I was contacted a week or so back from a gallery that represents me, asking about an image that appears in In Quiet Places, the book that shows some of the paintings from the 2003 -2008 time period. I opened the book to the page so I could fully reference as we talked and it wasn’t until they asked about the color of the sun did I even realize that the sun was blue in the painting. It just didn’t register at first and my mind didn’t even recognize the fact that the color was unusual , instead focusing on the feeling it gave to the piece.
It was the feeling of a bright and seemingly normal day that was somehow different. A strangeness that didn’t threaten but was instead like a sudden awareness of the unseen that surrounds us.
It was at this point that I realized that a painting that I had just finished had such a blue sun hovering in its sky. It is the one shown here, a 20″ by 40″ canvas that I have titled OtherWorld. It. too, had that feeling of the unseen dimension, one that is everywhere but remains hidden to us and, therefore, strange. The sky in this piece is painted in three sections that seem to hover transparently between the blue sun and the red tree, symbolic of that invisible other world that surrounds us. Perhaps it signifies the spiritual dimension or maybe it is a purely physical dimension of energies that we simply cannot detect or feel. Or maybe it is both.
I surely don’t know.
But that blue sun made me feel differently in this painting than if it had been a more traditional color, say a yellow or orange. It was as though I were suddenly aware of that hidden dimension and this knowledge changed my perception of all things normal, everything somehow just a bit different. Slightly strange yet the same. Like the feeling when the hairs on the back of your neck suddenly raise for no apparent reason. You feel there is something there but it remains a mystery and then the moment is passed, soon to be forgotten.
Maybe that is what this piece is about– how we remain remain strangers to those dimensions that we often brush against. Those other worlds.
Redtree Times 