This has been a busy week!

I’m preparing gifts—hats and tote bags—to give to a group of young people coming from Chicago to Ireland, sponsored in the United States by the Boys and Girls Club, and sponsored in Ireland by the City of Cork.

They’re coming to my studio, where we’ll talk about leadership, the Umbrellas for Peace, and how we can all make a difference in the world.

I look forward to these encounters.  These young people will eventually become leaders of our country.  I believe that we should do everything we can to encourage them to become risk-takers.

I’m glad they’re coming here to spend some time with this old fool on the cliff!  When they walk down the old brick road into the village, I envision them swinging their tote bags, going off to save the world.

As for my paintings this week—they have been blowing in the wind!  The patterns that are coming out are very exciting to me.  Every so often, I change out the rocks holding them down so they don’t blow away, and take great delight in seeing what happens when nature meets cloth and paint and a human being who doesn’t know any better than to introduce all these different and warring elements into something that can hang on a wall and be either detested or lauded.

It’s all great fun.  Day in and day out, I don’t know whether I should put on my sun suit or my rain suit, but it really doesn’t matter, because they all have their place, their duty, and they all perform it, as do all the animals, insects, birds, cats, and dogs that encounter my paintings—some with great delight and some with paws, beaks, or claws.  All are invited to come and look, walk through the melee, and leave their own impressions, whatever those may be.  To me, it’s a grand gathering of species that intrigue and delight the conductor of the paint.

We had lunch recently with one of our friends who is a painter.  She has some physical issues with her back.  She also lives in a rural area, and her studio is separate from her house, so there’s a lot of room on her property to throw canvases around.

I invited her to come look at my paintings and see the madness of the drips and the paintings that are outside.  For two or three hours we took great delight in observing the dripping of paint, the interaction of the sun, the wind, the rain, and the reality that every painting doesn’t have to be the Mona Lisa; it can be some strange relationship between paint, painter, gravity, and wind.

Her paintings are very striking and bold.  I visited her husband’s new office, and to everyone’s great delight, three of her paintings adorn the walls, and they look very much at ease.  They are strong statements of a semi-abstract and abstract mode, but she also explores all avenues of figurative work.

Because of the physical things she’s dealing with, she hasn’t been able to spend all the time that she’d like to with her art.  I had to go through that a year ago with my back.

The fortunate thing is that we don’t have to spend hours at an easel.  We can spend three minutes throwing paint on something and then watching it react to its surroundings.

We can also think intensely about our work somewhere other than the sanctity of our studio.  To me, painting is a living, breathing, moving world.  We are not the dictators; we’re just along for the ride.

Matt

When I look at my paintings from one year to the next, I see that the family is still the same.  They’ve just grown wiser, older, more complex, smarter, better teachers, more mysterious in ways and more open in other ways.

The review by me is a self-examination.  Am I going forward or backwards?

The static nature of paint on canvas and how it is accomodating it is to itself at the time that it is theoretically finished—that’s just the beginning of the interpretation.

Obviously, people are changing constantly.  The universe keeps moving all the time.  If we don’t move with it, we’re being left behind.  That’s why I have to look at it really from my own discovery, to see if I’m going forwards.

Are there new ways of looking at supposedly the same old manipulation of paint, the nuances of the characters, the development of the style, the mixture of the colors?  Have they become old and redundant?  Is the process a reproduction machine?  Or is it a great magnifying glass that I’m using to look into the wonders of the microscopic world that I’ve never seen before?

These are all personal challenges that give me my report card.I am still old of body but young of spirit.  I am still a risk-taker.  I am still very limited in my knowledge and learning.

I find the review not only challenging, but scary.  I love it.

Matt

Life is a smorgasbord.

We can take it or leave it.  We can choose what we’re going to do or not do.  That is the joy, the prerogative of our species.  If we want to eat grass or filet mignon, we can do it.

We are not slaves of some unknown gene that drives us to swim from coral reef to deep ocean.

We have choices, we make them, we live them, and we should love them.  If we don’t, we should examine what the hell we’re doing this for anyway.

So, as I always say, be at it!

And if it ain’t fun, the hell with it!

Matt

The most dangerous years are the years between 9 and 90.

Last week as I was painting, I decided that I was spinning too fast.  So I decided I would change my work habits for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

I built more rest and meditation into my days:  watching the waves, the birds, the fish, and letting my mind wander through what I was doing.

Because I’m in the beginning stages of accepting drips into my painting, I focused in my meditation on one of the main topics I’m dealing with:  where I’m going with the drip.  Was I really and truly accepting, or just kidding myself?  Had I really embraced the drip as I once came to embrace color as my friend?  Have I embraced the drip and turned from it from being a perceived enemy to a trusted friend?

As usual, I go back into my memory bank and look for similar situations, and on this occasion I recalled when I was first learning how to drive.

I was very young—I think it was sixth or seventh grade.  At that point, there weren’t all the rules and regulations that we have governing the driving of vehicles today.

My grandfather and father belonged to the Teamster’s Union, so I joined it, too.  I probably was one of its youngest members.  My grandfather owned a livery company, so I learned how to drive in Pierce-Arrow Limousines, Packards, Cadillacs, the finest machines made by man at that time, which my grandfather rented out to funerals and big events.

I was thrilled to be able to learn how to drive in them, but it scared the shit out of me to get into these grand cars with their throttles and shifting gears...  I delighted in the situation, but I was sure glad when I got out and the car was still in one piece, because I knew if there were so much as a scratch, it could be traced directly to me.  I don’t think my grandfather or father would have been very excited about me screwing up their cars.

So recently as I was meditating by the cliff, I thought maybe that’s what’s been happening with me and the drip.

A drip always responds to gravity.  Knowing that, I could look on that as either a weapon against it or a power that could be used.

