the first go

I followed my impulse yesterday and began a 24"-square panel by drawing on it with reference to the photo posted on Thursday. I used an oil stick.  Then I added a first layer of oil and cold wax over it, and left it to dry, as shown at left I'm excited about developing it further next week.

Today we are off to St George, Utah, the closest city of any size, and at 3,000-feet elevation, much warmer than Torrey these days.  The purpose of our trip, in addition to enjoying the warmth, is to purchase a high-definition television.  Our 20-year-old set is finally giving up the ghost, and we are tired of not seeing the edges of the screen of high-def programs ("Where did that soccer ball go?").  So we are biting the bullet and entering the 21st century. A technician will come out next week to hook up the set to our satellite service; I wouldn't dream of trying to do it myself!

being referential

I spent a couple of hours today scouring Capitol Reef National Park for cliff formations with arcs, and photographing them.  I'm feeling a pull toward sketching them, an activity I seldom undertake, and at the same time am observing myself returning to old impulses and methods.  Am I pulling away from abstraction?  I don't think so; I have vague visions of using both approaches. It has never worked before, but it is an urge that keeps returning.  I seem periodically to feel a need to unify the abstract and the representational or referential -- and this is another such time.  Such attempts have never before been permanently productive, and usually have been discarded as a wrong path taken, yet I also acknowledge that they always feed the process: How can they not?

So I am once again feeling the urge to reference a concrete (well, sandstone) thing in my work, but am thinking that somehow I can also be true to the last nine months of abstraction.  If nothing else, I had a lovely day gazing at the strata and the desert varnish that characterize our local formations.  One of the photos is posted above.

old perspectives

I have made good progress on the "larger" pieces (12"x12", 16"x16") that have been hanging on my studio walls, though the smaller panels seem to be difficult to bring to closure.  My fascination with arcs and semicircles continues, and the three panels that are most exciting right now all contain the gesture.  I spent time today experimenting with the grout spreader in combination with natural arm gestures on a new panel, but ended up wiping it all out.  Some ghost marks remain, and will inform later layers, but all in all it didn't work to try to combine the two, at least not at this point.

As I worked, I found myself remembering all the cliff faces I've seen with arcs on them, future amphitheaters not yet eroded enough to merit the name.  I wonder if that is what is pulling me into this fascination. There is something that draws me to sandstone cliff faces, time and time again. I feel at home when I am in their presence.  They embody a permanence and stability that endure eons of storm and erosion, with a grace and beauty that never change. I realized that I haven't gone out to the park and visited the beautiful sandstone formations there since last fall.  When the weather warms a bit, I'll do that.

Perhaps because of this, I've returned to thoughts of painting from the real verses painting without references. But I don't want to leave the abstraction that I am doing.  I'm not sure where these impulses will take me, but a chunk of time spent on the panel whose image appeared in the penultimate post here has morphed a bit, and I'm posting the newest iteration above.

mechanical and organic

One of my favorite tools for scraping back oil paint in cold wax is a metal grout spreader that I found at a hardware store (pictured at left). I love the swath of parallel, curved lines that it provides.  Sans mots (see post of August 21st) has its mark in the upper left corner.

As I have begun to work on larger surfaces (I just put down the first layer on a 24"x24" -- yikes!), I find myself making larger gestures with or back into the paint.  A natural gesture that seems to be a current favorite is the curve that presents itself by swinging my forearm naturally from the elbow.  This is not the perfect curve of parallel lines provided by the spreader; it is a frequently uneven, somewhat elliptical, single-line curve.  But it also has a vibrancy and eloquence that is endlessly changing (no two are ever the same) and, at least for the moment, endlessly fascinating.  The picture in the previous post carries one, sideways.

The contrast between the mechanical and the organic speaks volumes to me.  Man-made vs nature, controlled vs spontaneous, precise vs carefree, scripted vs ad-lib: The list could continue for pages.  The presence of each characteristic in a painting makes a clear statement, and which mark I use becomes laden with meaning in a new way.  It forces me to ask myself:  What do I want to say?  And:  Am I saying it?

This relates to the concept of effortless mastery in my last post, in a variety of ways.  Mostly, I think about the mastery that a mechanical tool like the spreader provides, which is easy but also fairly automatic and perhaps robotic, in contrast to the huge investment of knowledge, training, intent, and ambition that feeds into the mastery of an organic moment in paint or in music.  This is why I am in love with the arts: To the extent that an artistic statement is organic (because some are mechanical), it speaks volumes to me, and it is that quality of a mastery that is complex, imperfect, organic, and human that I seek to achieve, and in which I rejoice whenever it is encountered.

effortless mastery

My new year has begun with a new orientation toward cello practice that may also apply to painting. I have been doing little of the latter since returning from Spain: The arrival of winter temperatures led to the discovery that the heater in my studio did not work, and when it is below freezing in the day, and often below zero at night, a space heater won't do the trick. A temporary repair last week is keeping the room comfortable now.

