As I imagine paintings going forward, every image/object that has traditionally been centrally located now feels awkward, forced, stiff and in the way.
Instead, my mind relaxes a bit when the envisioned center of the painting is mostly devoid of a primary character. The space is instead occupied by fog, landscape, the sky, etc. In other words, more space, emptier. The background has now become the focus.
Or, could the center contain ghosts? Faded images of birds, flowers, etc.? Foggy, white, barely there. Intriguing, but potentially a gimmick. I must tread carefully.
Pushed to the edges of the canvas is the endless detritus of our lives – I see piles of typewriters, piles of clocks, piles of French horns, piles of crowns.
A new day and as is typical of me, I distrust everything I just wrote. Now, I see the paintings as more explicitly devotional, I see icons, Sacred objects. Why not make paintings that don’t just point to the Sacred or use symbols and motifs we associate with the Sacred, but rather, like the icons of old, are actually Sacred themselves. The painting as a Sacred object. The way to that place requires focus, devotion, silence. I become the monk bringing into flesh the ephemeral idea, the word. The word made flesh.
Day three. The imagining continues. Only very fleeting image/feelings so far. As this envisioning continues, my inclination toward a singular, central object once again wanes. It feels entrapping. I also feel less compelled to paint a scene – a picture of a place with perspective, shadows, a story.
I look back to the paintings of the early 1990’s. They were full of emotional vitality, flirting with recognizable space and objects but not fixing them to the ground. They often contained non-representational aspects which were also alive and breathed. But that language was then, this is now. While I am the common thread between the decades, my life has been weathered and changed, thus the language must change. And yet, that innate impulse remains – the impulse to use all around me and within me to get at something honest and lively.
So, once again, does the center become the foundation? The somewhat empty center, the place where the primary character, the portrait would reside, does it hold the thing together? Is that where the Sacred resides?
Much of the early 1990’s work was concerned with phenomena – radiant light filled fog, light reflecting on water, clouds, the abstract black embodiment of horror, the movement around the canvas of all those things. The phenomena were the subject.
The recent decades have been filled with explicit characters doing specific things in a specific space. They have been stories and scenes. They are very good. And yet, I feel drawn to a less grounded, less specific expression. A language closer to music or maybe poetry. A language that speaks around the subject, points toward it and suggests it, rather than illustrates it.
I have six 72”x60” canvases ready to go and dedicated exclusively to this endeavor. I want these to be shimmeringly beautiful, reverent, tender and undeniable. The next step is to actually start painting.