early santa fe

the plaster walls and lighting were alive with our colorful paintings and the space open like a grand museum for our first opening. Feb 14, valentines day. cold and rainy, but we not to be deterred, were there early, the walls ablaze with color, light, and expectations . ten people came, a rainstorm hitting the little building, blessing us, the gallery little more than a garage with an office where i kept my art books and african sculpture, my lucky piece. i painted there everday, splashing everywhere in a fury of activity, stripped down to my shorts i was a painting machine letting loose color, more color, out with color jamie, let it rip and roar and dont stop anything that comes up and swirl , drip, rip and dont stop now baby your on to something. i don t know what it is but i dont care, with my shirt off, i m a painting savage and i m loving every brush stroke and every painting, until i put them out in the courtyard and look at them and wow thats really bad and then paint it out and start over, and that too being a great part of the act of creation and chaos colliding, and not being attached to the outcome. paint out the bones, whatever comes up follow, and follow, dont think, paint. great heady times. jgk

painting out the bones

i grew up painting and drawing, my mother made sure i had plenty of art books and took me to museums to look at art. in high school i studied watercolors at CCA in oakland, calif. later i had my own construction company, restoring houses, painting on and off. kismet entered, a serious illness drew me back to art, returning to health was a long slow process and art enabled me to be creative. i spent much of my time in museums looking at art unable to do much else, but it was a revelation, for the first time in my life i actually saw with all of my 5 senses and the unseen psychic senses, i experienced art as real, something wonderful was going on there on the canvas. art was there for me when nothing else was and i followed along as best i could. the more i looked the more i saw. i did hundreds of small paintings during my recovery. later when i got well i began to paint in earnest, fairly shocked and how bad of a hand i was at it. these early paintings were graffiti and child like, but they were a good beginning. i was coming to life. i found a teacher, a great sculpture, artist, jeweler, bob winston who became a mentor and friend, a zen master, poking holes in my ego, pushing me past old beliefs and any notions of grander, just paint, its enough. we talked about design, theory, ideas and new ways of looking at the world, but mostly i watched bob work, and work endlessly. well into his 80 s he was still making and enjoying the process of inventing. its a pretty fine tribute to the human spirit and he never turned me down, no matter what odd hour i showed to hang out and visit. when i left for santa fe the last time i saw him he walked me to the door of his studio, go forth and be a great painter and shut the door. some of my main influences are picasso de kooning, gaugin, de buffett and any of the german expressionists, latin painting . but really i like it all, any genre, any era, its all art. bios are just bios, its the work that important, if you like it that's all you need to say. as bob said paint ,its enough . jgk

food

santa fe is a cafe society, we new Mexicans love to get together eat, and socialize, talking about art, the snow, the cold, who is selling paintings, what galleries are hot, what artist is moving to what gallery, local gossip served over a bowl of harry's good soup, or green chili enchiladas with a brew and a toast to picasso for getting us into this painting life. in many ways food is the art in santa fe, i think more dialogue is spent on where the next great meal, great restaurant is going to happen. most of us tend to love the rustic cafes as opposed to swanky, and expensive ones. you can get a fabulous flat iron steak with mole enchilada and cowboys beans, or one of of harrys specials, cuban pork roast with grilled sweet potatoes and moja sause, red beans and rice, with around 12 dollars. fabulous. we know the chef mikey well enough to say hi to him as he s whisking off to his next great idea. its almost guaranteed you ll meet at least one friend at harry's and probably more, which could turn into a table hopping food fest, topped off by one of harry's wonderful dessert, great thick pies, homemade ice cream, a chocolate chip cookie warmed with a scoop of homemade ice cream, all wonderful. harry's staff are generally the best also and the wait staff become family. old route 66 leads the way to harry's and become part of the whole dinner ritual, the locals roaring in for food and friendship, my friend dean, 3 broken ribs, one collapsed lung not withstanding, within one week was holding court at harry's, ribs taped, aching head and wheezing lung wolfishly digging into a 5 inch piece of lemon pie, oh lordy church was in, harry we love thee, your cafe our real church of food and we often think what if there was no harry's, there d be no culture, no watering holes for our souls, because we new Mexicans love to eat and eat well and live well, and for us eating is living, eat well paint well jgk

