"Space is an open hand, a mind that thinks shapes, not ideas, shapes that breathe, walk, speak, transform and silently evaporate." Octavio Paz
I took these words to the studio today and let them float around inside the room with me. I am full of ideas, another idea is always blooming up from somewhere, one idea leads to another idea. I sometimes have so many ideas that I become paralyzed by the ideas and can't even pick up a paintbrush cause I am lost in my head of ideas. I think of the painter Agnes Martin who says she's careful not to have ideas because they are inaccurate. I was also thinking about the painter Jake Berthot talking about "intuitive geometry" and the "method" of investigating a painting: At a certain point the painting takes over. It is for this reason that I am posting these very first marks as I blunder my way into a painting with my "clever ideas" and suddenly the painting takes charge and I am noticing and feeling "the volume of the space and light". I am very enamoured with this particular place in the woods, it is deep and mossy and dripping with mystery. The place expresses it's incredibly complex and intricate web of life through a riot of colors and textures that wind around each other into a seemingly chaotic embrace. I work from photos, I make sketches, I lay down the bare bones and then the memories begin to fill in the smells, sounds, quality of light, density of air and so on. I am back inside the moss becoming squishy and moist within a symphony of greens. Ideas evaporate and light, air, shapes and texture replace the thoughts. I move to these shapes as I move to music and release their sounds onto the canvas...it is an incredible experience! One I will never cease to be completely in awe of, as I become a servant to the painting.
1 comment:
It's so great to see the work in progress.
Awesome painting.......
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