Hello, bloggers!

Rose and I are happy to be in the sunny Florida Keys this week.

Last week in Chicago, the weather was atrocious:  fog, rain, thunder, lightning, 30 degrees below zero, blizzards, blowing wind... It raised havoc with my arthritis.  I found myself lying in bed, and to get my mind off my aches and pains, I started to meditate on the question of:  “If I wanted to paint a painting depicting how I thought 2008 went—how it started, how it finished, and how 09 will start—what would I paint?

In a surprise to me, I started thinking about a canoe.  A canoe is the same shape in the front and the back, and people sit in the center, using the paddle and directing where they’re going.  I envisioned the canoe with a person in front saying, “Go forward, go forward” and somebody in the back saying, “Go back, go back!  We’re going the wrong way!”

It reminds me of how, with all the political and economic chaos in the world, some people are saying “Do this,” some people are saying, “Do that,” and it’s almost like we’re spinning around, like we’re going down a drain.

But, as I thought about it more, I thought:  No, maybe it’s not a canoe; maybe it’s the great ship of state, sailing forward with all its power?  How am I going to picture that?  I came up with the fantasy of a huge, great, smoke-bellowing liner, chugging always forward.  It’s got 50 decks but no bottom, and the oars leak.  No one knows where the captain is, the crew are either taking care of people, sitting at the bar getting drunk, or on life boats watching the damn thing go by.

What is this image all about?  To me, it's about:  How can we have so much power and make so many mistakes?  Who is in charge?  I think we don’t have a consensus.  When we saw the end of the year tabloids and opinion polls, most people thought we were going the wrong way.

From history, we know that what most people think over periods of time, changes like fine wine; it takes awhile to figure out what it’s going to be.  We have a great example in Harry Truman:  Nobody saw him leave till he got to the train station, and the ordinary person clapped for him and gave him a good sendoff, but it wasn’t until years later that we really realized what great deeds he had done for this country.  I always hesitate to make judgments about things that are so fresh in my memory...

Which puts me again to the point of:  How am I going to make this painting?  It’s definitely not a 50-deck ship of state.

Then I thought:  Maybe it’s a song.  Maybe it’s “Do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around, and that’s what it’s all about...”  I could come up with a great cast of characters:  kids and men and women and animals dancing around, don’t know where they’ve been, don’t know where they’re going, and don’t really give a damn...  But no, I thought, as fun as it would be, it can’t just be about the hokey-pokey.

Finally I came across a good representation, and it’s our national pastime:  baseball.  I must admit I’ve never been to a professional baseball game; when I watch it on television for short periods of time, it reminds me of paint drying.  But I think it’s a great way to tell our story:  that we as a people are very disappointed with where we’ve been and the direction we’re going...

It’s like getting a new team in town; we go to the new stadium; 100,000 people are yelling, “We’re Number One!” with glee and hot dogs and beer and camaraderie and anticipation.  And then they yell, “Play ball!”  And our new leader comes forward, Barack Obama, comes up to the plate, and everybody is absolutely enthralled;  everybody, with few exceptions, is wishing for a home run—but in their heart of hearts, they know they would be absolutely thrilled if he just gets a single.

In a democracy, it’s a little bit different than a ball game.  We yell, “We’re Number One” in a ball game, but none of us has been in the field, swinging the bat.  In a democracy, it depends on everyone doing their part.  We have perfect trust in the cast of characters in the ball game, but in the real world, I think we should make sure the money-changers, the people who don’t want to see us succeed, the greedy, the ones who have a complete disdain for the rules, aren’t starting to visit the dugouts.

I think it goes further than that.  I think it goes to every state, city, village, and hamlet, to every CEO, doctor, dog-catcher, and sewer worker.  In a democracy we have to start discussing, and shining the light of reality on things we don’t agree with.  That’s what it is to be human:  to debate and to discuss things that sometimes make us uncomfortable.

Maybe we’ve become too comfortable, and the game has gotten away from us.  I don’t think we’d stand for it if there were 4 outs in 50 innings, and the bats were made of cork, and the balls were made of potatoes.  I’m sure everybody would be charging the field to straighten things out.

So, how do I put all that in a painting?  Possibly with a fat person sitting next to a big pile of apples, taking one bite out of each one and throwing the rest away into a river, while 15 scrawny kids are sitting there, looking at him, starving to death.

As 2008 flies away from us and 2009 appears ahead of us, we ask the question:  What is our responsibility in the new year?

