This is a new piece that I just finished. I really don’t have a title for it as of yet and am still in the process of deciphering it for myself.
In the studio, this is a very striking painting but is probably a piece that won’t show up as well on the screen as it does in person, which is often the case with a lot of my work. My photography of the work often doesn’t capture the sense of depth into the piece that I think is an important aspect of my paintings. There is sometimes a flattening of the surface that just doesn’t translate the real feel of every piece.
One comment I hear quite often at openings is that the work is so much more impressive in person than in print or on a computer screen. I don’t know if that is the result of of my capabilities as a photographer or if it has anything to do with the appearance of the work itself but it something I try to improve on an ongoing basis.
As for this painting, I am very much reminded by it of a dream I had about twelve years back that was both disturbing and exhilarating at once, one that is still vivid in memory. It took place in a darkened space in what appeared to be a museum of some sort. At a certain point I came to a doorway at the center of the space. I was warned not to enter it. The person who warned me, who I couldn’t make out, called it the Van Gogh Spiral. As I entered, there were these bursts of rich colors that all came together in the form of a downward spiral, and I descended the spiral as one might go down a large spiral staircase. As I came around the bend in each new layer, imagery would flash before my eyes becoming stranger and stranger the further I went, a sort of symbolic descent into some sort of madness, some nether region. Without disclosing every detail of it, I can only say that it was a powerful dream which still lingers with me and I see parts of it in the sky of this painting.
That said, it makes my objectivity on this piece somewhat suspect. I’ll probably spend a lot of time over the next few weeks with it visible to me in the studio, trying to determine if it works on its own for me or if it works only because of the personal information I see in it. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Redtree Times 