This morning, I was looking at the wall in my studio that is directly in front of the desk where I write this as well as the easels where I paint. It’s a large stone fireplace that is about fourteen feet wide made from local creekstone. There are bookshelves built into the wall, the shelves formed by thick slabs of bluestone. There are also three half round ledges that jut out from the wall that were obviously placed to show off tchotchkes.
I have a number of personal things littering the wall. There are several of the carvings from the years before I began to paint. An old snowshoe. A carved crow from a well known regional sculptor shares one of the half round shelves with a cheap carving of Don Quixote that my sister gave me as a Christmas present when I was still a kid . There’s a Buddhist prayer wheel given to me by a friend along with a thumb piano made from koa wood, picked up on a trip to Hawaii many, many years ago.
But in the center is a painting from a few years back, an abstract comprised of colorful blocks. I knew when I did this piece that it was strictly mine and wasn’t surprised that it didn’t find a home. There are several such pieces here in my main painting space. Maybe it’s the fact that I did them just for my own satisfaction that make them favorites of mine. I know this painting catches my eye several times a day and there is definitely a sense of satisfaction in each glance.
Even with that, I don’t know that I would do such a piece again. If I did, the scale of the painting would be much larger, maybe four or five feet square, so that its colors and forms had the size to make a real statement. A bold yelp whereas this small painting is a whispered wish. But that whisper is mine and I wish on it every day.
Below is a post from back when it was made. The quote totally aligns with how I see the key to creativity– finding that medium and process that corresponds with the way one thinks and feels.
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The artist is a man who finds that the form or shape of things externally corresponds, in some strange way, to the movements of his mental and emotional life.
—Graham Collier
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I have been working on dream inspired patterned forms, as I’ve noted here several times recently. I have been incorporating into the layers that make up my skies in simple landscapes where they serve to give added depth and texture. It works really well in that context and it would be easy to just use it in that way.
But there is something about some of them that make me just push them to the forefront alone without masking them with any representational forms over them. Something beyond narrative. Elemental. Like it is somehow tied to my own internal shapes and forms and patterns.
I was thinking this when I came across the quote at the top from the late jazz musician/composer Graham Collier. It made so much sense because I think that is, in general, the attraction of art for me– it’s an external harmony of internal elements.
I didn’t know much about Collier who died in 2011. He was a bassist/bandleader/composer who was the first British grad of the Berklee College of Music. He played around the world and also wrote extensively on jazz but he still wasn’t on my radar. While I like jazz, my knowledge, as it is in many things, is pretty shallow. So I decided that I should listen to some of Collier’s music.
The first song I heard was titled Song One (Seven-Four) and it just clicked for me. It was so familiar and seemed to be right in line with the piece at the top, a 12″ by 12″ painting on masonite panel. It made me think about the connection with music, how sounds often take the form of shapes and colors in the minds of both musicians and listeners.
Again, very elemental.
So I began to think of these newer pieces as music. It creates a context that makes sense for my mind, one that gives me a way of looking at the work without seeking representational forms. It’s an exciting thing for me and I look forward to some newer explorations in this realm in the near future. For Graham Collier’s clarification, I am calling the piece at the top Jazz ( Song One). Here it is :
Redtree Times 