Trying to be a Tree-In Progress. Words and Pictures.

This blog used to be called "Labor Interests: Notes on a Process".  It was a document recording my naive, absurd, beautifully desperate attempt to move to the city and be an artist.  That experiment coincided gorgeously with the great recession and though sales were brisk at first, prices were low, rent was high, I worked in the trades to pay he bills as a carpenter and handyman, and by 2011 I was so thoroughly wiped out from working sixty + hour weeks, 40 doing construction and 20-40 in studio/office/freelance/showings that I decided to fold up shop and beat a retreat back down to the Central California Coast, where my mother's people are from.  About that time I changed the name of this blog to "Trying to be a Tree". Art/Life

In February of 2012 I ruptured two discs in my lower back.  In the 18 months since I have done the best I could to stay productive while dealing with crippling pain on a daily basis. I am thirty two years old and live on my grandmother's house, on the floor, and have a small studio in her garage.  I was able to limp to a year of computer and design classes at the local JC, hoping that a desk job would allow me to fully recuperate my back and possibly get back into the trades at a later date. I lucked out and landed and entry level architectural apprenticeship.  Two weeks ago, after less than a month on the job, I started experiencing the worst pain I've experienced since having the injury.  I'm hoping to get back surgery soon, trying to navigate the Kafka-esque world of medical limbo of the un-insured in America in 2013.

These paintings in my little studio, I've made during the last two years, are based largely on my study of stories and ideas that ancient Mediterranean peoples, and The West descended from them, used to describe the incredibly painful, fleeting and ineffably beautiful experience of being a human being in this world.  The tree motif is my way of looking towards the post-human, or perhaps an alter-human, situtation.  By this I mean a scenario in which consciousness is more a more wholistic, integrated phenomenon.  Less heroic.  Less isolated.  The irony, of course, is the pain and isolation it has cost to look in that direction.

I have few more paintings to execute for the series, and have been moving back into mixed media to flesh out the concepts of "Trying to be a Tree" and develope the groundwork for the next cycle of paintings.  It's easier to draw than paint when it hurts so bad, just to stand.  The major piece, though, that will close the series, is going to be based on Michaelangelo's "The Birth of Eve", from the Sistine Chapel frescoes.  Art/Life.

Addendum: I don't know who is going to read this, but if you happen to own a gallery, a real, brick and mortar, sell art to pay the rent, have lights that shine on the artwork, do lots of work to earn your percent, actual gallery and are interested--this work needs to be seen, and I would very much like to speak with you.

view portfolio page on jordanquintero.com

                         

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