Friday, October 12, 2007

Life in General


My days have grown structured. I don't believe I like writing in this manner. It's unnerving. I've thought to update this for awhile, through days in wind and passivity the thoughts stream, I try to grab at little bits and preserve them..but I'm just here with a fistful of dirt. The references to nature could very well be because I am presently working on a farm. I'm trying to understand and communicate how things connect, disconnect and move about, how the alteration in environment or temperment changes the work- but it just seems trivial. Earlier I thought about how it is a common thought to regaurd ourselves as seperate from our environment but in the most literal of lights have we known anything but this earth? Plants continue prodding their way into my work. The most prominent element that has affected my work as of late I've noticed actually is not material or imagined. It's time. I'm working routine days. The time for working (on painting) is scarce. I often don't even want to begin because I know I'll only be torn away, interrupted by sleep or the end of break. How often do we decide not to engage something because we know how quickly it will end? Rather a new approach has appeared. I'm working a bit more with layers. It's interesting how bluntly the manners of painting provide analogy for life in general. When I say layering, I mean that due to time restraints I have to leave a painting unfinished, sometimes for days, and return to it. The old paint dries and won't budge. The newer areas are open for any possibility, but they must be somehow resigned with what it already present and less open to change. This is like people. We get older, things, characteristics, habits, beliefs, they begin to harden and stick, and as much as new information can be welcomed, it must somehow be manipulated to fit with all that has come before it. I think about time a lot. About life progression. Like why hasn't anyone told me what age I'll be when I'll begin to loose my teeth. Didn't things like this used to get passed down? I used some berries from the farm for a warm reddish tone and painted with it. I like the idea of using elements from the surrounding. But how seperate are we from it?


2 comments:

Kønig Hasemörder said...

I'm pretty sure you don't necessarily have to lose your teeth when you get older. If you take care of them, and take on a bridge or two, you might very well die with originals.

I think you'll do well with complex layers. Sandusky said that he thought layers forced him to become rigid and used them as a crutch. However he started those works from a rigid drawing.

I've always thought of your work as derivative from layers, albeit a minimal amount, building the form upon the wash. With complex layers you will find wonderful new possibilities in the pigments value, texture and hue, not possible with the more direct form of painting.

My suggestion to you, since your on a farm and excepting more rigid techniques of art, is to do life paintings/drawings of the plants your helping produce. The skills you'll learn from life drawing will liberate your purely imagination inspired works.

But how seperate are we from it?

Identity is a tuff cookie. The answer depends on what your terms of separation are. For instance, in gravitational terms you are connected to every bit of stuff in the universe at a ratio that is proportional to your mass this instant and it's distance. Therefor your not separate from anything at all, especially the Earth. Metaphysically your mind is completely separate from everything, even you best friend during a great chat about the boogie man.

Anonymous said...

Well said.

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