journal excerpts | 1993–2023
Jay Burton Tracyborn 1956, Charles City, Iowa
currently lives in rural North Iowa
10.2023
a sublimation of gesture in the ruptured quotidian—
a sublimation of gesture in the futility of the whole—
a sublimation of gesture in the fugitive authentic—
wobbles in the approximate
elective affinities to transience and indeterminacy
the ruined sky
select details of relationships to circulating (cycling) states of being
...
illusion(ment) ⇆ disillusion(ment) ⇆ re-illusion(ment)
07.2023
nothing is gained in gazing
upon the clotted brushes
and rags of the mastersthe work is sufficient—
it is question and answer
...
practicing mistakes in order
to learn from them is the opposite
of dismantling the traps of expertise
04.2023
there is no security or compensation
for the improviser who journeys past
the safety of plans and algorithms
will you praise danger and risk demise
through perilous revelation
who will protect those who perish in discovery
and a pointless harvest of evidence
09.2021
how i work reflects my understanding
of the world, but how i paint resembles
methods some archaeologists use to
excavate prehistoric mounds.
my paintings are by-products of very slow
processes. they locate form inside an accre-
tion of material gestures that are sometime
colorful and sometimes violent. Gestures pile
up on each other as sediments do on the banks
of meandering rivers. as they deepen, they are
selectively altered and sometimes destroyed
through various mechanical or (sometimes)
chemical means (e.g., abrasion, scratching,
scoring). this stratigraphy of damage accu-
mulates until I determine that work on
the work is over.
because time is a process, the time spent
making my work is part of the work. i don't,
however, view my work as ever being fully
resolved or “finished”. my challenge is,
and always has been, to know when
to stop working—to end the dig—
and move on.
04.2020the ruptured quotidian:
is it here, at the far end
of the cul-de-sac?
or, is it there, folded,
above the far end
of the cul-de-sac—
like bone and carbon?
...
aiesthesis:
an unelaborated, elementary awareness
of stimuation, i.e., a sensation of touch
the bare ground upon which a sense
of place accumulates
fossils as recall or intermittent reports
from the field
02.2020the molecular anxieties of the times
the noise that broke the first silence
our desire to organize it as a means
to end it
...
i operate inside a stratigraphy of damage,
working until I eventually arrive at what i see
or recognize as a reckoning and reminder—
that only some things have authors;
that significant work remains unfinished
if it is to exist beyond itself, unmediated
beyond interpretation
01.2020"we be made of many colors,
but our shadows fall in one."
—lee "scratch" perry, musician/music producer
...
a shimmering decade—
dappled green-gold
in bluest black
shade of passing clouds
10.10.2019he left us today—
first snowfall
07.2019acts of man and nature snap limbs off trees
it is perhaps the work of the artist
to understand and reverse the violence—
and, beneath ruined skies,
finish them again
03.2019
involvements in a push-pull encompassing
perception, seeing, looking, understanding,
making, presenting, and accepting form
and space as conduits for unique and peculiar
manipulations i find satisfying, worthwhile
and (occasionally) significant
12.2018
artists who approach materials conventionally
often do not understand where their materials
could lead them
i see engagement with the potential
of raw materials as making a case for
the physical plane of existence
04.2018
what was once a passage is now the entire work
12.2016 > 05.20.18
contraction > minimization > loss
upheaval > relocation/redistribution
(infinite) resignation > examination
assessment > reassessment
de-accession > grief/mourning
disillusionment > reillusionment
affirmation > reaffirmation
simplification > austerity
(godless) recovery > calm
10.2016
i am reminded that i've never met
a truly selfless person
...
this morning i walked past a place that was
to be, two minutes later, the site of the worst
gas explosion this city (Portland, Oregon)
has seen in 30 years
one primary blast, one secondary blast,
and several reverberating echoes
suddenly—and for just an instant—
all the windows in the surrounding buildings
were distorted and reflected something else
09.2016
fragility and instability—
a miasmic intimism
...
fusing some of the more durable aspects
of drawing, painting, photography, and
printmaking within a conceptual frame
that enmeshes retinal and non-retinal
realities, i add sublimated gesture and
the transformative agency of heat to
the optics of my work as it stakes a claim
and makes its case for the physical plane
of human existence
...
evidence of the hand in a damaged
stratigraphy of accretion; of commitment
and redaction
07.2016
consider the focal length of heat and its signature
05.2016trees sway overhead—
through a comb of wind
the listener listens,
listening
03.2016
it is less about composing or constructing
pleasing, plausible spaces than it is generating
and distributing a full spectrum of shadows
lent by fugitive forms
01.2016what would happen to poverty if we mini-
aturized ambition? what impact would it have
on art and artists?