When I look at the many canvases that I have dipped, and they lie on their backs in these giant racks, am I waiting, knowing that when I take them out, the viscosity of them will have become so entrenched that they will not drip?  Was I giving the drip a chance to happen, or was I the plumber, tightening the pipes to make sure the drip didn’t come out?

I decided to change my procedure.  24 hours before I was going to work on something, I took some pieces out of the racks that had not reached their acceptable time of drying yet, and placed them on the wall and let them drip to their hearts’ content.  There were pools of paint everywhere, and it scared the shit out of me!  It was like the cars.

I found it a great awakening that my power of not doing, was what inhibited the drip in the first place.  So what would happen if I helped it along?  What great things would develop?I found that I started turning them, first on their backs, then on their sides, and all of these interchanging lines started making wonderful patterns.  (It doesn’t take that much to excite me when it comes to patterns!)

I thought:  I’ve deprived myself of this great power for so long!  It was like getting out of the old Packard or Pierce-Arrow.  It was a whole other lesson for me:  that sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.  So my time on the cliff really was well spent.

As a final observation...  The only person I ever really ask about my work is Rose, so when I thought the paintings were well enough along, I asked her to come and look at them in the studio.  She looked at them for awhile and said, “I’m not sure whether I like them.  I’ll have to study them before I know whether I really don’t like them or whether I love them.”

Which was a great comment.  That’s really what I’m looking for.

Onward and upward,
Matt

When I was an undertaker, my whole life was focused on the end of days.

I always said we shouldn’t worry about when the end of the world is going to come.  Ask your insurance actuary when the end of your world is going to be.  They can read all the documentation and then insure you, and they feel quite comfortable in predicting when the end of life is going to be.

At 78, my horizon becomes shorter and shorter.  Is the end of the world in 2012, is it tomorrow, or is it later?  I have no idea.

But I live every day as my last.  I can’t wait to get up and find out what’s happening today.

I am very blessed.  I usually go to sleep laughing and wake up laughing.

I could either be classified as an optimist or an idiot.  Frankly, I don’t give a damn—I’ll take either one!

Matt

P.S...  One day I won’t wake up, and I’ll be “there,” wherever “there” is.  I hope I’ll be happy there, too.  I hope I’ll be wearing light clothing!

A reader asks Matt who he believes was the worst President in United States history.

Matt responds:

I think that is a great question for a historian.  Historically, it’s an important question, not in the sense of rating the dead, but to look into the actions, why they were taken, what their ramifications are, what the intended and unintended consequences were, what they mean to us, and did we or didn’t we learn anything from them.

I don’t have a list of best and worst Presidents.  I feel that I am in most cases powerless to do anything except vote if I have an issue I think is important.

I have many times been known to go out and campaign door to door, give donations, make speeches...  But if I don’t know anything about an issue, I make a point to keep my mouth shut.

That might be a selfish way of looking at it, but I also believe very strongly that evil succeeds when good men do nothing.  I don’t know if I’m a good man, but if I see evil, I don’t just sit with my finger in my ass; I run out and scream and holler and make changes.  Sometimes I get in trouble.

At the end, I feel good about it, because I did something.  If we’re not going to do anything, then we’re part of the problem.

The Founding Fathers were rebels, and they knew very personally—and it shows very clearly in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—that we can’t blame our problems on “them.”  There is no “them.”  There is only us.

Are we sitting with blindfolds, waiting for something to happen?  I believe that when the water hits your lower lip, you’d better say something!

Matt

Am I running forwards or backwards?

Please, sir, tell me which way my head is facing!

I already know which way side my ass is facing, since it’s always getting kicked!

Here is a link to a 10-minute-long video on YouTube from our June 29, 2010 “Umbrellas for Peace” parade at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany.

Thank you to everyone who made this event such a wonderful expression of peace, tolerance, understanding, hope, and love!

This past week I had finished all my stretched canvases, and they were on the racks drying.  I have two huge rolls of unstretched canvas, so I took them out and rolled them out on the tables and cut them up into about 24 different pieces.

Then I did the process of manipulation of color and materials, melding them together, introducing them to each other...

The weather forecast predicted really bright, sunny morning and early afternoons, which to the Irish is around 4 o’clock in the afternoon, since it stays light till about 10 at night in the summertime...

For two days I was able to prepare them all for their planning and marry them together like an Oreo cookie.  Then on the second day I pulled them out and laid them all over the cliff and weighed down with all these big stones from the property, because I knew the gales were coming and the storms.  And they really came.

I had taken refuge in the house, drinking tea and watching the gales and the rain come straight by the window.  After 5 or 6 hours I went out and looked at the canvases, and they all seemed to be taking a great bath.

The wind and rain and nearly hurricane-force winds and little tornados of wind hitting the building and creating whirlpools, were all having their way with the canvases on the ground.  They were pooling, and all kinds of great things were happening.

As soon as it gets bright enough today and I get myself stirred up to walk among them, I will be eager to see how they weathered the storm, although I know that the storm will give them new life; it will not detract from their wellness.

The other thing in this preparation that I did, a sweep the house concept, looking at every nook and cranny of all my buildings of paint that may have been there for 10 years, with a crust of linseed oil on top, but digging that out into clumps, throwing it onto the canvas...

We had the greatest array of colors that you’d ever want to encounter, some of which had been gestating for 3, 5, 7, 15, 18 years.  I characterize that old paint as fertilizer.  It might be shit, but if it’s put in the right conditions, it gives great power to its surroundings.  Nothing is worthless; everything has its own power and dignity, even though you might not know it at the time.

So then I put solvent on them to help them in their migration and then encased it in these different concretes, and let the wind and rain see what they can do to help it along or blast it away.  It’s like having a voyage but you don’t really have to go anywhere!

Matt