Today's Underpainting from Yesterday's Sketch ~ Weaving Roots of Time

Today's underpainting from yesterday's 6" x 8" sketch. Three panels, each 24" x 48". This piece is just painting itself. I have been thinking a lot about synchronicity and how time and space seem to melt and disappear when I am painting. There is a relaxing of cerebral processing and a surge of energy that seems to come through my body. I can honestly feel these roots winding and weaving within my own muscle tissues. I am holding the brush in my hand and making the marks but it is not by "thinking" about them, it seems more intuitive, almost like I am "breathing" them into existence. Whatever it is, I LOVE doing it and feel so energized and ecstatic after an afternoon like today! It feels as though I have just gone on a journey w/ the rocks and roots and they have filled me w/ marvelous tales of "elsewhere". Part of a Neruda's poem kept rising to consciousness today, 

"When I lived amongst the roots

they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell."

 



 

The Rain-Maker Story

The Rain-Maker story (told by Richard Wilhelm in a lecture at the Psychological Club of Zurich in the 1920’s) 

Wilhelm told Jung that while he was living in Qingdao, China, there was a long dry spell in the region. The land in the countryside was utterly parched, and the crops were failing. As a consequence, many people were facing the prospect of starvation. Desperate, they tried to produce rainfall by performing all the religious rites they knew: the “Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result. Finally the Chinese said, ‘We will fetch the rain-maker.’” So they sent a message to another part of the country asking for the assistance of a well known rain-maker. Eventually a “dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked for was a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great snow-storm at the time of the year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumours about the wonderful rain-maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it.” When asked, the old man replied: “I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be in the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came” (Visions, 1, p. 333). It was quite simple. He put himself in order, and this put the surrounding natural world in order. In turn, this brought into play what the community needed in order to survive, i.e., precipitation. Jung uses this story to illustrate the phenomenon of synchronicity.

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Tumbling Into Ecstasy

60" x 48" oil (work in progress)

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3 Small Stories in Stone

These are three small paintings (12" x 24") that I completed last week. I find that working small is much

more of a cerebral process than the gut inspired dance I usually do w/ my larger works. These three

pieces became a story from the stones and rocks that I love and admire so deeply. They each taught

me something new about painting from the inside/out of the rocks and though they were painted w/

much focus and direct intent they still whisper secrets from within the nonverbal realm.

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Sky Road

The newest painting in the road series. Feel like I'm taking a "road trip" with my paints when I work on this series.

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Perched on Eagle's Nest

Snowshoed up this mountain side to listen.

WInd whispered spring secrets,

earth released her sweet scent and 

woodpeckers drummed in rhythm with the beauty

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Sky Falling into Water

Two new pieces that I have been working on since September. These two paintings have gone through many

variations, transmutations, alterations, dissolutions & integrations...now, finally, they feel fully absorbed. So

much takes place on an instinctual, nonverbal level when I paint...at one point, the brushes were interfering

with the process so I dropped them and started to paint with my hands, it felt like I had become the rocks,

water and sky...sometimes painting is like a portal into a more integrated world, an imaginary world, but somehow

more real in it's visceral body revelations.

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