Rite Of Passage

Yesterday afternoon I was in a movie theater with my family watching Frozen when an idea came to me. There was a scene in the movie where the young queen of a fictitious city state had come of age and the people of the kingdom were celebrating her coronation. I decided at that moment what the title of my newest painting, which was one night's work from completion would be.

The title has many meanings and many layers, the simplest of which is that I was about to complete a new work, which had come of age, and was ready to celebrate it coming officially into being as my latest work. But there's more.

The painting is adapted from a photograph I took in 2009 in the marshes behind the Vince Lombardi rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. It shows a view of the Hackensack River, and on the horizon you can see a few buildings in the Meadowlands Sports Complex, including the Xanadu building. Not visible but adjacent is Met Life Stadium, which one week ago was the sight of the NFL Superbowl.

The Superbowl, aside from being one of the biggest sporting events of the year, is where the champions of American Football are awarded the Vince Lombardi trophy for their achievement. In our society, which is devoid of official monarchs, professional athletics are widely celebrated, and their champions are considered heroes. Thus, championship ceremonies such as the awarding of a trophy on the field of play for the winners has many of the hallmarks and pomp and circumstance as royal coronation ceremonies.

The title, The Coronation, is appropriate, and in this case pokes fun at the very idea of such a ceremony, especially since it is a painting of a sublime natural landscape instead of being an image of the ceremony itself. Our culture hails the rather ordinary and unimportant accomplishments of athletes instead of other achievements that could benefit humanity, so in this case the title is sarcastic.

I can go even further with this if I look at the rituals that human civilizations regard as important, and ask the viewers to consider how insignificant any of these celebrations really are, whether they are to crown a monarch or sports champion, in the larger universe.

Our culture, lives, societies, and histories on the Earth are only a tiny fraction of the history of our home planet. What happens on our home planet is only a tiny fraction of the events that occur in the universe as a whole. Therefore, anything we regard as important or worthy of a celebration is merely provincial, and won't matter at all in a million years.

Consider also how big these celebrations seem to those who are there. Big events such as the Superbowl seem larger than life if viewed from the right point of view. But if you were anywhere else on Earth except Met Life Stadium or at home watching on TV, you would never have known that the Seattle Seahawks had just been crowned champions of the NFL. Even in a spot where you could see the stadium, such as a location with a view of the the Meadowlands Sports Complex on which The Coronation is based, there would be no information that would tell someone that something great had just happened.

Getting back to the movie, Frozen, and the afternoon I was spending with my family, watching a movie and enjoying their company. It was a wonderful time, one that I'll remember for years to come. It was my daughter's first movie, and I insisted that we go see it for that reason. I thought of my painting, the one that was almost finished, and I thought about how important an event it was in their lives when I completed it. It meant one more for the inventory, another potential little chunk of cash to keep our family going. It was an event that served as a continued reminder of why I do what I do, and what's at stake at the end of the day.

Matthew Green, The Coronation, 44" x 48", oil on canvas, 2014

Running To Daylight

I love the New York Giants. Their stadium is pretty much centrally located within the New Jersey Meadowlands which gives me another reason why this project is near and dear to my heart. On a photo shoot in the area back in 2009 I stopped in the Vince Lombardi Service Area off the New Jersey Turnpike to finish out a roll of film. Behind the parking lot there's access to some pretty dense foxtails, with some creeks and nice views of the Hackensack River.

The image at the bottom here is my latest work, titled Vince II. It's meant to be the follow-up to another, larger, and presently unfinished work tentatively called Behind Vince Lombardi. Both of these works were painted from frames shot behind the service area. Lombardi, the man for whom the area is named, was a coach with the Giants before he was head coach of the Green Bay Packers, the tenure for which he is most know for.

Lombardi was an innovator, and was the offensive coordinator for the Giants in the mid to late 1950's. He developed new blocking techniques and other strategies, and coined the phrase "running to daylight" to describe how a running back should head towards open holes in the opponent's defense. This is significant to me, since I tend to employ the idea of running to daylight as a metaphor for how I have to seek out small windows of time in order to get in my studio as I slog through my busy life of job and family.

As I duck and dodge for the open holes, and run to daylight through the obstacles life throws in my way, I slowly churn out works like this:

Matthew Green, Vince II, 22" x 30", oil on canvas, 2013

Bare Naked

These dark canvases are hard to shoot with an iphone. Fortunately this one won't be so dark for long. It feels almost barren to me, since I'm seeing the photo, and since I know where I want this to be.

I hate this part. In my head its done, but I still have to stand there night after night to execute it. Its those nights where I'll make some moves without really noticing, and then step back and be nervous about someone seeing what I just did. I guess that's the part where artists feel like they're baring their soul.

We experience those little blackouts where we feel like we're not directly in control, but being guided by some unseen force. I'm not a superstitious person, so I know that's not really happening. Its like the illusion is extended to me, as if I'm an audience of my own work.

I had to wait for Software Update to finish so I could continue writing. I lost my train of thought. Not cool.

Anyway, here's Vince, in progress...

Sh*t Just Got Real

Day 3, and I like where this is going.

Vince II part 3

Soundtrack to tonight's studio session: Simon and Garfunkel Concert In Central Park...

In northern New Jersey along the New Jersey Turnpike, somewhere near the Meadowlands Sports Complex is a rest area called the Vince Lombardi Rest Area, named after the famous NFL coach, after whom the NFL Super Bowl champion trophy is named. Lombardi is mostly known for his time spent as the head coach for the Green Bay Packers, but he is also remembered as one of the early masterminds of the New York Giants, who play in the nearby sports complex.