I think we should be more in the forgiving, “Let’s see what happens” camp than the “Throw the bum out after the second inning” camp.  I think we have to give ourselves and our democracy as much support and scrutiny and attention as we give the Sunday football game, the Wednesday basketball game, and the Friday baseball game:  reading about it, talking about it, screaming about it, jumping up like a banshee with one finger in the air, proclaiming, “We’re Number One!”  We’re always saying that.  In 2009, let’s prove it to ourselves and the world.

Now, I still feel confused as to how I’m going to put this all into a painting.  In reality, I probably won’t ever be able to, although for the painters out there in cyberspace, reading this whole crazy dissertation that Richard Speer puts on the blog, I had the idea of all of us making a copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, along with Obama’s Election Night victory speech in Chicago, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettsyburg Address, and Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, cutting the printouts into pieces, floating them into the colors of the rainbow on fresh paint and gesso, and see—when they are finally encased in their little whirls of gesso surrounded by color—what do all of those great words and thoughts say?

That’s a little project I’m thinking about that I’ll probably be working on in Florida.  If I do, I’ll let you know what it says.  I’m sure all of those words will live on for a long, long time.  I’m going to think through that process more, and, if I were to predict, that may be my painting for 08/09.

So Happy New Year, thanks for tuning in on the Blog, and “Onward and upward!”

Matt

In the comment posted below, longtime friends of the Lambs wish the couple a Happy New Year:

Dear Matt and Rose,

Thanks for your Christmas comments on the Blog.

Pray, Hope and Don't Worry.

Jim and Inge Doody

Matt responds:

A reader asks Matt whether, after all these years of painting, he still sees "spirits" in the melange of a dipped canvas.

Matt responds:

Absolutely!  More so than ever!

They’ve become like old friends.  They’re shouting and laughing with me.

Before, they were very mysterious and powerful.  Now we have arguments...  and I almost win some of them!

Thanks for the question,
Matt

Hello, bloggers!

Thank you for your participation and praise about the blog this year.  It is humbling to get such great praise about the blog at the end of the year.

At this time, for me, it’s sort of a constant re-looking at what I’ve gained and lost.  The gaining always seems higher than the losing until I get to the part of losing people who have gone on to a different dimension or plane.  And this year, I’ve lost many great friends, numerous acquaintances, and many people who I have looked up to as leaders and visionaries.

The one person, surprisingly, who I seem to miss the most (because I am a political junkie!) is Tim Russert of NBC News.  During the time leading up to the Presidential Election, throughout this whole amazing time in American history, I kept thinking how much Tim Russert would have enjoyed the spectacle that’s been playing out, not only in this country but around the world, and how his insights and synthesis of the cast of characters would have made things a lot easier for us to put together.

For a micro-manager politico such as I, Russert’s death made my job a lot harder; I was used to tuning in and seeing what he had to say, and inevitably, his interpretation of current events made great sense to me.  Now, I have to listen to three or four or five accounts to come to a conclusion that makes sense.  I feel as if I have lost a great figure in my world—strangely, a man I have never met, and who my only contact with was from the television.

Thinking about these things recently, I then took it a step further.  One of the reasons I relish being an artist is that, in my fantasy, I think that my work will make a difference in the far distant future, when I am no longer walking the earth but am only skeletal remains.  That is a powerful motivation for me to get up every morning and keep pushing my Don Quixote quest for world peace further and further. I think I am probably relating my personal loss to a strength towards my artistic career, hoping that my ranting and raving on the blog will continue in cyberspace, so they’ll know that a recovered alcoholic undertaker artist still has something to say a couple hundred years from now.  I hope our planet then will still be peopled with people who are thinking, active, involved, and forever expanding the species.

Artists have a great responsibility, because with the name “artist” comes the responsibility of presenting your world to some future world, which will be looking back at us and wondering, “What the hell were those people thinking back then?”  That alone is motivation for all of us to get up and be at it—it’s definitely worth the time.

Looking ahead to 2009, every day I’m getting phone calls from friends of mine from around the world, just delighted about our soon-to-be new president.  In Spain, I’m told the newspapers sometimes have more news about Obama than their own king and head of state.  Everybody has great expectations about our future, and what they feel is a different effect in the world.

As I travel, people have asked me:  Is there an apprehension about being an American?  Have we lost respect in the eyes of the world?  The people I meet are always very friendly.  We’ve never encountered any unfriendly gestures or words, but when we get to know people very well, there is more of an openness to their disappointment in how the policies of the United States have gone.  The consensus seems to be that we’ve become too dogmatic, too prescriptive, too “Ready, shoot, aim...”

