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“A philosopher once asked, “Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?” Pointless, really…”Do the stars gaze back?” Now, that’s a question.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust
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Above is a new painting that is going with me down to Alexandria for my show, Haven, at the Principle Gallery, opening June 1. I am calling this 20″ by 16″ canvas Stars and Satellites. It’s a continuation of a series of recent works that are primarily stark nightscapes with skies composed of shards of color in an almost stained-glass manner. At the junctures where shards meet are points of bright color— the light of the stars and the planets of the night sky.
I think I have written here about the meditative effect of painting these pieces, how there is a feeling of both intense concentration and non-thought that blocks out all other things. If the television is on or music is playing, I don’t really hear it. If delivery vans or cars come up my driveway, I am totally unaware even though they directly pass in front of the large windows before which I work.
It’s like I am in that space in that time, especially in the first stages of composing the picture. All is quiet and all that moves through my mind is the simple geometry of placing blocks of red oxide in a way that makes sense in that part of my brain that is scanning the whole of the composition. It’s one of my favorite parts of my process of painting, this state of being so mentally attached to the surface of the painting.
Another favorite part comes later as the painting evolves from its red oxide skeleton. This moment comes after layer after layer of color is added and the painting crosses a tipping point where it suddenly becomes a fully fleshed being, an entity with its own life force and its own voice.
That is a really gratifying moment, one that makes me think of Carl Sagan describing the Voyager space mission and how it would travel through time and space as a reminder of our existence as a people and a civilization long after our Sun had turned our planet into an ember, long after we had ceased to walk this earth.
And in a way many of those stars in the night sky serve that same purpose. Many are the final traces of light from stars that have been extinguished eons ago yet remind us of their existence.
This piece has, for me, a feeling of an interdependence between the moon, the stars and we here on earth. We each need the other in order to be seen, to serve as a reminder that we have existed in this universe, if only for short time.
Like John Lennon sang in Instant Karma: Well, we all shine on/Like the moon and the stars and the sun…
Redtree Times 
I recognize the phenomenon you mentioned here: ” If the television is on or music is playing, I don’t really hear it.” The ticking a chiming of my grandmother clock gets blocked in the same way.
On the other hand, music doesn’t get blocked because it’s never on. I simply can’t read or write with music in the background (or tv, if I had one). It’s the reason I don’t favor audio books. I can’t even listen and wash dishes. I either miss part of the story or stop washing. (I’m not sure about chewing gum and walking, but I have my suspicions.)
I often watch movies while I work but they are almost always old films that I have seen numerous times before so that I can zone out and come back in, knowing where the story is at any given point. They are usually from the 30’s, 40’s and early 50’s and heavy on dialogue so that I don’t have to actually watch the imagery. Like you, audiobooks are out of the question because of the attention needed to completely follow the narrative.
Once again Gary, this new series really grabs me. And your description brought back memories of a nighttime bike ride back in the early seventies when the moon wasn’t out and the countryside around me was as black as the sky itself. Pedaling down a blacktop road just a shade lighter than the land on both sides, all of my world became the star filled sky… A transcendental experience.
I love this painting.
Thank you so much!
Once you mentioned it in your discussion of the painting, I could see the “stained glass” -ness of the bits of sky, but when I first looked at the painting, I was struck by how web-like the edges of the bits were, like the moon was suspended in the sky at the center of a great orb-spider web and the stars were like droplets of dew that caught the light. The second thing that struck me about the painting, something I hadn’t realized until just then, was how the houses are shaped like arrows pointing upwards at the sky. (I’ll have to go back and look at other works now and see how that perception changes what else I see in them.) And to carry through on your Carl Sagan thoughts, the moon really is suspended in the sky by a web of cosmic forces. You point out that most ironic of paradoxes — That when you look up into the night sky, what you’re seeing is not the present, but the (very, in a lot of cases) distant past.
I do love that “fugue state” where the thing you’re making just seems to flow out of you. I always have music on, something that fits the mood and the feel of what I’m doing. It will be ambient music, without singing, without a beat, sometimes without melody, just pleasant, musical sounds. Anything with singing, or a melody, or a beat tends to engage my attention and distracts me. It’s a great place, that place where you know what comes next without knowing how you know — or caring, really. You just go with the flow.
Astute of you to see the roofs a arrows. When they first entered my vocabulary many years back, that is exactly the term I used for them. They were originally meant as visual guides that would move the eyes upward.