perspective

I've had most of a week away from the easel, partly because I've been away from home and partly because I've been assembling and bolting panels. It feels good to have seven completed pieces. Not only am I in good shape for the show (now just two weeks away), but I also now have been through this whole process, from ordering Gessobord at decent prices, to figuring how how to attach eyelets and hanging wire, and how to sign the finished work.

Looking back at the creation of this first set of panels and montages, I realize that I abstracted out beyond where I really want to go, in the long run. But I think that I had to, to break out of my old habits and get away from my representation traps. To borrow a distinction from Rebecca Crowell, I don't want to represent, but I do want to reference, and I did very little of that in this first batch.

Contemplating this first set of finished pieces, they do not say what I now envision. But then, I didn't envision that, a month ago. And I like them, and they represent an important phase, maybe a transition phase (but aren't all phases transitions?), and a worthy one. While creating these panels, I used my imagination and intuition almost exclusively. Color and some design came from reality, but not much. I am persuaded, from all this work, that especially intuition has a vital role to play in this kind of painting, yet I want my daily interaction with the landscape around me to play an important role also.

In Rebecca's book Old walls and lost paths, she includes photos of Catalonia that she took, and some paintings of hers that she can relate to the photos. It is not that she painted from any photo, but rather that after creating a painting, she realized the relationship between the two. This description of hers has stayed with me, as a glimpse of the way that one's surroundings can influence directly one's work. In my travels of the past week, for example, as I viewed a mountain valley or a red rock cliff, I could see in my mind's eye a painting that might come from that. Not a rendition of the scene, but an impression of color, of shape, of space. (In contract to my former practice, I did not take any photos.) I have three such ideas in my head and in my sketchbook, basic plans that will morph as I paint, but still three little visions that (at least to me) will say valley, cliff, mountain. Someday this may become intuitive, too -- it is largely a matter of seeing differently, mindfully. For the moment, it has to be conscious. The adventure continues!

The image above is of a 12"x18" piece, as yet unnamed, for the show.