Back in the Studio of Brian Rutenberg

Had the great pleasure of meeting this guy junior year of college, touring his studio in NYC, getting the gritty details of what it's like to live as an artist in that concrete jungle.

I was also really intrigued by his comparisons of art and music and story--how different colors juxtaposed created a "buzzing", how a painting could be read left to right, and the quality and length and intersection of lines and color planes created a sort of dynamic velocity leading to a climax and denouement.  Big inspiration for my thesis, back in the day.

Recently these videos came into my life: http://www.brianrutenbergart.com/video_doc.html

Here are some highlights (hastily transcribed as I made a Suzanne Mubarak collage--some of the fun of lesson planning for an art class):

"There is no instant gratification in a painting.  We need repeated encounters."  There are layers of information that we need to come back to, like seeds

He equates the decorative with pleasure--two things almost impossible to codify, two things that relate intimately with being fully present in the moment

The application of color as "percussive", the meeting of those planes as "tectonic"

"Sometimes the most beautiful colors are the muck and mud at the bottom."

"You need to carefully observe the transitions in your life" since, as in a painting, those are a sort of crux around which the whole rest of everything hinges

"A finished painting is a dead painting." --Picasso

Rutenberg hopes "an unfinished painting requires the consciousness of the viewer to fill in the gaps."

"My hardest day is still easier than someone else's easiest day...but painting is crucial in a subtler way.  Our job is culture.  We make the beautiful and the hideous collide at a hundred miles per hour."

"I feel most like myself when I'm working."

"Intuition is greater than instinct.  Intuition is informed spontaneity."

"In a painting you start like a bricklayer and end like a jeweler."

"There's nothing worse than a painting that tries to do too much."

"All of the content is located in the tip of the brush."

"The painting becomes finished when that blanket drops, when it attains transparency."

"An eye not told what to see sees more."

"If it sounds good, it is good." Count Basie

"You can't have movement and velocity without stillness."

"All I do all day is negotiate contrasts."

"There's too much emphasis on novelty in art."

"Inspiration's for amateurs.  The rest of us just show up and work." --Chuck Close

"Painting is about creating problems, not solving them."

"A painting (like life) is a series of slow motion trainwrecks."