art as business

today will be a chop wood carry water day. julie and i have to prepare some art packages to sen d off to a new gallery we are going to be in Atlanta, and we ve got to get one together to send off to a new york gallery for me. packages consist of slides, cds of our work and an artists statement, and a bio and or resume, where you ve been to school or who you ve studied with and what your art is about, exactly what i was talking about in my last blog, how to put into words what you do in the abstract. the more professional the package the better presentation, don't forget galleries get thousands of these sent to them continually. the new york gallery found me via the sale of one of my head paintings to a client who told them about me, they in turn looking at a web site i was on, contacted me. the Atlanta gallery found julie on the Internet and contacted her and she told them about my work, and they looked at me on our website and asked me to join in also. the web spins and spins. now we must follow up and send off our work and statements. all of this is a lot of work and we do it in the evenings. with the coming of the computer, the old ways, the dealer taking care of everything for the artist is gone, you have to promote yourself tirelessly, and constantly find new ways to get your work to your audience. we both know great artists who are broke and struggling who have no Internet presence, and have relied only on galleries for their livelihood and when sales go south they are stuck , waiting, waiting. julie and i have had our own businesses before and we are pro active in the pursuit of our careers, having put on our own shows and traveled and been letting the world hear about us, hey we re alive ,we re painters. some artists consider this a dirty business, but for those off us who ve worked 60 hour week and hustled and been in business it goes with the territory, work hard b e lucky, jgk our website is wwwsfabstract.com check out our bios, resumes, statements.

art is

the english painter francis bacon would not explain, what his paintings were about. he believed that any explanation would destroy the power and magic of the image, because in the pure painting process he liked chance and accident to drive the image out of the fog and the chaos of the experience. how can you describe an event that arrives from the chaos and beauty of the creative process. a process that is done alone with no audience, and wordless. in his later years after he was famous, he became a great talker, he'd done so many paintings perhaps he felt safe that his greatness, and the magic of making those fabulous, distorted, powerful modern images were safe in his genius. yet the world demands explanations, art becomes a commodity, ultimately to be sold to wealthy people, it must be understood to be sold, and the greater the mystery to be solved the more something must be explained, yet i have found that the people who bought my paintings needed very little explanation and most often did not need to know from me what a piece meant and in most cases didn't need to hear anything from me. the painting struck something in them, perhaps what i saw in it, mostly likely not and that to me adds to the great mystery of the whole art making art, buying process. people respond or they don't, the world and i think bacon is great, but julie doesn't like him at all, so dark, to sinster, the images twisted and forcibly disfigured, yet i see an artist blazing a path no one had ever ventured. the push and pull of making art, the unknown aaccidental stroke that leads to the finish of the painting and never knowing when that will come is part of the great wonderful experience of making art. i never want to know very much before i start, arriving in front of the canvas is quite enough. jgk

history

there's tremendous energies here in the desert, we're surrounded by 19 pueblos, there's history here and shedding of blood and the tribes pushing against each other and the Spanish who came in and then the Mexicans and there's bad blood and murder and deceit of the white men who lied,broke treaties and killed the Apache. the Apache warring against the Mexicans, and then hiding out as their lands were taken and then forced into the high country and the trail of tears is long and blood soaked and these are the lands i live on. who knows who passed by my house going on a war party headed into Mexico to steal and plunder. the Aztecs were supposed to have traded this far and the pottery in the area tells of tribes coming and going and skulls tell of warfare and violence. no wonder i feel so much, the whole spirit of the land echoes a violent turbulent past and we should remember it and maybe someday in the coffee shop when we're all huddled together talking about art and the lack of sales, i'll stand up and shout we're surrounded by a violent history, the tribe's bones are under our houses, and carlos whiteagle with his long hair and red head band will join in and second me, he being the only Indian in this part of the country, a tall striking Apache in full regalia, fringed jacket and conchos. whatever is here, all the old ways, the spirits rushing together, this energy i harness when i paint, i dip my brush in it as surely as i do my reds and blues and ochres and blacks and whites. the ghosts of the tribes, the blood of the trail, the harsh times, the people, this is what i want in my paintings. here let me paint the past, let me paint the sorrows, the long trail south, the wanting times, the ghost dance, the old ways and again the people. jgk

