four drawings

morandia

morandia, originally uploaded by m_napper.

cadium red

cadium red, originally uploaded by m_napper.

She's Lost Control, Again

archive94_diary1

archive94_diary1, originally uploaded by m_napper.

basic

basic, originally uploaded by m_napper.

in memory of a dead sailor

in memory of a dead sailor, originally uploaded by m_napper.

(the) dealer

(the) dealer, originally uploaded by m_napper.

m.z.

m.z., originally uploaded by m_napper.

corrosion 1

corrosion 1, originally uploaded by m_napper.

experiment 179.1 (not a painting but a found piece of film)

experiment 179.1, originally uploaded by m_napper.

....scribbled notes, crude drawings, traces of dry pigment patched over and buried by thick passages of oil paint, discord and disjunction of line, surface, tone, evoking associations of flesh, earth, landscape, broken communication...visceral transmission of reticent desires.....shame scratched on and over, the surface a topography of intimacy and introversion, an artifact of desire and denial....
An incident of chaos in a bucolic field.......A puncture in the plane......a moment of loss....a moment of resurrection......
The word or gesture "seeping"/"emerging" from the "fissure" or crevice......could be a fragment of a word, handwritten in script.....Doubt......that is a particularly instrumental and inherent aspect of what the work is about. The same can be said about life in general.

widow's house

widow's house, originally uploaded by m_napper.

graphite and oil medium on gessoed watercolor paper

clown (w/out make-up)

clown (w/out make-up), originally uploaded by m_napper.

untitled

untitled, originally uploaded by m_napper.

portrait: heinrich mahler

portrait: heinrich mahler, originally uploaded by m_napper.

widow (PD-16)

widow (PD-16), originally uploaded by m_napper.

fragments redux

An incident of chaos in a bucolic field.......A puncture in the plane......a moment of loss....a moment of resurrection......


-blood: dominant in cheerful, optimistic types
-black bile: which renders a soul gloomy and melancholic
-yellow bile<: the source of irritable and angry attitudes
-phlegm: ruling cool, detached and unemotional types


.... pot-holes in the work, disjunctive areas, hints at imbalance, incompletion, loss....


+vague itinerary
+feverish, but also porous
+Payne’s Gray
+diminished conciousness
+acknowledgment of imperfection
+"seeping/emerging"
+Stains, fragments, shards, splinters, memories, echos, ghosts, traces, rudimentary frames, whispers, dust, notes.


Doubt......that is a particularly instrumental and inherent aspect of what the work is about.


an artifact of desire and denial....

laboratory, 3 a.m.

arena

corner 1

untitled no. 1

dunce redux

passage 1

in the shadow of a dunce

alembic (blinded)

nightwire 2

nightwire 1

on imperfection

The idea that comes to mind when looking at the some of the best paintings and drawings, the best work really in all sorts of art forms, is that they embody an acknowledgment of their own imperfection. And this suggest humility, humanity, honesty. Life is off-kilter, unfinished, damaged...so, in a way, the best works are a manifestation, a mirror, of these aspects of life: not an idealization of one aspect (perhaps beauty), but an amalgamation of the mistakes and corrections of a journey or process.


What will be the physiognomy of painting, of poetry, of music, in a hundred years? No one can tell. As after the fall of Athens, of Rome, a long pause will intervene, caused by the exhaustion of conciousness itself. Humanity, to rejoin the past, must invent a second naivete, without which the arts can never begin again.
E.M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

Notes

...navigating
botanical density
mind
a garden
words and memories
abandoned structure
dry/barren/dusty,
possibility of growth.
Burying things in the paintings
partial excavation during a moment of courage
erasing or covering them over
the demands of societal decorum.
riches without receipt.

Notes

Atmosphere.
Buried and exhumed.
Fragility.
Broken-ness.
Phantom systems.
Layers, erasures, mistakes, retractions, regrets, exultations.
Manifestations of doubt.
An incident in a bucolic field.
Distilation. Dispersion. Decay. Delineation.
Alchemy.
Artifacts, terrain, amulet.
Blood, earth, ash, moss, mud, milk.
Subterranean.
Gray, the color of doubt.
Enchantment.
Seepage.
Fissure.