SUMMARY MOVE:

MO IS A FEGELE
IT'S OK TO BE EMBARRASSED
I AIN'T SAYING NOTHING THAT HAIN'T BEEN SAID BEFORE

YEA Matthew! xo

YEA Matthew! xo

Matthew Offenbacher is probably my favorite Seattle painter right now, for reasons I have not yet attempted to put into words.

I'm interested in digging deeper into this "embarrassed" quality you describe. I see a rather anachronistic expressiveness and disarming sincerity, but I'm not personally embarrassed by it. If anything, I'm embarrassed by all the other art that does not have this quality (specifically the stuff that really wants to be "smart").

I think both Joey Veltkamp and Jeffry Mitchell share this disarming sincerity, and I find it refreshing.

"Painting is a state of mind suspended between doubt and belief. It's private but public. Bringing private and public together, wanting to believe, always means being embarrassed. But what's the alternative?"

These words touched a deep, deep note within me (whether in regards to Matt's work or in more general terms) -- but I would like to suggest a slight shift:

Making art [Painting] is a state of mind suspended between doubt and faith[belief]. It's private but public. Bringing private and public together, wanting to believe, always means being vulnerable [embarrassed]. But what's the alternative?

painting is to art what guitars are to music

Hi, Jen,

I remember that question to Matthew asking if he ever considered being a stand-up comedian. Right off, it didn't seem a correct question to ask an artist at an opening but he clearly invited any kind of question with a certain panache and what seemed, not maybe as a challenge but as a posture of some kind of holistic and extremely friendly gesture, a wanting to share thoughts openly. He so often laughs and giggles while engaged in answering questions you'd swear he works on the level of a stand-up comedian. He stated he couldn't be one because he can't deliver the simplest joke without it going flat. But his easy social charm and levity suggests he may be, in some sense, a natural comic in art or other things with the insight to the really real as Robin Williams, Chris Rock, George Carlin and Margaret Cho. It's the vision you know. It's funny but not. And, with Matthew, there's some kind of wonderfully strange painting impulse going on for us to marvel over.

Then comes Matthew's answers to questions and his respect for the other person which all seems so serious and deep except for more giggles and laughter. I think Matthew is a natural performer before an audience and it may even explain his role in the local art community. His presence promotes such ease and sincerity and jovialness. Also he seems so adept at working with people and making just about anything they asked become a provocation for him to spin off an enormous tale related to his art or whatever. Also, he seems to bring an amazing broad base of perspective that fuses his art with the humanity, the world and the universe at large that easily moves us.

I've just come from a weekend painting workshop were near everybody was wedded to painting more realistically conservative than the Gage Academy and being certainly resistant to contemporary painting. They are largely frozen in archaic gestures. To these romantic plein air realistic painters of fall foliage and riversides, Matthew's work might seem kind of dark and appear as something like colorful chicken scratches. They would probably have deep difficulties with De Kooning, Frank Stella and color field paintings that send up rose bushes in fall.

But Matthew's work seems historically fresh yet connected to painting's history. His work is full of light compared to the fellow artist in the other room at Billy's place. His work knows so many things a simple minded painter doesn't yet has romance in it. He says he loves the sixties and one senses a Burchfieldian-like LSD color moment in his work. He is celebrating and saluting so much of painting of the past yet with such a new vision. He is romantic in embracing Burchfield, animals, naturalism, the universe, the moon and Mars and all their questions brought to the present age. He seems to have embraced the great American Transcendentalist's love of natural things. He is intense in a contemporary view. This brings up the stand-up comic thing; they are often said to have a darker side in how they are aware of the mistakes of culture. Comedians are often said to be bipolar or depressed. I'm not thinking Matthew represents this but, like stand-up comedians he is extremely garrulous and aware. The truth might be that comedians aren't depressed but SEE the underlying reality others don't. Matthew seems to hold a very personal real awareness. We easily lust to see what he is seeing.

Being garrulous is a fault of writers and makes us consider the larger being Matthew is. Writers are thinkers not just word stringers. They support analyzing and pondering before putting things to pen or brush. In fact, is his brush or words more prominent? He may be a kind of eccentric Renaissance Man in our modern times with dreamy yet very perspective stoned out visions. His foreshortened painting (untitled) looking down the trunk of an evergreen tree borrows the perspective of a young artist exploring tight perspective rendition and also the view of a cat caught in a tree. It's so witty. There is a lot of oneness here.

Your segue from artist as stand-up comedian to artist embarrassed certainly probes artists' psychological and sociological worlds via a marvelous conceptual extension. In contrast to the comment of Emily P., we find your embarrassment discursion, Klara Sen's workaround your discursion and Bruce Nauman's statement to consider:

"To present yourself through your work is obviously part of being an artist. If you don't want people to see that self you put on makeup...You spend all this time in the studio and then when you do expose the work, there is a kind of self-exposure that is threatening."

Need we say more about this embarrassment? Let's just conclude that Matthew is a mysterious force who we should probably keep an eye on because he's doing something off the wall but significant. It is kind of interesting too that he's apparently changed his approach to titling his pieces. We are now lost in sea of untitled vs. his older elaborate titles. What's up with this?

.....

And then we have to deal with that all-caps apparently conceited idiot, LaRiiiiM0RrrHAwtiiii696969, who constantly asks us to engage in a leap of faith and accept their wild-ass posts. Male or female this person would seem a very stuck on self irritant but we must be open and consider the possibility that this is credible presentment. We are damned if we do and don't. This person knee jerked on my use of the word musicology once apparently thinking I was using two bit lofty academic vocabulary. They missed the fact that I was using it in a comic tongue in cheek parody of the realities of the museum universe. I think much of what goes on in museums is nuts as many have pointed out in recent decades. The role of the museum to art is still suspect and SAM does not always act with a kind of sanctified beauty. Yes, I've slammed some of the goings on at SAM because they are an extremely suspect and large institution speaking for the arts as if they are automatically leaders and right no matter what they say or do. I don't think so. Sam's behavior is ever so political and guaranteed distant from the realities of the artist's world. Duchamp had this problem with the Solon and the question as to the fitted ness of art being placed in these spaces is still of concern. Do they really speak for us? They are museologists of some ilk like putting forth smooth media spin and careful avoidance of political mistakes, like it or not. We all have to deal with their affront and posturing.

So, LaRiiiiM0RrrHAwtiiii696969, you know were you can stick it. Take your utterly cool conceit somewhere else. You missed the point as a simple minded reactionary.

What if LaRiiiiM0RrrHAwtiiii696969 was a major power in the arts community? Truth and beauty are never easy in recent times. Is it stand-up comedy or embarrassment we should detect? And whose? Viewer, reader, artist, or blogger? Embarrassment or discomfort? Awareness of the real? Disturbing isolation of the self? What the hell is going on here? Peace out.

GaryyyyyyyyyWWWWWWWFinholtttttttt

That's museology not musicology that LaRiiiiM0RrrHAwtiiii696969 knee jerked to in the above. (Dang, Mr. Gates spellchecker is never a total friend.)