santa fe refugees

we re all refugees out here in the desert from someplace else. as my friend Ramon asks whose out there with you jamie, all gringos, and i say somewhat reluctantly , yes only gringos. julie speaks Spanish and so does of course ramon whose from Mexico, but that's about the only spanish i hear, outside of our housekeeper blanca. some of us have a real connection to this place, i grew up in scottsdale Arizona when it had only one solitary paved road , the rest dirt and mountain men and Indians actually gave to my fathers little laundry to get there clothes cleaned. we ve got displaced Texans, Bostonians, chevy chase Marylanders, Floridans, Minnesotans, Connecticut, new yorkers, Californians, and the list goes on and on, but i ve never met anyone who is from new Mexico, and it seems a little strange, just like Ramon asking where are the Mexicans? well they most be somewhere because when the weather is good its Hispanics working on the houses and buildings out here, and then at the end of the work day, they re gone and I'm stuck with the gringos. yet for all this there s what i call the new Mexicans, these refugees like myself and julie and my amigo jack who have e taken the place to heart and mind and marrow and cannot leave it, and feel the land, and the sky and the spirit of new Mexico and it sings through us and we cannot leave it and we take the solitude and the desert as a blessing. it fills us up like no other place and we want to add our our bones to the bones of the tribes that have come before us and it would take heaven and earth for us to leave. in jacks case he moved to California and now cannot sleep, hes in mourning and the tear so bad in his soul, he must find a way back to us, to the skies he loves ,to the open grandeur of the vistas, to his beloved four corners and eternal sunsets. we are not from here but we are new Mexico, and so we say bienvienidos jack welcome again.

full moon

a full moon in santa fe. coming out of the road house after dinner last night riding on old route 66 the full moon shining off the hills, the hills snow covered and with patches of juniper showing as dark spots and the snow glimmering on their flanks they looked like giant snow leopards, the hilltops looking feline and they shone ,laying there as if in wait for something to come by and we were the only car on the lonely road and julie and commented on the austerity of the place and would we rather be back in the bay area going out to dinner at some more upscale restaurant rather the road house and her saying, no i prefer it out here with my roadhouse roast, i think its quite marvelous and dinner was good a cuban pork roast and they gave julie the recipe so she could try it out herself and i said, weve got to be alone anyway in order to do the masterworks, ie. the paintings because thats what we love and are, painters, and she said, we have so many friends here anyway, theres enough distractions already. i said ive spent most of my life alone, its what i love and we speed on down the route 66 toward home. its our very own austere tibet she said, the moon lighting up the horizon.

