Notes from the Artist’s Studio
August, 2007
It is our power of choice that connects us most immediately to God.
My process in painting sometimes gets caught up in the product, in critique and judgment. Remembering that I am seeking to be caught up in a dance with choice and response to the many aspects of expression present in the moment—the colors, shapes and edges on the canvas. When I stay focused on the choice and the flow of choices and the rhythm they create as I physically move around the paining— these moments of creation are the closest I have come to understanding that I am God/Goddess and can consciously create from that knowledge.
January 2006
When I am starting a new canvas I want to create exciting color, texture and space on the un-sized canvas. I pay close attention to the light and the edges of the shapes as they form a dynamic composition. Usually I pour several washes overlaid to get the initial patterns and movement that will underlie the finished painting. When I am most successful I have an emotional feeling of space and light that may be suggestive of landscape, but defies any literal translation as place. It is becoming increasingly important to me to stay clear of specific references. This is not always easy since my impulse may be to define an emerging suggestion by enhancing the markers that show up. Most important is the spontaneous trust that allows marks and flows to place themselves easily on the canvas. My job is to respond decisively in working the wash with my tools and experience guiding me, without succumbing to the draw towards a familiar landscape image. I am most excited when unfamiliar and unknown fields of color hold landscape impulses. This is when I am fully alive as I work, and 100% present in the unknown. The finished painting will express this unlimited energy.
So much of this process of art making is related to my work in healing, and with energy fields. All of it involves an unseen, or “unknown" world requiring conscious attention and huge trust. Suspending judgment while remaining in a discerning and responsive state is a tricky business. Becoming increasingly familiar with what it feels like to enter the “unknown" is essential. Fatigue, discomfort, irritation, distraction, hunger, and worry are all likely responses to be encountered. It continues to surprise me that I must enter into these response patterns before noticing what I am doing and having the presence of mind to allow myself into the unknown without lurching to hold onto something familiar. Over time it actually becomes more difficult since my many avoidance behaviors become familiar and comfortable. I have to do what ever it takes for me to push my work back out into unknown territory in order to discover fresh and exciting use of color, line, shape and texture. I want my paintings to open new horizons of possibility while referencing deep interior landscapes that have never seen the light of day. There is just enough of the familiar in these paintings to easily engage the viewer ‘s involvement, but once involved the viewer is caught in the presence of light and color, form, line and texture which demand their own meaning apart from specific references.
The elements that are important to me are the initial textures, edges and shapes, as well as colors. Then the veils that overlay the first washes evolve the emerging painting, and convey the mystery of energy fields converging to create something previously unseen. The spontaneous nature of these events is essential to expressing random magic and the fleeting moments of creation. Through all of this process I remain committed to the elements, and to landscape as life force and spiritual presence.
There is great power in this process, which mimics life by stepping outside of conscious deliberation and control. Sometimes fragile, sometimes fierce, these images are full of motion, light, and contrasts; attributes of spirit.
In my work as a healer I am required to bring myself totally present with all of my senses consciously engaged. I attend the “other" in a receptive state of curiosity, letting go of any fears that might arise and following intuition and instinct in a state of trust within myself. Thus there can be full consciousness of the external experiencing of the “other"; while at the same time there is full awareness of internal experiencing. Both internal and external realities are vast universes, and each is ultimately unknown. Developing access to both inner and outer experience simultaneously expands enormously the potential for creativity and for healing. The hazard is in getting lost in either universe, and the challenge is to be fully willing to direct my flow back and forth between the two without getting lost. Again, it becomes imperative to stay present in the actual unknown of each moment, and awake with all of the tools and experience of a lifetime available for navigational purposes, rather than for answers.
Making art, as well as healing, seems to me to be about developing oneself as an instrument or vessel from which may pour an expanded experience of possibility. The ego must step aside in order for a force greater than self to enter into the equation and use the vessel or tool that is offered by the self. In this way the process becomes a kind of prayer, as in “thy will be done". This is not to be confused with organized religious experience, however, in that no dogma or form is given to the involvement of spirit, other than to acknowledge the relationship between unseen forces and the human being at work
Notes from the Studio 1/25/06
What excites me on the canvas is the sense of a pulse, of breathing, live, color fields that are irresistibly attracted to each other, and full of the pleasure of creation. They must be liquid veils to accomplish this fragile yet powerful presence. The fields bear the marks of my consciousness as a momentary alliance with their own random nature. I am joining with this unknown emerging being in a realm outside of my conscious mind, while completely responsible for the image that results on the canvas.
When I experiment with thicker, juicier pigments I change the nature of the painting entirely. The ephemeral breathing quality surrenders to the more substantial material presence of the paint. The heavier marks have my artist’s determining hand more plainly visible. The delicate balance I am seeking tips too strongly towards me, the artist, leaving the random fields of color looking less powerful and perfect in their aliveness.
Painting notes 3/28/06
Last week was long and hard, revealing some of the core resistance I encounter frequently in the cycles of creating. Its like a jam, a dam(n) of logs, a tangle of chaotic and mounting proportions. I am unable to move out of it, but keep avoiding action, or taking action that is futile and ineffective. Canvases in progress surround me. Most of them look like good beginnings full of possibilities. They still have potential to be great. And so I am attached to those things in them that please me, and full of fear that I will destroy them, erase, confuse, overwork through not knowing. I confront my not knowing and feel lost in the unknown of emerging images, and I loose courage. Without trust in myself moving without restraint to create in that unknown, I am bound to fail myself. So I start a new painting hoping for the one that flows clearly and perfectly into being before I stop to hold onto it.
Waking up to this fear, and this process of attachment and resistance, reminds me once again of why I paint in the first place. It’s about the process, the process of trusting myself to act freely and perfectly with all of who I am leaping into the unknown new moments that the painting offers me.
In the end it is only this dance of trust and action that matters. The best of the paintings, the ones that thrill me, are the ones that express the freedom of flowing freely into the unknown. I want the unexplained delight of color and form in balance and tension that sings and seduces and suggests to the experience of the viewer. I want the richness of complex colors from my limited palette, like the hum of tones from the universe, creating a new reality. I want to invite the viewer in to be quickened with new life. I want the painting to show how I erased it all, how I let it go, only to discover something entirely unexpected. This is what thrills me most and makes my heart race. This is when I can feel deeply how my painting might make a difference in the world.