painting,
has always been for me,
a tool for understanding.
Whether that be investigating complex physical objects,
or the study of elusive emotional subjects.
Hunkered over sketchbook
Walking to and fro in line with easel
Studying the evidence laid before me
an investigator
Three days of stubble
Coffee stained shirt
Dark lush pillows under eyes,
That are still bright and hungry,
Ready to solve the case
The evidence:
Value
Hue
Saturation
Shape
Line
Each like an island
Separated
in the vast
ocean of
vision
A stroke of paint,
Smudge of graphite,
Slowly constructing bridges
Connecting those distant shores
So that a network is created
A visual infrastructure
Where the eye may travel,
And
objects begin to appear.
After three decades of studying objects
from life
An elusive language beyond demographics
Has been created
The ability to communicate subtle feelings and ideas
To the viewer
outside of linguistics
Deconstructing recognizable objects of the world
into abstracted shapes
of colour.
Into their original state.
reverse engineering
human vision
Where each thing I see,
Whatever it is,
Communicates to me in a way outside of any detailed information
I may hold of it
Where the object ceases
And
The subject is born
dissolving the physical boundaries I see between things
in turn
Dissolves my boundaries
And i know I’ve mentioned this before, so pardon the repetition, but:
Once the many iterations of the physical universe become dissolved into
one
The result becomes
A life
Where I cease to be apart from the world
and become
a part
Object to Subject to me
Object Subject Me
objectsubjectme
Me
Wading through the universe
Swimming in myself
I understand that if the “I”
keeps these objects and subjects clearly defined
Whether in vision or upon canvas
I understand their place in the world
I understand my place in the world
understanding this has become my security blanket when faced with the ambiguous and chaotic nature of the universe
Please remember that:
Understanding that keeping my boundaries defined has become my security blanket when faced with the ambiguous and chaotic nature of the universe
In this way,
painting becomes a dialogue
With
The sky, the light, the rivers, and trees
Trying to discover
To understand
the universe I am painting,
And their testimony always brings me to the same conclusion
These objects
myself
the subject.
Are one and the same
The questions I ask of the universe are being asked of
Myself
My
Self
Where ‘my’
Becomes the sole proprietor
And ‘self’
the small part of the universe that I inhabit
The part of the universe in which I have claimed as my own
The supreme vehicle
That has been gifted to me at birth
And as I meditate on this,
typing away,
I close in on the truth.
For when speaking of painting
Any part of it
Object,
Subject
Me
You
the beginning or end
All are just
the same.
Whether separately connected
With the bridges of vision
Or
When the bridges, and the shores they connect,
Have been dissolved
Into
One
a separate reality
outside of human experience
Or
Pure experience
It is all just a way to understand.
Two tools
Available at any moment
In order to experience.
One not better than the other
It is in their dichotomy that the richness,
of what it is to be an artist,
is
Found
At first I thought that when going out to paint from life, en plein air, it was the landscape that I was studying
But now I find that I am studying
Not merely a landscape
Nor strictly my self
But
one in the same
This agent of understanding
fuelled by the dichotomy of
Me
and everything else
Becomes a resting place
Dissolving back into the source
Unity
(Well sort of)
one foot in and one foot out
I am neither the universe
Or the self that is viewing it
But
both.
It is in this that i find true freedom
Free from my security blanket
The need for understanding
The self
the universe
the same.
Inclusion
Barr exception
&
In the times of frustration
In loneliness
I wish to burn the security blanket
And truly see by the light of its flames
No longer do
I
wish to understand
I
Like a flag atop the mast
Whether seen in reverence or disgust
saluted, burned, or forgotten
matters not
I shall give myself
freely
to the coming and goings
Of the