In wondering about where this comes from and how we relate that to a democracy—not in a detrimental way, but in a questioning way—I know there’s great anticipation by the people we know around the world, in the caliber of character shown by Barack Obama and the diversity of the new Cabinet.  I look on this as a really good omen to where we’re going as a people.  I think any time we can knock down a wall or a glass ceiling or a prejudiced approach to anything, that we as a species gain, as opposed to any time we become restrictive, jealous, and intolerant, which is a step backwards.

So as we must always feel that our best days are in front of us.  That’s a little Pollyanna, it’s somewhat of a Little Orphan Annie approach—“The sun’ll come up tomorrow...”—but it’s a lot better than “Woe is me.”  So as 2009 looms ahead only a few short days from now, let’s not roll or crawl into the New Year, let’s run in, full of glitter and fun, greeting like an old friend, laughing, singing, and hollering...

Signed,"
Old Great Grandpa Lamb, who’s running through the field, looking for the golden sunrise

A reader asks Matt whether he is able to see spirits in a blank canvas, before it has been submerged in the process Matt calls “The Dip.”

Matt reponds:

Never.  A blank canvas to me is just emtiness before the Big Bang, before the God experience.  It is possibility.  A blank canvas is the ultimate test of what’s next.  It can be daunting or a great adventure or the greatest possibility of your life, depending on how you look at it.

But as to how you actually interact with nothingness—well, that’s why I think the artist is so blessed.  We can take 2 or 3 different ideas, turn them into a conversation, and then present it to the world in a painting or sculpture that everybody can talk about and call you a genius or an idiot.

It doesn’t matter, because you have turned a blank piece of paper into some sort of an object that can be discussed.  I suppose you could discuss a blank piece of paper, but it would be minimal:  how big it is, and how wide, and whether it will accept ink or pencil.  But there’s not a hell of a lot more you can say about a blank canvas.

Thanks for the question,
Matt

A reader writes to Matt of his dual compulsions:  on the one hand, to make art; and on the other, to travel the world to collect experiences, which will presumably emerge in future artwork.  The reader reports that he often feels a certain pressure, when talking with his relatives in general and his grandmother in particular, to spend less time amassing experiences and more time converting those experiences into art that can be viewed and perhaps even sold.

Matt responds:

Thank you for your post.

Remember that we all have our own life to live, our own billions and billions of years of knowledge inside of us, because we all come from the Big Bang.  For some people, that knowledge flows like a river and seems to come from an unlimited supply.  For others, it’s the dripping faucet that, no matter how you turn the damn thing, still only drips once a month.

I believe that for each one of us, the only criticism we give or receive should be to ourselves.  So if my wife or mother or dog or the person next door doesn’t like what I’m doing, maybe they shouldn’t be looking at me.  But if I like what I’m doing, that’s what counts.

For you, if you’re making sketches and scribbles from your travels—it reminds me of a time in London years ago where I believe they found a lot of things Chagall had drawn on scrap paper, then put them away somewhere...  Many years later they were in a gallery, selling for big money.  I went to the show, and people were going after them like the lost Ark of the Covenant.  I imagine when he was doing the sketches, he was thinking, “Well, I’m just screwing around; it doesn’t make any difference.”

The big thing is that we keep doing what we’re doing.  I self-examine and give myself the challenge of asking, “Will this piece of art look good in the Louvre or the Hermitage with my name on it?”  Before it goes out the door, I always have to say, “I’m proud of it right now, but I can do better.”  But I don’t really know that; I’m constantly questioning it.

I think questioning ourselves is part of the human condition, but giving in to the conditioning of ourselves and saying it’s impossible, is really something that the world likes to wrench out of us by the custom, education, religious doctrine, and self-fulfilling philosophies of relatives we know and love.  To be truly an individualistic artist means that we may go down many different roads that are predictable or unpredictable.

By my own standards, I am constantly discovering; therefore, is the first thing I did when I went down this road the worst or the best?  I have no idea.  When I look at something five years later, after exploring all the possibilities, I think, “That’s pretty primitive, but that doesn’t make it any better or worse; it just makes it what it is.”