12.2015
today i read a book and, for the entire time
i was reading, none of the characters in the
book were online or on the phone
they were doing things i felt were (and knew
to be) far more interesting than what we're
all seeming to be doing at this exact moment
in time
10.2015
the radix of communication is the invention
of the campfire—
the extension of day into night
and the development and cultural
transmission of language
09.2015
the ark stood firm on ararat; th’ returning
sun exhaled earth’s humid bubbles, and emulous
of light, reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic
guise hope’s harbinger, ephemeral as the summer
fly which rises, flits, expands and dies
—j.m.w. turner, the fallacies of hope
...
the wind has shores as does the sea—
do not worry about the direction it takes
aftermath is prelude
...
each convincing image is flanked
by less convincing others
we are confident in the behavior of objects
do not overlook the value of unconvincing
glimpses for they too point to and from
unknown, unfamiliar places
...
in the gloaming,
the solitary walker stumbles—
alone and nameless
nostalgic for a million different futures
...
the transformative nature of art is never
revealed in idle arrays of the artist’s tools,
nor the shelves of stored materials
the wild alchemy of the mad artist-scientist
in his laboratory is a popular fabrication of
the consumer, but may, when useful, be conjured
by the artist when it is absolutely necessary
or in his or her best interest to do so
08.2015
one no longer chooses isolation—it is manifest
consider how this changes the landscape;
how one sees paintings or any other local
manifestation of the hand
...
not colors, but indications of invisible
chemical agency
...
fabrication is the literal manufacture
of a thing as well as its falsification
05.2015
i have been listening (and this is what it said):
nothing changes except that which has to.
...
on/after twombly:
the culture of superficiality (surface)
and the ontology of depth (in deception
or illusion)
the vexation of painted sculpture, eliminated
in painting with stain
the memorial voice of scupture
and the slapdash rime of white paint
...
ambiguity cannot rationalize chaos
for the inexpert
03.2015the running length of a meandering river shares
a similar proportionality to the distance from its
start and end points as a circle's circumference
does to its diameter (pi).
no grand plan unearthed. simply a beautiful
appearance of consistency in reality manifest.
...
the architectural equivalent of italicized text
02.2015scud the glitter—
check abash, undo.
...
"...humanity's problems stem from man's inability
to sit quietly in a room alone."
—Blaise Pascal, Pensees
10.2014
under a ruined sky
the darkened world thrashes and pauses—
a turbid interregnum amid prospects of light
...
cautious regard(ing)—
watching cannot locate things
...
when is it a painting?
when there's nothing left to do
...
intentionality deflected by a kind
of planlessness the work comes forth—
on its own; in its own terms
...
paintings are assertions that suffer
no company.
...
resign from the cult of personality.
dispense with the traps of expertise.
find open ground on which to stand.
then state your case.
08.2014exclusion in inclusion—
a new class of digital provincials has emerged.
07.2014
"i have returned to the crash site several
times. there is a field of sunflowers where
rescue workers found headphones, laptops
and some of the dead on the first night.
sometimes, or maybe always, the flowers
all face the same direction. ...it is as if they
want to tell me something."
—mauricio lima, reporting for The New
York Times on the day ukrainian separatists
unexpectedly blocked access to the crash
site of malaysian airlines flight 17, thwarting
recovery efforts protected by agreements
made with the malaysian government
(july 27, 2014).
05.2014
after a false start, i vacated the disjecta studio.
it was a beautiful day.
04.2014
nothing external validates this.
02.2014
pacto de olvido
there is a delicate perceptual ecology
in operation. its outward expression,
nearly always mediated by cultural
norms, helps us function with a sense
of purpose in what we are told is a wild,
fully malleable world. indeterminacy or
fear of the wild has throughout history
fueled the construction of empirical
and metaphysical belief systems, each
intended to methodically reduce, tame
or eliminate it. the practical failures
of these systems continue
to fascinate me.
in the information age—at a time
when so many individuals eagerly
self-sacrifice to the whims and eros
of virtual communities—i query:
is it still possible for art as we know
it to suggest or convey how reality,
illusion (and failed illusion) menace
and/or serve the soul?
how do historic artistic traditions
such as luminism or the picturesque
movement affect studio and post-
studio practices informed by the
myriad cultural reverberations of
post-War trauma and the effects
of turning the fragmented mirrors
of postmodernism on ourselves?
is disillusionment inevitable?
can it still posit virtuous possibili-
ties for re-illusionment?
