The basket list

Hi Robert, after 10 days I’m into chapter 8 of a book I’ve begun writing on my experiences as an artist, but also a healer and a shaman, and I am constantly jotting down thoughts so as to not forget them when I pull the program back up and do more actual writing. I’d refer to it as scraps of paper and envelopes and napkins and notepads if I happen to have remembered to bring one. Writing ON a basket probably isn’t going to very effective! But I have to slightly disagree with Jack London- The term inspiration breaks down into IN SPIRIT- and Spirit does in fact float around in the air, connecting us all together. So inspiration can be picked up by more than one person and it’s best to act on it if you get a really good hit. I’m very proactive, always looking for inspiration everywhere in everything, but all I really have to do to get it is to be open to receive it. Going after it with a club is so caveman-like, masculine overkill so to speak. I’m a male obviously, but I’m directly connected to my feminine nature as well, and therefore not closed down to just receiving that inspiration directly! It’s pretty easy to be this open. As much as I’m WRITING a book, parts of it I’m just channeling.

Actually, I tend to agree with London. Years and years ago I had a high school art teacher, Miss Flora Wright bless her memory, who would not let us sit long merely contemplating. “Get moving”, she’d say, “action brings inspiration.” Works for me, as we say. For more than forty years making a living at art, it’s action that gets thoughts moving.

When I am positively drunk on inspiration I often sober up to a mediocre canvas. I try not to let inspiration get in the way of perspiration (to revise the old chestnut). Sometimes, when I’m in my cups, I’ll take an old scraped down panel and throw a lot of stuff at it as fast as I can, to get it all out of my system. It’s fun, but usually it’s just therapeutic. After one of those sessions I can get back down to the act of making art.

You read my mind – I just created my own Bucket List on Sunday, for the projects I want to do in the next few months. Great minds….

At the top of my creative basket list is knock myself and others people of their professed center, disarm self righteousness. Surprise and disarm constantly. Soon as a character thinks he “knows” something. Strip it away, stomp it to dust. At least that’s my thought today. Maybe, tomorrow I’ll expose beauty in unlikely places. Chasing it out of the dark with a stick! Luv the thoughts!

I enjoy all the ones you send but this one struck a particular cord. What a great idea. There are many things I see that when I see them, I think I’d love to paint that. Then you carry on driving or walking and forget about them. I’m going to start making a list. I paint for my own enjoyment when I can get some time but always read and enjoy your articles.

I like that statement going after inspiration with a club. I get so tired of my artist friends who say they are not inspired to paint lately and so avoid coming out regularly to our local art club. I find inspiration everywhere I look but now I will take out my little memo book and jot them down thanks. One question though what are 3 degrees of shadow? If you are in Prince Rupert again stop by and see the Easel Weasels……

Oh, I love this! So true~ and inspired my remembrance of an anthropomorphic sense about an Airstream — quite the opposite of grumbly…joyful, instead — that I saw behind Shady Grove in Austin, TX.

One more time, after many other times, you have inspired me. Now I am determined to go back into my studio and experiment again, hoping for a painting I can say, “YES!” to.

Love those little drawings on lined paper. They look so fresh. Wonder if you should do an oil of the little drawings as they are on the paper with the funny edges.

Love this tactile wish list.

Although you must surely receive thousands of appreciative letters from around the world, I do want to add mine to your pile. I live in Sunny South Africa and do painting as a very hesitant new hobby now that I’m 70, but I have always enjoyed the many facets of creativity in my life. So I love the way you touch on general creative ideas in your letters. Your English is such a pleasure to read and your comments and stories are inspiring to me. Thank you for your generosity and the pleasure you give to so many people twice every week. I think you are a genius!

I must master the color you see when you peer into a glacial crevasse — that luminous aquamarine-into-ultramarine that glows from within. It is that same hue you see in the most exquisite ice bergs.

You’re welcome to go to Argentina, that’s where I am from originally. Let me know if you ever make it, my family owns 2 rather big farms in Buenos Aires you can go and paint from I’m sure!

Gad..I finally got to draw from a model and proceeded to put face on canvas two days later! This sure inspired me again. Just one of a list of new things to add to the basket list. Thanks..I love you..

The poetic quality of the notes in the basket list as proposed by Robert serves to make them a little “art form” in themselves, and worthy of reading and re reading. They appear to be thought out and nurtured into shape, a characteristic not far from the creation of visual art.

Your basket list is perfect! Words open the mind to possibilities limited only by the imagination. Yea! And thank you for a elegant solution to all the messiness of being exposed to the internet age of art.

