grown up and out of the house by the time I was five, I was virtually an only child. An only child with ADD, which of course no one had heard of at that time, so an only child who was just weird. I don’t think my parents really knew what to do with me. When they figured out I would spend hours silently drawing, my dad started bringing home typing paper and pencils from his office. Reams of typing paper and boxes of pencils. I would lay on the floor in front of the TV with a pad and pencil and silently draw rather than bounce off the walls and get into trouble. I know the television of the fifties from the audio, I wasn’t watching I was drawing.

I majored in art in college and when I graduated I tried to make it as an artist and a printmaker, but I really didn’t try very hard. In my twenties I had the perfect job for an aspiring artist, I tended bar at the Black Forest Inn, near the Art Institute and frequented by the local art crowd. I could get by on working 3 shifts a week so I had lots of time to develop my skills. But like so many things in my life, I was distracted by another obsession. I was addicted to pickup basketball, and I spent that time working on those skills. All I have to show for that is really bad knees. But that’s a different story.

I moved on to “commercial art.” In quotes because it’s an old term that folks in field absolutely hate. I plan to address the artificial divide between “fine art” and the applied arts. Something I’ve never quite understood.

I worked as an illustrator, an animation inbetweener (yes that’s a job title), a production artist, a newspaper layout artist, a graphic designer and unfortunately a manager of a group of artists. I say unfortunately, because I was the poster child for the Peter Principle, I sucked at management.

On the other hand I don’t know shit about art. I was at best a mediocre art history student. I’ve never read much about art theory or aesthetics. I do love museums and galleries and combing the internet for art of all kinds. But I can’t make any claim to being a critic or knowing anything about current trends in fine art.

So, this is the beginning of a series of posts about art. I’m not doing this to educate anyone but myself. Hopefully you won’t think it’s complete bullshit.

Freedom

Art, Life

One of my favorite illustrations that I did for Computer User. Notice the hardware… it was a long time ago.

Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to get paid for making art. Most of the time, I’ve been constrained by the needs of clients. I once had a gig doing highly rendered illustrations of grocery products for newspaper publication. I did them with stippling technique, building the values with tiny dots. I was pretty good at it but it was intensely boring and unsatisfying from a creative standpoint. Most of my work was editorial, illustrating articles for publication, which is a lot more creative, but the work is still directed by the content of the article.

I’m semi-retired now and have the freedom to create whatever want. WTF! What do I want to create?  Right now I’m getting in the groove doing small impressionist still lifes and landscapes. I’m enjoying the work and I’ve gotten good feedback, but I’m not so sure that’s the direction I want to go.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve gone pretty far down the abstract rabbit hole. I still want to explore that direction, with both digital and natural media.

But for now I’m enjoying the challenge of working with paint to make it do what I want and using color and value to express light. The discipline involved in this study brings a heightened awareness of the visual world. I notice color and form more intensely and from a new perspective.

For me it’s a form of meditation.