...
work locates form
my recent work locates form inside
a stratigraphy of damage—a narrow,
imperfect space of accretion
and destruction.
the ruined sky paintings are material
metaphors for an irresolute unfamiliar—
a threnody for the mounting losses
of a highly illusioned world.
10.2013a dappled path moves
through darkness and light
overhead sails the ruined sky—
new clouds for the empty messiah
09.2013
to the extent a plow is a comb,
so, too, the arc of inquiry
is a painter's path.
...
a troubling trap is a hinge for liberation—
by operating in proximity with illusion,
we formulate manifestos tying our efforts
to human history and other convulsions.
06.2013
irony is but a single fold—
but irony can be lost
on the ironic
...
better to stumble over rough ground from which
all else falls away than accept (suffer) the grandi-
loquence of those who claim their way is peerless
and new—a slick avenue encumbered by blind
motivation, empty connoisseurship and the bland
privilege careerism affords.
05.2013
the sun does not rise to make a point.
02.2013
i would have sent a postcard from there
had i known where "there" was.
01.2013 (revised 08.2013)
no one questions the reality of virtual space
to those invested in it. it's the loss of quality,
i.e., the loss of resolution, suffered in uncritical
digital abandon that deserves our full consideration.
we all know passengers in slow- and fast-moving
trains recall different journeys. both remember
perfectly, but it is inside and among qualitative
and quantitative differences that ambiguity
makes itself at home.
these are fresh manifestations of an old
and familiar relativism—an ignorance of
still another flavor.
11.2012
"any production of the mind is important
when its existence resolves, summons up
or cancels other works, whether previous
to it or not."
—paul valery, french poet/essayist (1871–1945)
...
"min is the ruine of the highe hales,
the falling of the towers and the walles."
—geoffrey chaucer, english poet (1343–1400)
...
what one does with one's hands—what is
handmade—can be seen as a kind of honor-
ific; a gratitude expressed for having had
a past, regardless of whether memory
and longing embrace it or joyous and
willful purposefulnness dispense with it
...
cultural bankruptcy is not the empty wallets
of those who attend art openings and fail to buy
09.2012
the best art is still—a local object
...
what i grant is this—these are places:
places as context for locating form (and the work)
in the possibility and improbability of arriving.
...
"it's a place that promises future conditions
of this same condition, a future particularity
of this indecision, this hovering. in a word,
it promises future creation.
that's the only place it can be."
—philip guston, american painter,
in conversation with harold rosenberg (1965)
05.2012
the new paintings were made during
a protracted detour through a creative
cul-de-sac; an unexpected place beyond
whose borders the horizon has gone
missing and stone-filled winds ruin the sky.
these works are autobiographical
as any work bearing evidence of the artist's
hand is, but they are autobiographical, too,
to the extent they register a complaint
and render in physical terms the extent
to which I mourn the mounting losses
of the world.
brutal and lyrical; cathartic in effect,
the paintings conjure simple associations
with the terrible power of storms in order
to suggest as well the reflective calm that
often precedes and follows them.
as metaphoric object-images, they make
a case for the physical plane. as art, they
are the jungle and the stars; an exploration
of the delicate ecology of illusion, disillusion-
ment and reillusionment.
04.2012
above the broken observatory
nothing placates the ruined sky
nor prowls the night
a dark portal frames and intensifies the view
soon, a glint—irradiant—illumes
02.2012
we have illusions because ignorance
is necessary for survival.
we become disillusioned as we learn
about ourselves and the world.
we seek reillusionment when we believe
we have learned enough.
10.2011
the path to the garden shines like rain—
a thick wall of stone and tile (positioned
diagonally) divides the beautiful garden
and the morning
steel bars fill its four window-like openings
blocking the path but framing the view
of the other side
07.2011 (revised 02.12)
"the mind is not a vessel to be filled,
but a fire to be kindled."
—plutarch, greek philosopher
if teaching is possible, this is how it is done
if learning is possible, this is how it is done
...
consider the subversive potential
of the unexpressed
a traditional landscape is as potent
a creative dislocation as ten tons
of chocolate presented on a pedestal
...
be not offended by tonight's mess of stars
06.2011
this is not the weather of the world.
when one compares the institutional finger-
pointing morality of 11th century tombstones
with the smash-and-scatteration of contem-
porary post-studio art practice, it is apparent
to me (as I imagine it might be for most
cultural observers) that creative progress—
or the climate of creative progress—is a
careerist iinvention measured not with
monuments but, rather, by the "weather"
they create.
