I think of the Bob Dylan song when I think of creating yourself as a work of art – “The Answer My Friend is Blow’n In The Wind.” In order to be a work of art …. In order to create “you” you need to blow with the wind.
How many years will it be , how many years will it be before you can be yourself – and blow with the wind.
Featured image: Peacock
Abstraction : the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events. Freedom from representational qualities in art.
Abstraction, transcends, labels and forms. Abstraction begins naked. It is undressed. When we can touch the naked work, the blank paper, the white canvas, then we become part of it and it is no longer naked. We, unfortunately, find a need to dress the blank page or canvas,. We label it and it is no longer abstraction, it becomes representational. The beauty in abstraction is that it allows us to create a unique one-of-a-kind work that can be itself.
My art is that way, when I step away from the work it needs to speak for itself. That is hard for me with most of my work, because I seem to always want to speak for it because I am so much a part of it. But, if it cannot speak for itself – then I believe it is not art.
Featured image: Patchwork Landscape
Transcendent – Beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience. Existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe.
Is a soul or spirit transcendent? If so, how can it be imagined? For me the soul, the spirit is something that is a loosely woven tapestry made of fabric, a weaving that has a lot of gaps. A weaving of the transcendent is not stable. It is unstructured. I imagine a weaving of clouds moving with the changing wind- not stable, sometimes transparent and sometimes opaque. So yes, I believe the soul or spirit is transcendent.
Is this kind of transcendent divine like many famous philosophies claim,such as Kant, Plato and writers like Emerson and Thoreau? I don’t see it that way. I don’t know why, because their transcendence is based on the idea that romanticism is better than rationalism. I do like their idea of transcendent being grounded in nature – but this nature needs to be divine.
How do I imagine the transcendent? Imagine a haze surrounding yourself, something like a sun dog surrounds the sun because that implies a glow – a light. I like that imaginary and the weaving of the sun dog with the clouds. Great tapestry – the soul and spirit of the transcendent – honestly – it is the imagined.
Featured image: Struggling For The Soul
I frequently get asked the question - "How long does it take you to paint a work?"
My answer is always, "It varies."
This work, for example, began during the NWAT. That was six weeks ago. I have painted, repainted and changed colors. The concept behind the work even changed. I told folks during the tour that it was going to be a work of a friend of mine. It would be about rainbows, prisms and the color of the soul.
The whole concept of the work changed as I worked on it. And, I think one of the reasons that it was so hard to finish is because it exemplifies just about everything I write about the self. There is the grid - the computer grid in the face representing the mechanical and controlled, robot-like. Then, there is the on fire blaze emerging from her skull that wants to escape the grid and the control. The blaze is her spirit, her soul and it should belong to nobody but herself.
It is a very powerful piece for me. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed and struggled with it.
Featured image: Black Bird
