.
It is cold,
blustery.
A wind whips rip curls into the frozen coast,
and every part of me.
Thankfully,
a network of respite falls strategically throughout the dunes.
Small families of Jack and Ponderosa Pines shield from the storms.
I find myself between
Three siblings
and a French easel.
The waves being hurtled towards the beach
The thick and thin storm cloud ceiling
speak in
Line, shape, and colour.
Skipping back through a single track of sand to experience a more expansive view,
wind whitens knuckles
And hurries my pace.
How this wind,
On this winter’s day,
is shaping, not only, the way I move through it, but
also my visual expression
When I was out there recording the notes of this field
it was in a no nonsense,
to the point,
language.
A pencil,
cutting into the thumbnail.
Slashing to and fro,
from hard to soft edges,
from dark to light.
All the while
looking upon the horizon,
Into the wind,
sand stinging eyes.
Taking in the visual information in furtive glances,
snapshots of what I see.
Compartmentalizing the environment and hurriedly putting it to paper.
Even while writing,
I am becoming reactivated with the energy of the day.
Looking back at my first drawings
I see a duality of experience.
Two versions of the same moment.
Firstly,
I see the connection
between myself and the world.
The blurring lines of dichotomy eeking ever closer to a unified front
Secondly,
The raw sensory data.
Taking stock of my body’s response to being in the environment
and recording it with pencil and paper.
My response to the cold windy day
To the duality of desiring to be in a place but being so uncomfortable that I wish to leave
How does my visual expression alter depending on where I am?
Are the drawings more hurried than normal?
Lines heavily weighted in gesture because my fingers are too cold to spend more time refining?
And if I fought this?
Battled against the natural inclination to jam my hands into pockets?
How might the quality of line change?
Resolute? Forceful? Strong?
whichever way I look,
Into the sun or away from it,
will change the way in which I feel.
Ultimately changing the manner in which I express it.
the environment
shapes my
Expression.
Environment shapes expression
Regardless of what environment I find myself,
studio, library, street corner, cafe, or couch…
Within the metadata of a stroke,
Where the finely tuned instrument that is the human body,
Cannot help but be effected by the environment it finds itself.
(And the only different between effect and inspiration is that the latter produces the desired result)
So here lies the duality of experience
How all of my senses interact with the environment that I find myself,
Coupled with the desire to foster a feeling of unity within the viewer.
Or
the intent of expression.
The drive to create,
Simplified into an easy to understand statement.
A foundation for me to stand upon,
Throughout the painting
If my intent is strong enough it
Is imbued into every atom of paint,
Into each potential or kinetic molecule of movement,
into the abstracted corporel shapes,
Into every mix of pigments,
Into every stroke.
All of this a mental exercise
a game plan
to better assist
Painting from a place of freedom.
For in the end I let go to become fully immersed in the moment
Acting and reacting with abandon
I have faith that my intent
Formed before hand comes to brush is what,
I stand upon,
beats within my chest,
floats away on breath,
and has become
the fuel
on which this engine runs.
The intent that I have refined gives a starting point a place to move from
And the environment provides the language to voice it
And in the end
Regardless of my well laid plans
In spite of the wind blowing through my flowery thoughts.
The two factors that have the greatest impact on my painting
happen before I ever pick up a pencil or brush.
One is the seed and the other the soil
The