The painting above is called Breakthrough and is a 30″ by 30″ canvas. I chose it for this post because it fits well with my state of mind this morning. You see, sometimes a breakthrough announces itself in a big momentous way while sometimes it comes in quiet, barely awake moment.
I woke up this morning in the dark and for the first time in a long while found myself thinking about a painting I had been working on. I was thinking about how I had left it at the end of yesterday and the approach I wanted to take when I went back into it today–the colors I wanted to add and the manner in which I would apply them.
For most of you, the thoughts of imminent work may not seem like a great way to start your waking day but for me it was an exciting thrill. It felt normal in a good way to me, something that has been lacking in recent months when it seems as though every day offered a different task or challenge that took me further out of the routine that has long been my emotional and creative stabilizer.
But this morning it seemed closer to my normal normal. And it felt good. It was energizing in that it meant that my mind was moving away from things I can’t control and back to those things that control and guide me. Just knowing that my waking mind transitioned immediately from the subconscious to a creative state was exciting.
And reassuring. There have been moments in recent months when I thought that part of me was slipping away, that I would have trouble finding my way back to that creative wellspring that has nourished me for so many years. But this morning I see a creative path moving forward and am eager to move ahead on it. It feels like a breakthrough and that feels right and good.
Whew!
Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended.
The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories…Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
If you work diligently… without saying to yourself beforehand, ‘I want to make this or that,’ if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.
Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral
I was looking at this painting in the studio yesterday. It’s another orphan, one of those pieces that went out into the world and came back without being able to find a home. I normally try to figure out if there is an apparent flaw in these orphans and often there is something that is just not right. But sometimes I notice that these pieces are often pieces that I see as being more personal, more connected with my own life’s narrative. This painting, called No Mail, falls into this category. It evokes a certain time and feeling so vivid in my memory that it immediately emerges for me when I look at this painting.
This painting is an orphan, one of those few pieces that ended up back with me here in the studio after making the rounds of the galleries. I don’t mind that it came back as it has always held a special place in my heart– orphans have that effect on me. I like the roughness of its surface, the deepness of the colors in the sky (which are so hard to capture with my photography) and the contrast of the scene’s quietness against the turbulence of the sky’s energy.
I showed this short video here about six years back. It’s a compilation of morphing self portraits from Vincent Van Gogh put together by Phillip Scott Johnson that I found intriguing then and now.
Redtree Times 