So in your travel, you are constantly, subliminally, taking in all kinds of different cultures, ideas, light, and forms.  Subconsciously, you will start putting it into your art, whether your art be painting or scribbling or carpentry or whatever.  If Grandma doesn’t like it, sad to say, but maybe she’d better get a hobby.  She could say the same thing if you’d spent 8 years in college studying to become a surgeon.

I don’t think we should marginalize people who go from place to place as a pilgrim, looking at different culture.  I happen to think that no time is really wasted unless we as individuals are only out to waste time.  We are the only ones who know that.  I sit and meditate and watch the world go by a lot, especially in my older age, thinking about things I did that day and how people react.  An uninformed person would think I was doing nothing; in reality, I’m doing as much as if I was throwing paint on a canvas, but in a different way.

Don’t try to figure out what “they” think; figure out what you think.  You’ll never know what “they” think.  You’ll also probably never figure out what you think, but at least you can work on it every day. 

Matt

Hello, bloggers.

As we approach the ritualization of the holidays, we reflect upon how the holidays make for a much stronger relationship between families and friends.

It seems to me that Christmas has become very hectic, while Thanksgiving seems more traditional—even though Christmas is a religious holiday and Thanksgiving is more of a secular holiday.  Sometimes, all of the hooplah and partying and folderal in gift-giving and running around, yelling “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” sort of detracts from the mellowness of true family harmony.  It becomes a matter of:  “Why didn’t I get a better gift from so-and-so?  Why do I have put up with these bastards coming to our house?  Thank God we’re half in the bag, otherwise we couldn’t put up with these people...”

In my first life, there was hardly ever a Christmas that wasn’t interrupted by coming to the service of a family whose holiday was interrupted by the ultimate tragedy.  Sometimes there were two, three, even four families we invited to dinner with us, who were having wakes downstairs in the funeral home.  It was a bittersweet time to have a “Merry Christmas” while these families were going through the worst times of their lives.  “Death takes no holiday” was a reality in our family.

That was compounded by the fact that all of our employees wanted Christmas off, and so our family took up the slack.  Thanksgiving was something we took more leisurely; it seemed that not as many people died around Thanksgiving...

So, all things considered, I probably didn’t have the traditional experience of these holidays, as the ordinary person would, because our life was always revolving around people whose Christmases had been interrupted by tragedy.  Therefore, it probably gives me and my family a different outlook on all kinds of things, for better or worse.  I know it shaped my art in many different ways.

Today, with my family, we have a great Christmas.  We all get together—it’s very inclusive.  Some of the members leave right after dinner and go on to our place in Ireland, where they have traditions of their own.  Others go to other families to visit.  We have all kinds of things that go on, and they’re all great.  So from our family to yours, a very merry Christmas and a happy new year! 

Matt

A reader who is a writer by profession remarks that the goal of all great art is to provoke a bark rather than a yelp.

Matt responds:

I love your comment about rather being a bark than a yelp.  I think that’s what one of our great jobs is:  to bark, to point, to capitalize, to regard something that’s maybe ignored, something that is important but probably too complex for most people to consider or appraise.

If, as an artist, you are given the liberty to do all kinds of things that may or may not make sense to the general public, that’s probably why artists usually wear outrageous clothing or carry a goofy umbrella.  Who should we pay attention to?

Primarily I believe that we must be our own critics foremost.  Are we presenting a lot of bullshit to ourselves and then hoping the public thinks it’s great?

Or, if they do think it’s the greatest thing, do we begin to believe our own publicity?

There is no “they,” and if there is, I don’t give a damn about them.  There are people who, using certain criteria and historic knowledge, can critique art, writing, music, or other languages of the soul.  They come from it because of gene structure, education, observation, the ability to look at 2 and 2 and figure out whether it’s 4 or 8 or 10 or 3.9.

Therefore, they make a rational observation about something that maybe isn’t even rational, regardless of what the author or artist had in mind.  A true critic can see all kinds of aspects to it that may or may not make any sense to other people. There are many people over the years who have observed and studied my work over long periods of time and talked about it.  I listen with great interest.  I don’t take anything to heart.

It’s impossible for me to be offended by what people say about my work.  Before anyone ever sees it and before I sign it—no matter where it goes, into the closet, the outhouse, the Louvre—will I be proud to say it’s a product of Matt Lamb?  If the answer is no, then I do something else to it.  If the answer is yes, it isn’t an answer that says, “This is the best painting I’ve ever made.”  It says:  I can’t do any better on this, but hopefully I can do better in the future."