I have gotten away from being creative. I have “back issues” of your letters in my inbox. I always planned to read them. I always planned to do more creatively. I’ve had some health issues that I have blamed for my inactivity, but in reality it’s mostly just an excuse. However, the desire to be creative has always burned in me — sometimes just a candle flame, but it has never burned out. I’m 62 now, and feel very unfulfilled creatively. I have made up my mind recently that this has to change. I haven’t touched a pencil or brush in months. I want to touch them, use them, and wear them out. So I’ve made three immediate goals: 1. Change the focal point of my life to life. Sad to say I’ve allowed myself to become the dreaded couch potato, or chair potato in my case. I’ve been missing out on so much, but I’m going to make the next 25-30 years different. 2. Read your letters. This made the list because they always pump me up creatively. They make me want to do. There is so much in them to savor intellectually and creatively. I’d kind of forgotten that. 3. Get my studio in order and get to work (which will take some doin’). So why am I writing this to you? I don’t really know, unless it’s to get these commitments down, and for someone else to see them. I am very grateful for the work you put forth in making so much of yourself available to other artists in such a positive way. Thank you. Montgomery, AL

I’ve often seen brilliance as the one on a cliff’s edge looking out at the sun set far beyond the mountains and saying to them self… one more step and I’m going to fall for you. Thanks for the tutorial — I read it like eating cornflakes on a dreary morning. …shards of glass, interesting — strong gradation, yes….

So Bruce Wicox says “Spirit does in fact float around in the air”. I always thought a fact was, in fact, a fact, not a figment of the imagination. The two should not be confused with each other.

I’ve always thought a notebook was a useful place for notes. A sketchbook serves that purpose as well. Doesn’t really matter what we call the entries. The point is to note the thoughts when they occur so they’re available for future reference and use.

I’ve never been a list maker. My wife likes to make lists and I chide her one this and she gets even with me when I forget to purchase something. Lists have an ominous connotation with me. I can imagine going into cardiac arrest if I don’t accomplish the things on my list. I have enough psychoses without adding to them with lists of things I never get to. Lists also suggest a routine and even thought my life is routine, I balk at routine inside. I like my painting ideas to be spontaneous. I like the idea of seeing something and responding to it with a fresh approach. Although I’m beginning to mellow a bit and repaint works at a later date that need some extra touches. Lists for me are a constant reminder that I am not painting enough or that I don’t have time enough to paint all I would like. I wouldn’t want to spend too much time on a list that I could have spent on painting. I guess if it works for you, do what works.

I hate to break it to you Peter, but not only are you Spirit- you are floating around in it too. It is in you, recognized or not, and you are in it. It is IN FACT- all there is. There isn’t anything else. You exist in a state of separation from recognizing you are spirit, but that’s an illusion. It’s not real. However, holding on to thinking it’s real keeps your state of separation in place. You could, if you chose, do you own necessary work to come to this realization, to become Self-Realized. Then you’d Know too. Until then you can remain unenlightened. I couldn’t care less! There are however, a whole lot of us human beings who both already have, and are, moving into a new level of conscious understanding. I regularly speak FROM THERE because I can. So do yourself a favor and don’t be so foolish as to suggest I’m the only one. Look around. Google works as well for consciousness information as it does for porn, or even art…

Is Google an illusion or is it real?

Interesting the two of your “basket list” are also on mine. The wheel tracks in snow still languishes there after an aborted attempt to portray it by weaving paper. The other one (abstract and unusual shards of ice) has become both a photo and a pastel. So that one made it out i=of the idea basket. Not sure whether either rendition is headed for another kind of basket. Enjoy your letters a lot. The ideas creep into my practice willy nilly.

I recently wrote this piece about inspiration, perhaps a different take then what you expressed, but I too jot down notes to get a grip on my wandering thoughts that take no heed of time.Thanks for the reminder that it gives life a full circle. I am often asked where my inspiration comes from and I usually respond duly, diligence and determination, but this question perhaps, deserves a more thoughtful answer. Many artists wish to respond to the beauty, or conversely, the anguish of the world, or use their art as a sort of spiritual threshing floor to sift through an emotional journey. It seems to me that almost all art accomplishes one extraordinary thing; it connects mankind to his ancestry. It is true that we seldom think of it this way, but art is relevant because it either sees our present or it expresses our past. This doesn’t mean each individual can identify with all art. If someone says they appreciate all forms of music, they probably never really listen to any of it. So what part does ancestry play in inspiration? Well usually that is the second question I am asked, who are your influences? I can site a litany of them. Anyone who really wants to grapple with paint should have a long list, so as to know whom to blame for their current intoxication. Inspiration is a conspiracy. It is the blatant act of mimicking our hero’s and the heroic act of having the audacity to call it our own. It is this later display of mutinous courage that marks a composition as original. It is what makes it threatening and exciting, at least briefly, until it is consumed by the conflagration of imitations it sparks. That would be about the end of it, if did not resonate with some one whom, in another generation, rediscovers it, and is inspired to call it their own

This letter is easily utilized with any artistic media.