LA musings and the freeze

It's 6 degrees out here, no it's consented to go up to 10. Julie and i just got back from the city of angels for a big art show downtown; we were recruited off the Internet. The gallery looked fine and we sent out our paintings and drove through palm desert where we had the best enchiladas I've ever had in a tourist watering hole. Life is full of surprises. City of angels was full of traffic and noise, bmws, shiny suvs and Mercedes ,all black. we saw one truck the whole week we were there. it took us two hours to go ten miles and the noise and stimulation was too much. the night of the show, oh man what a disappointment, it was cold, I'm under dressed, i get the chills, the gallery was terrible, the lighting ,yes there was lighting, was dull and made the paintings look well ,bad and we were surrounded by terrible art, yes really terrible art and i immediately wanted to run, but Julie said we have people coming and they did but it was a pity visit, they knew nothing about art and that along with scant and poor food and the worst gallery owners we ever meet, me "hi, we're here"; him: nothing, me: "hows business?" him shake of the shoulders and that's how the whole show went and of course no sales and us swearing never to put our paintings in a bad gallery and me not ever wanting to show alongside anyone again save Julie, and city of angels, men with makeup smoking cigarettes with women with makeup and heels so high they'd snap in the cobblestones in Santa Fe and me getting the flu and Julie doing all the driving in la and because of constant clutch work she sprained her knee. the city of angels body count. one flu case which developed into a constant cough, one sprained knee, no sales, x amount of dollars spent and our only la gallery contact with an alcoholic gallery owner whose face looked like all the wine he'd ever drank. oh and the body count add one more, because i fell out of my truck over thanksgiving and cracked a rib. Julie watched the movie no country for old men in la , shot in New Mexico, go figure and hated it. what a trip. and its cold cold here. jgk ps after all this we came home and an Atlanta gallery contacted Julie and signed her up and she mentioned me and they checked out our website and they took me also. go figure. website is wwwsfabstract.com

The Ice has Come

The cold white deadly ice has taken its toll on us out here. I have had a fall, no harm. Deano: 3 broken ribs, collapsed lung, Paulie: cracked back, Tom the potter: concussion. The desert giveth and the desert taketh.

no country for old men

The deadly frozen ice has struck. i fell getting out of my truck and landed on my elbow, no damages, but there could have been. Deano, my sculpture buddy, fell coming down his driveway at night. His feet flew out from under him and, as he says, headed for the stars. He landed on his side and head, knocking him out, breaking three ribs and collapsing a lung. he lay unconscious for some minutes before rolling himself down his driveway and into his house. He's now recovering with soup Julie made for him. It's a shame he had to get her soup this way-- always wanting something she'd made, she being a legendary cook out here, known for her green chili stew. Paulie the photographer was nursing a bad back from the same kind of fall, i saw him when i was picking up Deano's ingredients, and Tom the potter nursing a headache from three falls he said where he lives in Pecos. I call it the betrayal ice because it happens so quickly you never see it coming. Like a lover who leaves in the night or dumps you for another, the suprise is so fast and you're falling, falling on the ice that forms in sheets and clumps and hides out in the street or on your hill or just outside your door. My road home is still impassable unless i am in the truck with 4 wheel drive and every day i'm out Julie always asks how was the road? i say still unfit for those two pointing at the other truck and a honda which i always questioned why we have it out here. i asked Paulie in the store if all these falls meant we were getting old and he said, maybe just a little bit maybe just a little.

Highways and visions

when the night comes out here in the desert you must be on your toes, it is dangerous out here. there are no lights on the roads out here in the desert. when the sun goes down the roads melt into the night, until your car glides along the surface weightless. you become disoriented and must be aware of your speed at all times, which can climb quickly and deadly. you must also watch the road ahead of you as cars suddenly disoriented ahead of you hav e taken a wrong turn and are bearing at you in your lane thinking they in fact are safe and in the other lane. twice returning home we have swerved at the last second as a car has just missed us, while the road they were supposed to be on lay empty. they are many fatal accidents out here where there are no stop lights, no stop signs and if there were people would only use them as a suggestion. the indians believe there are spirits out here in the desert, not all of them good. they tell the legends of witches called skinwalkers, shapeshifters who change in the night and roam the desert comitting evil acts. one morning at sunrise i was on my way to town, it was that hour between the night and the day when everthing is hazy and your still not awake and uncertain when a large doglike beast came down the road toward me, much bigger than a dog, its tongue lolling out and the eyes shining and something metallic on its sides, strolling at a high speed like it owned the road, i turned to look and it had vanished. to this day i call it my magical beast and you may think i was seeing things, but in all my years in california i ve never seen anything like that. look the indians say look over your left shoulder and youll see the spirits. many times while sitting at my desk reading tne paper over coffee, half looking away i have seen shadows in the junipers moving quickly from one to the other. jgk