I think critical reviews have their place, but we have to find our place and our center, and no matter what anybody says, we have to keep going on our process of self-examination, the quest for something better at all times.  We shouldn’t be discouraged if everybody thinks that all we’re accumulating is a big pile of shit.  Maybe after 50 years in the sun, it will turn into something beautiful.

My only hope is that I’ll be still around to hear the accolades instead of the arrows and stones. My best advice is to listen and learn, no matter what “they” say.

Matt

A reader asks what is preferable for a beautiful young art student:  to pursue a potentially unlucrative career in art or to take advantage of her good looks and work as an exotic dancer.

Matt responds:

I think life is a great adventure.  We never know who and what we’re going to be.  We seem to stumble around and fall into place somewhere, somehow.

I don’t see a big advantage or detriment to being an exotic dancer, stripper, tap dancer, ballet dancer, ballroom dancer, or artist.  I think it’s two parts of our psyche, and the decisions that we make personally, we have to live with personally.

The only thing I think, as an ex-undertaker, is that I would hate to be on my deathbed and think, “Oh hell...  I wish I would’ve taken science in school and been a scientist instead of an auto mechanic or airline pilot...”

When people ask for advice, quite often I think it comes down oftentimes to the “Yes, but...” syndrome.  Should I be this or that?

Well, what if we were to say, “You should be a stripper!”  But then you say, “Yes, but then I can’t be the next Picasso and put my thoughts out through my art to be appreciated by the world...”

Or what if we were to say, “You should be an artist!”  But they you could say, “Yes, but if I become an artist, I don’t take this great challenge—Marilyn Monroe was photographed stark naked on a red satin blanket—to become the next Marilyn Monroe...”

We can always make up a reason to kid ourselves.  I think this is a good place to remember an old saying I found in a book as a kid and have kept with me all these years.  It was written by an Englishman named James Allen, who lived from 1864 to 1912, and it comes from a book called As a Man Thinketh.  The saying goes like this:

“As you think, you travel; as you love, you attract.

You are today where your thoughts have brought you.

You will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

You cannot escape the results of your thoughts, but you can endure and learn, accept and be glad.

You will realize the vision, not the idle wish,of your heart, be it base or beautiful or both.

You will gravitate towards that which you secretly most love.Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your thoughts.

You will receive what you earn:  no more, no less.

Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal.

You will become as small as your controlling desire, as great as your dominant aspiration.”

With that in mind, I would say that your friend can either become Greta Garbo, Pablo Picasso, or Sally Rand, the first known fan dancer. 

Matt

Hello, bloggers.

Here are some thoughts I’ve been having after thinking in depth about an individual’s place in this great cosmos, and the meaning of the term “ego.”  I’ve been thinking about this especially since having read and re-read the book The View from the Center of the Universe.

When I’m giving speeches in public, I always declare that as an artist, I’m not trying to be Miro or Picasso; I’m trying to be the best Matt Lamb that I can make myself.  It’s not that I discount the past, but I live in the future, always longing to discover or be associated with something new.  There’s a great feeling in this world that everything has been done before, and there’s nothing new under the sun.  For years I was in that camp. Now I’m not.  I’ve not only left that camp, I went back, packed up the tent, burned my clothes, and you’d have to burn the fields and sift the ashes to find any part of me there anymore.  I’m truly anchored in the future of “Who the hell am I, what am I doing, what can I do better?”

People always ask, “What is ego, and is it good, bad, or indifferent?”  I believe that ego absolutely is the acceptance of yourself, and if “they” don’t like, well, they can all go take a big shit for themselves.  It’s not my job for “them” to feel good about themselves because of what I do.  If we have to call it ego or eccentricity or innovation or acceptance of change or “such a stupid fool,” regardless, if we can start to accept ourselves as we are—with all of our halos, warts, and devils—we can really start enjoying this life because it is such an adventure.

When I go to sleep every night, I’m thinking about tomorrow:  how I’m going to tweak it, push it, pull it, kiss it, carress it, burn it, flush it, tomorrow.  That, to me, is the excitement.  That’s what I call ego:  doing because you want to do it; doing because you think you can do it; and doing because that’s who you are—not for some unnamed faceless automaton in the crowd who’s going to march by you, giving orders to the last 90,000 people they saw.  They can all go to hell.

I’ll be marching my parade of one the other way, saying “I’m going this way, and if you don’t want to march with me, you can go march off a cliff.  Or maybe I will—I really don’t give a shit.”  That’s my definition of ego.

Matt