At the tail end of one of my Meadowlands photo shoots, I decided to stop at the Lombardi rest area to try and finish up my last roll of film. There is a photo which will become a painting I'm planning to call Behind Vince Lombardi. The painting below is being made from a photo which was one of the last frames on the roll, when I was really just snapping off frames to end the roll.

I wanted to call it Two Sticks, but that just felt kind of trite and stupid. The two branches sticking up also form a letter "V", which makes the case for the new title, Vince II. I've only sat with it now 3 times, so things can change. It's still being molded into the image I think it can be, so be patient...

I'm Unapologetic About How Bad This Looks

I've never been squeamish about showing work in progress. I truly understand that first impressions from viewers are completely misguided, simply because what they're seeing is incomplete. I can say with utmost confidence that I will work out all parts of this image to a logical and satisfying conclusion. What seems like a bad attempt at imitating a Sunday painter is really just the foundation for something inspirational.

A painting for the artist is all about seeing. When you begin building layers, levels, colors, and shapes, you begin to see the picture coming to life, as it slowly emerges from the empty canvas. You fall into it and out of it, you begin to live inside of it and grow with it. But it has to start somewhere, and what you see below is the start for this particular piece. I'm carving a space out of a blank white rectangle, and beginning a journey through the next several weeks of my life, and I invite anyone reading this to come along.

The Great Escape (official) and The Cooler King

Matthew Green, The Great Escape, 30" x 64", oil on canvas, 2013

In my last post I wrote about all kinds of meanings and parallels regarding my latest work, The Great Escape (above).

There was one reference I forgot to mention: the painting's namesake.

I've seen the movie The Great Escape only once, when I was about 11 years old, and I loved it. If you don't know the movie, it involves Allied prisoners of war in Germany during World War Two, and their plan to orchestrate a mass escape from one of the highest security prisoner of war camps on the enemy side.

The most memorable scene for me is the most climatic, where Captain Virgil Hilts, played by Steve McQueen, almost at the Swiss border, jumps the motorcycle he's riding, becomes entangled in barbed wire, and is re-captured by the Germans and returned to camp. Hilts is able to avoid execution as a spy by showing the Germans his Captain's insignia sewn to the inside of his shirt.

Hilts is dubbed "The Cooler King" by his fellow prisoners, because of his propensity to try and break out of prison. This behavior generally lands him in the cooler, or solitary confinement, which is one of the harshest punishments imposed by the Germans for the most disobedient prisoners.

Most of us are Virgil Hilts. We infuriate our captors with frequent escape attempts, only to be alienated and locked in the cooler once our attempts to free ourselves are discovered. We have no choice. Our desire to live free drives us toward the goal of liberating ourselves from the limits of civilization, expectations, peer pressure, pre-determined concepts of success, and anything else that forces us to suppress our desires and limit our effort to self-actualize.

Realizing our constraints, we dream and strive to separate ourselves from the pack and grow as individuals, try to do something that we want, to live like we want to live, to exist outside of rules imposed on us. We conspire to build our own tunnels, plan our escape routes. Most of these attempts are discovered by the guards.

Our tunnels, like those built by the prisoners in the film, never reach the tree line beyond the prison walls, and only a very select few successfully vault over the barbed wire border fence on our stolen motorcycles. Most who even get that far are usually captured by society and returned to prison to be our own versions of The Cooler King.

We can fight, conspire, dream, connive, or fly below the radar all we want, but the tentacles are almost always there to bring us back in. Once captured, we gladly flash our insignia that shows that we are still willing to comply in order to not be called out as an outsider.

So another painting, this time named after a movie about a quest for freedom, is my latest motorcycle. Will I clear the barbed wire at the border this time?

Excerpt from the film, The Great Escape

The "motorcycle scene"

The Great Escape

Formerly called "Untitled Painting," it now has a title: The Great Escape. It's oil on canvas, measures 30" high by 64" wide, and was completed in the year 2013. Its my latest and one of my most successful, which is one of the reasons behind its title.

It has significance as an escape in its reality as a landmark piece, a career milestone, an artistic turning point, a personal affirmation, and metaphorically in its subject on multiple levels.

I promised to document the conclusion of each sitting, which you can see in the series of photos below. What I did not do as promised was to blog each night's photo. I was just too busy, too tired, too preoccupied, too lazy.

It was completed in 13 sessions, considerably fewer than some I have documented in the past. I recall Xanadu, which was recorded in the same way, but took 44 sessions to complete. That was the old way. Things have a new sense of purpose now, and my priorities have changed. Hence the title.

I've been able to bridge a gap so to speak, or to parallel the subject of the painting, a miry, fecund swamp of mediocrity and meaninglessness. This painting was completed in a period of transcendence.

My previous 3 posts are sittings number 1, 2, and 3. Below are 4 through 13...

What's next?

Fo' Rizzle Ma Nizzles

The paintings you see in the images below are based on photos taken at the top of Snake Hill in northern New Jersey, alongside the New Jersey Turnpike off of exit 15X, near the Secaucus Junction rail station.

It all started here. My first visit to the New Jersey Meadowlands began with a trip to and subsequent climbing of Snake Hill. It was January 2009. It was cold. The view from the top of that hill is pretty amazing, since there are absolutely no obstructions in any direction. No tall buildings anywhere nearby. The only large land formations are the Palisades a few miles to the east and the Watchung Mountains far in the west. A perfect panoramic view of one of the weirdest places in the known universe.

These paintings represent the last of the Five Miles From Times Square series. Soon this blog will be renamed as the project will be officially finished. Some new venture will take its place, and this blog will take on a new meaning.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Thanks.