I call this new painting Harmonic One. It’s 14″ by 34″ on paper and is part of my Islander show at the West End Gallery in Corning , opening this Friday and running through August.
This is another of those paintings that I start then set aside, waiting for a moment of clarity when the direction of the painting comes through to me. Sometimes I set them aside because I simply lose momentum, lose the rhythm that is driving the creative force forward and find myself dulling the painting. Other times, like this, I set them aside because I reach a point, in full rhythm, where I must choose a direction and cannot because I so like what I see before me that I am fearful that I will make a wrong decision which would destroy everything.
The thing that attracted me to this piece and caused me to hesitate when I came to that point on this piece was the color and texture of the sky. It was chaotic and rough with bits of differing tones of blues and pale greens. It was just alive and seemed to dance on the surface. There is a detail from the sky shown at the bottom of this post. I knew that to just jump ahead too quickly would diminish the whole effect of that sky. It required a focal point that would play off of the chaos running through the sky.
Of course, my focal point, my central character, was going to be the Red Tree. But it had to have a certain weightiness, a feeling of strength that would create a solidity that would contrast with the foreboding confusion of the sky and bring the whole into some sort of equilibrium. In short, a tree that would create harmony.
I repeatedly would put this piece on my table and, time after time, I would take it away without touching it. I just could envision such a harmonizer. I was at a point where I was beginning to think that I had created a piece that would never go beyond mere potential. The finished section began top lose vitality and I thought it would go in the heap with other work that never lived up to their possibilities.
But finally, it showed itself in the form that you see. It transformed the whole thing, bringing a peaceful solidness and force that brings the chaos of the sky into balance. The title came easily. In the end, I was tremendously pleased with this painting. It had everything that I looked for in my work–depth, texture, color, contrasts, and a feeling of vitality all in a deceptively simple package. All that I could ask of it…
I’ve been hobbled a bit over the last couple of weeks by a pinched nerve in my neck that has made any work (or sleep) almost impossible to accomplish. Hopefully, it will soon fade and I will be working feverishly again. But while it has kept me from work, it has not prevented me from thinking back on 2012 and what it meant for my work. It was truly a great year for it, one that will be hard to replicate.
Redtree Times 