Wow! There are some incredible artists here for sure! Kudos to you all! However, I find some to be very self-centred, maybe marketed in the BIG CITY??? I am from a very small village and I don’t think I am less talented than you, but you must keep your egos intact people…holy cow! Yes, the rich will buy from you because they are told, but from me? HA! Not a chance till it’s sold!!!

Hi, reading about Robert Dublac….has he thought of the never ending changing of style and mediums an artist can get into?! I painted in oils (Oh, yes, the ‘true’ medium….) and would not bend, as much as I love it that I learnt the techniques, but then I found oil pastels, collage with ink and gouche, charcoal in all sorts of unconventional settings…. and, after learning anatomical drawing and all the jazz, ‘doing it properly’, I now draw as I would play because I LOVE it and peculiarly, THIS is the stuff everyone loves!

Sorry that Non-Objective Robert has such an ego that he doesn’t realize that art is a commodity. The train left long ago for that non-representational grad school imagery. I sold well with a certain style in the ’90’s, and technological innovations have dried that market up. I moved on. Most people don’t realize how rarefied the place of known artists. We now compete in the global market. There are many small regional galleries cater to the people who live near them. They get plenty of ” ‘atta boys “. If you have been producing since the ’70s, them you should be in the mature part of your career and should be mentoring anyway.

I find Robert’s work rather dated and caught in the 1960’s abstract trap. I am glad that there is a renaissance of realistic work. Now living in Greenwich Village, NY I recently saw some stunning work in NOHO of that ilk. There is a place for non-objective and very experimental work. But once it is done it’s hard for me to get real excited about another white-on-white. A wonderful thing about living in this time is the acceptance of a wide range of styles and materials. Hats off to all those pioneers who pushed art to the limit but the study of historic styles whether it is Impressionistic, Classic, Modern or even Baroque is now an option and prerogative for the modern artist. All of that makes the making of art much more interesting to me.

I’ve never had a bucket list. I pretty much have had the universe give me what I am passionate about because focus = action = effect. I’ve never said ‘someday’, I’m going to…? because what’s missing is the focus and the action. I like Robert’s basket list better. When people ask,’how do you get to do (whatever it is I’m into), I politely ask what’s holding them back ? I had a workshop participant last year tell me I was on their bucket list. I was stunned for a second, even a bit embarrassed. Then smiled to myself as I realized I’ve always had an ‘anything but a bucket’ list…

I love the light in Robert’s paintings! Reminds me a bit of a decidedly non-abstract painter, Mary Pratt. I like Robert’s work very much.

I have felt that doing the work of art that is your style, your heart, your passion is this inner side of YOU. No one else has this “specialness”, only you. I may be different…or my style may be different, and that’s OK. So what. So, your art doesn’t sell and doesn’t seem to be recognized. Many artists aren’t recognized. Just follow your passion, do the art that’s in your heart. Keep knocking on doors and one will open—just because it’s you!

I know what you mean. My work, for the most part, is AE. But if you don’t do what you feel, your work won’t be authentic. It just won’t feel right, and probably won’t work.

I love these—particularly Thompson’s Field, Augosto, and Essex. I hope you keep making them as art world fashions come and go!

I don’t do lists and I don’t do sketches. If I did, like Dr. Bridlington, that is as far as I would get. I have lots of photos, though, and no shortage of inspiration – just have to act upon it. Thanks to Frank Bales for his list – it saves me making my own. Re his # 2, I do welcome and read your letters the first thing in the morning, and i really enjoy viewing the works of other artists. (P.S. – Found your response to Robert Dublac interesting. I came to my “creative space” much later in life; perhaps that is why I lack his sense of entitlement.)

I will read and re-read the powerful information you have sent today. I will get a “basket list” going. Since I am a mature (I like to think “painter”) I will need to paint a little faster. I dream some of the paintings I don’t have on canvas as yet!

the photographic images are arresting, but it was impossible to figure out where the painting edges were. It looked as if the paintings might still be on the easel so that the easel became part of the painting. Maybe that’s the idea. I only suspected that the photograph included more than the painting because some of the verticals seemed tilted.

Ideas seem to float in the realm of imagination .They appear to one artist and, if not created , float into another artist’s vision until they are “birthed”. I have seen paintings that I thought of creating and never brought to reality, done years later by someone else.

Astounding !! Loved these pictures..

I very much like Robert Dublacs work, sadly, I have no money.

I have money, but I golf.

I love Robert Dublac’s works you have posted. Don’t be discouraged, Robert. This is quality work and bound to be recognized as such sooner or later.Stay with your muse.

I am a galleriest and show a lot of abstracts. It feels like Mr. Dublac’s work lacks emotion. He may want to revisit his committment.