Henry Chinanski

He is the real deal, the “man,” the artist He is making it, true, honest, in your face, cruel but laced with a touch of insight and pathos. And then He lives it too. On the edge: women, drugs, booze, the track, and all the while, in the midst of the fucking, whoring, and drunk he makes art. And now we can add Arturo Bolano another artist cut from the same cloth. As a teenager wandering the streets of the big city, passionate for experience tethered to art, wrapped in glory of his certainty for a “visceral realism.” Reading these iconic tales I can only wonder why I cannot aspire to such heights or plumb such depths.

First, I am sitting alone … no 18 year old redhead with “ample” cleavage is giving “head,” no joint, no vodka-7, instead …. I am eating Choco-dynamos. I am making art and like Chinaski I have had the struggle of doing it while doing the day job, like Bolana, I have wondered great cities living and drawing. However, Chinanski was able to cleave to an audience until he became enough of a phenomenon to just make the art and live it, use it, for an endless source of girls and booze, and recycle those times into more art.

At least I can take the subway to the studio and read of another Henry Chinanski chapter, another written page and another sexual experience, another bottle of booze. I can look into the mirror and hope the work, in its intimacy, energy, voice, drawn line has an echo of poetry.

Then I can have another bowl of choco-dynamos and go to bed.

Top: "Hands with cigarette" etching

Next: "Nude study: Jen" oil on canvas

Then: "Party" drypoint etching

left: "Me and Katherine D" etching

right: "Couple" etching

above: "Portrait and Mirror" oil on canvas

last: "Cold Wind Blowing" etching