Blog posts, as opposed to note taking, have the ability to unlock a physical or metaphysical blockage. They unblock inspiration, even if I’m not having mind blowing revelations or realizations every time. They maintain momentum, and keep that ‘inertia’ that I have been thinking of lately. They motivate me. They make me see things more clearly, and make the things that I want to do more clearly. That is a theme that is coming up lately, seeing more clearly. Being able to distinguish fear, and a rushed feeling of needing to change or fix or keep working from the more calm and quiet ‘knowing’. I have been trusting, however subtle, that knowing more lately.
Something I have been practicing, and succeeding more at lately, is making paintings feel like they are truly their own space – the subjects are really sitting in that space. This has to do with light direction; its quality, and the location of its source. Source, this is also a spiritual, or religious concept. In fact, the light in this recent painting I am working on is not only important because of how clearly it is a light coming from above, and how I am working to make that light reflect coherently off of each figure or subject within the painting, but also the presence of the light as its own subject matter. The presence of light as some sort of divine ‘source’ – a spiritual presence.
Integrating figures into their space; ie the light of the sky reflected off of the figures. This is also determined by what is painted in the first layers- the under layers, what I came to understand as ‘the soul’ of the painting with this particular piece. The overall driving energetic pull and the quality of this space, this is what I am trying to achieve with the underpainting. Setting up place, giving it an identity. Then, when the figures come in, I am asking myself: where is the light coming from, what color/temperature is it, what direction is it coming from, how bright or light is it, how far away is the light source from the various figures, or how far away are the figures from the light source – how far away are they from the viewer? How much are they receding in space? These questions, funnily enough (ie: how far away is the light source from the various figures) feels like it has a spiritual resonance in nature, now that I am asking these questions in retrospect.
The underpainting helps me capture a mood, a time of day, a soul, an ‘anima’. Beneath the painting, and so existing as a background that envelops the figures, is the first glimmer of a moment, a metaphysical moment, a sensation, a feeling, a memory, a flash in time. Thomas driving me home from Arezzo is the moment I wanted to capture on the canvas with the deer, to pinpoint that moment and emotion and let that dictate the subsequent layers, let that dictate, to a degree, the aesthetic direction of the painting.
Depth and transparency come into play here as well. The first layers can have both – but they will always be the first layers, so everything that happens after will come after. Again, this feels connected to a spiritual notion; that of God, in a Spinozan sense, as the only matter; God as nature, God as the only ‘substance’ – everything else being made of the same substance.
What I have found with this painting is that things go well when I am focusing on process. I am not preoccupied with the outcome so much as I am with making a great painting, and making a great painting is dictated by the steps that I put into it. That is not to say that I box myself into a formulaic, codified step-by-step process that can’t be changed. But lending attention, intention to my process, really thinking about it before and understanding why I am approaching a painting in this way, helps it come out better. For example, my scapegoat was impulsive, raw, and there was raw canvas showing. I understood that that is how I wanted to approach it because there was a deep emotion in me driving that. The painting of the deer took much, much more planning, many more steps beforehand, because I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do in terms of the concept, but a changing vision in my mind’s eye of how I wanted it to look. So, I relied more on the steps beforehand to bring that to life and understand my vision in the material plane better before painting the figures on the canvas; understanding where they would be, and why. This circular nature of the canvas – the circular fervency I spoke of even in my research paper, is connected to the rhomboid or circular shape that the figures create. This is intentional, they create something of a circle of energy exchange, something close to life, the regeneration of life. Just as in my research paper, there is death occurring, but in the perception of the hunters, and perhaps in the perception of the viewer, there is something of a rebirth, even if illusory, happening as well. There is light pouring in. There is hope, intention, prayer, emotion. The colors are bright and vivid, as in the way I believe spiritual apparitions, enlightenment, occurs to the eye and mind in the believer. This visual nature of enlightenment became a theme at the forefront of my research in my second draft.
Soul of the animal
Soul of the deer
Blood of the deer
Birthing, the birth of the animal, the blood, the death
The blood spilling, and also the regeneration, the forced regeneration. Man playing God.
I wanted the red to be the soul, the energetic center
It also looks like the spilled blood
The beauty of art is the ambiguity, exploring the ambiguity and the depth of it
Stoning
Stoning of the devil
Sacrifice
One entity encompassing all the suffering, that is the scapegoating
Ritual – I am still unclear as to what this means in my own life.
Some more freeform thought:
I’m afraid of this other side of my art
Of creating and letting it look bad
Of just keeping to constantly create, even quickly
Results from last year weren’t good but look where they brought me
Everyday painting again?
Of being in my creation
The work I’m afraid of making
Could be the best, not letting myself do that because it would be too simple
It seems obvious or too obvious
Not letting myself do the good stuff
A block against the easiest and simplest solutions
The simple work seems to obvious
Simple
Elegant
Easy
Afraid of doing the easy work
Blood on the trail – this will form the basis of my next work