sunsets santa fe

Light orange against a dark outline of the Jemez Mountains, momentary pink above that and then gone, you've got to pay attention, things change fast out here in the desert. i always have extra clothes in my truck in case i break down at night. cellphones work some places, and then they don't. you need an ice scraper and a flashlight and a good pair of sturdy boots that can take the cold and wet. the snow lays all over the hills like a white woman soft and feminine and deadly cold, crimson earth surrounds her beauty, the dirt roads a deep brown red and the highways are redder from something they put down for snow. the whole valley, we sit on the top of a hill, with a long stretch of dirt road to the top, which becomes impassable in a big snow, lays out beyond us, dotted with adobe homes of all sizes and manner. one long lonely highway lays at the bottom of our hill and we see headlights from cars slowly make their way up the pass. on a good night in the summer the whole sky is ablaze with reds , purple, golds, that stretch all the way from Santa Fe down into the Galisteo basin. a good sunset can last for a half and hour or longer, each night topping the other for effects until you think one cant be any more beautiful than another, until a more grander, more magnificent sunset shows up the next night. jgk

rain and snows

Sheets of cold wet thick rain here in the high country followed by snow. We have a tin roof on our house and you can hear the rain hitting the tin and the snow falling off in clumps when it gets warm. The snow slams into the adobe dirt and there are all sizes of explosions and huge bangs as the snow discharges. If you keep the tv off and music off for days you tune into the desert and the rhythm and flow it brings. On the surface nothing looks like it is happening, just a giant brown ocean of adobe. If you listen ,you begin to hear songbirds, brother crow and the wind that comes up like a fury, the same wind that bedeviled Odysseus and bedevils all of us out here in the desert. It seems to come from the east and blows and blows until it drives you mad. At night it literally feels like it has fingers ripping away at our roof. In the morning we're always amazed that the roof is still there.
It's fundamental that when you live close to nature and out of the city how much the weather enters the fabric of your life. You can't work outside when the winds come, it will tear off your sun hat, ripping tools and materials from your hands and leaving them strewn over the landscape, and if you do steel yourself to this the head winds beat at you all day as you're pushing a wheel barrow hauling rock for a wall until you're beaten down and you start to feel as tall as the low scrub junipers that have found a way to squat low and let the wind blow over them. I've been out there for a week at a time in that wind, building an adobe wall with Ramon and come home with legs like jello and taken to my bed for three days. The weather is a third person out here. It takes on all the importance of any great tragedy, comedy. Turn off the tv, the news and just sit.
--Santa Fe, Jan7. my art site http://www.sfabstract.com/ for the visual part of my Santa Fe experience. -jgk

santa fe desert musings

Santa Fe is cold right now, 20 degrees in the morning, snow fall, clear skies, and steel grey evening sunsets, with a hint of orange, the house on the hill looks like a painting i saw in a gallery on canyon road, no better, my girlfriend, Julie, and i are in a gallery on canyon, Selby Fleetwood Gallery. Julie's work is figurative, like desert angels, my work is figurative, based on a lot of studies of Francis Bacon and Max Beckman, not as dark.

When the cold comes Julie sends me out to the studio with a cup of coffee and the hopes of returning later with a great painting. Sometimes it happens that way. We're surrounded by other artists' studios; you can see the lights in their studios at night like beacons. We see them and notice them but we don't know if they see us. They are all trying to make that next great piece of art just like we are. We can go for months never seeing them but we know they're there, we can feel the hum of the paint, the gears turning and see them loading paintings headed off for shows. We are a great breathing, churning art colony out here in the desert.

We have a lone bobcat that comes by our studio, he seems to appreciate abstract expression. There aren't many of us out here.
later--James Koskinas