Intuition, Signs and Sublimation ....

Detail of Rhizome Abstraction

Like many human beings including young children, I use intuition to make pictorial decisions about composition and mark making. The results in this most recent work are outcomes I can live with. I say I can live with these decisions as if I am uncertain about the work's existence but in reality I feel good about this work. As Robert Motherwell explained about his art, his creative force was generated by an internal source related to the primal realm. For Motherwell, his artmaking experience was organic and authentic. I find myself aligned with his thinking. Intuitive artmaking is as natural and pure an art experience as I can generate.

Rhizome Abstraction
acrylic on canvas, 38" x 23"

detail

 Lately I just felt that my back was against the wall (Thank You Larry Poons). Literally against the wall. I had entered a make or break period where after nit-picking and tip-toeing, I just needed to become more aggressive with my process. Trusting the process, and trusting myself, I had to let my anxiety go. The affect of sublimation could be obtained. Once I found the "look" I needed, I moved forward and the event was profound and uplifting. Artmaking is so good for one's psyche. The experience can become euphoric.

Fundamentally, the marks within the composition can be read as shape, edge, polygon, color modulation or pathway signs. On a deeper level the elements form a shifting composition that reads as a map or a rhizome. Semiotics is the science of sign interpretation and perhaps the viewer might perceive something different. That is the beauty of abstract art, we naturally utilize our powers of signification to make associations with the work that are unique to our own subjectivities. 

I am hooked on this developing process and can't let it go. 

At the Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) Institute last July in Boston, I was experimenting with a similar mark making approach. For now, I'm seeing new opportunities to expand on this process. 

How does one express a feeling? 

I had been channeling Motherwell, but now see possibilities into the beyond.

 I'm going to be working with this process again in the studio at the TAB Institute this coming July!

Can't wait to get back to the studio!

https://massart.edu/professional-continuing-education/teaching-for-artistic-behavior/

Here are the experiments from last summer's TAB Institute!

https://sites.google.com/view/clydegawstudio/

https://clydegaw.blogspot.com/2026/02/addressing-adolescent-mental-health.html

Mark Making With Paint!

Sometimes I just can’t leave the materials alone.

 

Mark Making/Drawing Processes: #Covid19Art

I document and share my drawing processes with students via remote learning experience. Here are more slides of works in progress since the #Covid19 pandemic closed schools around the country:

2020 Spring Drawing Project

Before our move to remote learning due to the #Covid19 pandemic, my students and I made art together. They could see me working on art and I could observe them at the same time. We research and make art together in the studio. Since our move to home studio activity, our practice of sharing our work has continued. With our move to remote learning, students share pictures of their work and I do the same.
Here is a sequence of photographs taken from January to April of 2020 detailing the development of a large drawing that started in the classroom and was finished in my home studio. 

Photograph by Sophie W. capturing dialogue between students and I. You can see the large drawing in the back of the art room!

Do artists do research? Absolutely!

Working on a large drawing requires persistence! 

The white oval bands were risky additions. What would go inside of them? The decision to add these bands added new problems and new opportunities for artification of this piece!
A few days after this photo was taken, we made the move to remote learning.

New studio digs. There is less space in the garage than in the New Palestine High School Art Education facilities however, I can make art in my home studio any time, day or night!

Repetition and pattern creates a sense of energy and movement.

Attention to detail requires patience and care.

For now, this 72 x 32 inch drawing drawing is finished!

New Art for 2017!

Mutation, 30" x 54" paper mache, cardboard, oil paint

"Job" 23"x 35," paper mache, cardboard, oil paint

I465I70 Interchange, 23"x35," paper mache, cardboard, oil paint

I70PostRd Interchange, 23"x35," paper mache, cardboard, oil paint

2017 has been a productive year. Working with new paper mache methods, I think I have developed a promising way to create relief sculpture in this medium. I have used cardboard and paper mache as art materials since I made a paper mache dinosaur in 2nd grade. The 2nd and 3rd sculpture images were selected for the 2017 Teachers as Artist competion in Greenfield, IN. Enjoy the pics!

Fun With Stencils!

Channeling my inner-prehistoric. Here's a little urban-suburban primitive for you!

Teachers As Artists Exhibition Opening Friday, March 14th!

"High Stakes Standardized Testing," 62" x 39" as of March 7, 2014.

It is interesting to see the meager beginnings of this painting. Check it out!

Rhizome series sculpture is created with paint, cardboard and glue, is approximately 60 inches by 36.

I've been working up two pieces of art for Sandy Hall's annual Teacher As Artist Exhibition, opening this Friday, March 14th at 6 PM. I appreciate all of Sandy's effort in providing Indiana teachers with this opportunity to show their work. My painting represents the distortion to the educational process that the overuse of high stakes standardized testing represents.