...
the place beneath this place
stood here long before
we looked skyward
and then home
nothing comes back—
behind the mirror (and before it)
all reflection is imperfect
to glimpse the sublime,
must one stand in the midst of ruins?
04.2011
size as the birthplace of spectacle
scale as within the purview of the sublime
01.2011
art is a perfect mirror of broken things
12.2010
we terrorize ourselves
in leakages of redacted reality
in seeking, one seeks the sublime—
fearlessly, eyes open
09.2010
stressing the importance of finding one's voice
precludes the prospects for silence in the twin
discoveries of what can and cannot be said.
(a remark overheard at the gallery opening)
"i have misplaced my discomfort and believe
it can be found somewhere in this room."
meaninglessness consists not in the rupture
of meaning, but in its utter absence. the willful,
fractured chaos of postmodernism is a failure
in this understanding.
...as if meaning resides in the particular
(the particulate).
08.2010
the granular assertions of smash and scatter-
ation, two dominant models for post-studio
artistic practice and object making, are less
clever revisionist strategies than certain
redundant modes of formalism, automatism
and expressionism; an uncritical accumulation
of the unassimilated—blunt objects fueled
by irony, illuminating nothing.
...
i continue my search for inspired misreadings
and the possibility of happy accidents.
07.2010
dismantling the discontinuous makes alchemy
possible again.
06.2010
private experience informs creative
action. if its artifacts do not embody
or enrich experience, nothing is delivered.
11.2009
"a man's work is nothing but this slow trek
to rediscover, through the detours of art,
those two or three great and simple images
in whose presence his heart first opened."
—albert camus, french author and philosopher
06.2008
the new paintings speak from an empathetic
place at a time when even the simplest signals
confuse and the bees have lost their way.
03.2006the ecology of form is delicate, seductive
and uncertain. drawing shapes the investi-
gation and approximates the findings.
forsaking intentional structures, a vista
of possibility opens.
12.2005abstraction thrives in a contingency
of reference. lacking reference, one
approximates. blind, shy of intent.
06.2005 (revised 06.2008)peripheral vision is acute and under-exercised.
have you ever tried to resolve details in the night
sky and discovered that elusive stars come for-
ward with unexpected clarity when you
divert attention to the periphery?
i am interested in assembling visual metaphors
for this and other kinds of "disinterestedness".
i am unconcerned with mimesis, the cult
of personality and overt displays of technical
prowess. i work to better understand the
relationships between the seen and the unseen.
i must be vigilant. there are traps of expertise
even for the blind and disinterested.
04.2005
one thing leads to another and its reconciliation
is form.
07.2003 (revised 09.2006)the process of illumination is a subject
in my work. through it, all things are created
or destroyed.
04.2000 (revised 06.2008)"thought is only a flash between two long nights,
but this flash is everything."
—henri poincare, french mathematician
my work hybridizes the paradigms
of drawing, painting, photography and,
to a lesser extent, sculpture. this is
the space of not quite knowing,
where rule and consensus merge
with the poetics of doubt. here, yes
is no and absolute silence is radically
beautiful. the actinism of light—its
ability to trigger chemical reactions—
is an apt metaphor for the expression
of thought.
though central to the development
of photography, photoactinism has rarely
been exploited as means and end.
the photogenic drawings of anna atkins
(1799-1871) and the photograms of laszlo
moholy-nagy (1895-1946) and man ray
(1890-1976) were overwhelmed by
the aesthetic or sociopolitical aspirations
of the day and are difficult to see as direct
expressions of basic intellectual curiosity.
the leaf, not the presence or absence
of shadows, was the subject of this work.
04.1999i'm not concerned with the delivery
or suppression of content. because this
is so, my work may be seen as a critique
of the post-modern spectacle. by neither
locating nor prescribing meaning, the work
speaks but fails to explain itself.
05.1998the secret life of objects must include
the possibility of nothing being there
at all.
09.1997 (revised 07.2008)
what is is. and what is remains to be seen—
in the gazeless gaze and focused frame
of the observer observing.
11.1996photo-actinism lends shape to processes
and conditions lacking retinal reality. it suggests
the existence of another, fugitive world; one in
which intuition is the organizing apparatus and
uncertainty is the constant.
06.1996the creative act is nonlinear—
born in clarity, extended through approximation.
09.1993the overall shape of choices made is a life
and life is occasionally art.
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