I haven't settled back into a painting routine yet. My last cello lesson of 2010, however, led to a shift in perspective about how I approach playing, and although I am barely beginning to put it into practice, it is clear that there are implications beyond the cello.  Quite possibly to everyday life, in fact....

It is hard to label the change I am trying to make, since all of the phrases that occur to me are already in use and mean other things. Bonnie and I dubbed it "effortless mastery," although it might also be called "relaxed awareness."  The former term has already been coined with relation to performance art, and is not the same as my concern.  The latter term is familiar to anyone practicing yoga asanas, and is closer.  The goal is a physical one: am I making more effort than is needed to play? Is my jaw clenched? (Usually, yes.) Are my shoulders tense? (Usually, yes.)  Obviously, some physical effort is necessary to create sound from the instrument, but I have well-entrenched habits of tension that at this point are impeding beautiful playing, which has a flow that is ... well, effortless.  The goal is to play accurately and expressively, with no hesitations, and with no more effort than is required.  Relaxed mastery, perhaps.

The focus is simply on letting go of physical tension that impedes the flow of energy.  A very dance-related concept.   The application in the studio is not as clear -- yet -- as it is in cello practice, but I do think that it exists.  The aches in my shoulders and hands after a long painting session are evidence of muscles held in tension unnecessarily, and I am intuitively sure that were I to release that tension, energy would flow more freely.  More on this in the days to come.

The image above is a current piece, 12"x12", as yet unfinished, though I think it is close.  It speaks to me of cliffs and clouds and sandstone arches.

mindfulness

A long and luxurious studio session yesterday afternoon followed a meaningful and satisfying cello practice in the morning. It was the first day that I had really plunged into either activity with attention and patience since we returned from Spain.  In both cases, I actively resisted the impulse to leap in and accomplish something. Instead, I allowed myself to relax and interact with each moment of what was happening.

While I was away, I was aware of a sense of distance and perspective from both activities, and a sense of seeing them -- and myself within them  -- from almost a third-party point of view.  Jerome and I talked about being anthropologist-observers of, rather than participants in, the cultures we were visiting.  I also took on that role when thinking about home, painting, and cello.  I kept that sense of observer yesterday, just long enough to change the dynamic of both the studio session and the music session.  The result, in both cases, was a mindfulness that let me ignore the mindset that pushes for production and encourage the mindset that stays in the moment and engages with what is going on.  It is much more rewarding, and I need to cultivate it more.  Perhaps that is a project for this winter: to not worry about forward progress in cello, or producing finished paintings, and just be in each moment with each activity, and let things evolve.

In the studio yesterday, I brought out a painting that needed some line work.  For some reason, the piece made me think of a ruined castle that we visited in Gormaz, Spain (above).  Caught by the memory, I picked up a ceramics needle tool and let my hand travel the road up the high hill on which the castle stood, then delineate the ruins and the fields in the valley below.  Then I put down more paint.  I ended up working on the piece for nearly an hour, lost in remembered sensations from that day a few weeks ago.  I didn't even think about how the painting might (or might not) turn out.

In cello practice, I focused on intonation, the exact sound of the notes played, their purity and their relationship to each another.  Again, time went by without my noticing.  I was completely caught up in the task at hand, and I heard nuances that I had never heard before.  I explored minor thirds in various iterations without thinking about anything but the sounds.  I wasn't working on a piece, and I had no further goal at that moment than to play with as perfect intonation as I could achieve.

In both cases, the small accomplishments clearly will contribute to later goals, but I achieved what I did because I paid no thought to those larger aims, but focused on what was going on at the moment.  And, at the end of the day, the satisfaction was deep.

back home

This is our third day home from Spain, and jet lag and a nagging cold caught on the trip are giving me a sense of suspension in time and distance from daily routine.  I am in the midst of cleaning my studio, a ritual that I have used before, after an absence, to help get back into a productive mode.  Opening the door yesterday brought an interesting mixture of reactions as I re-engaged with current work.  I felt a strong desire to get rid of older pieces that are neither cold wax nor abstract.  My more recent pieces in cold wax just feel so right.  Not that I don't still have favorite past paintings -- and in a wide variety of styles! -- but those pieces hang in the house, while most of the old paintings in the studio are pieces that I never let out the door because I wasn't happy with them.  I'm still not, but rather than hang onto them to "fix" them, as has been my tendency in the past, I now just want them gone.  One exception, a piece for friends that is nearly done, a semi-abstract landscape of our valley.  I need to settle down to finishing that, and I've been avoiding it.  It pulls me into past methods and, to some extent, into past insecurities...the same reasons I am wanting to toss the old work.

I was somewhat surprised by feeling such a strong re-commitment to abstraction and to the cold wax process.  I wasn't aware that I was questioning it.  The reaction may have been strengthened by not getting into a statewide juried show to which I submitted an old piece, pre-cold wax and pre-abstract.  Creating that particular painting accomplished many things for me at the time, over two years ago now, but  as a finished piece it also never quite worked (and also has never sold).  I think that entering it into the show was partly to find out and decide its final worth.  Which is, that it was a great process piece, but wasn't my voice.  An image of "Three Sisters", 22"x24", is above.