summer 2023 Two new paintings, “Sky on Earth” and “Song Lines.”
Writing about the first painting: “I live between two open hayfields that catch the light on them at drastic angles at sunset. I focused only on the reflection of the sky on the hay, which is why there is no sky. It is at that time after painting all day that I go for my sunset walks, so I get clear my head of the day’s work in the studio, and let my eyes take in what’s ‘out there,’ (the constantly changing light). Neighbors scold me because it gets dark quicker than what I’d like, trying to extend the day longer. One neighbor tells me he times his martini when he sees me go by, informing me I have been late.
Someone asked me what the name of my style is after seeing “Song Lines.” I said, “I didn’t know I had one,” adding: “The process I go through is such a mystery to me, a search beyond what I even try to understand anymore, (but just accept), as though I am not the one painting it, another force tells my hands what to do. I can feel good decisions right up from my feet through my body to the brush moving on the canvas. My painting is coming from an entirely new place than even a year ago. I don’t let anyone come and I don’t go out until it’s off the easel, so that I can keep that flow. (A painting is really never ‘done,’ like the monks at the Accademia in Rome who worked on one painting all their lives in tiny cells looking through tiny windows with archways, from landscapes they painted daily. I could easily become that reclusive but I love people too much.” Then he asked me if the way I painted could be called ‘a method.’ He needed a word I could not offer, so I offered the above many words.
9 May After the icy cold winter, in early spring everything comes into blossom. The mountains, which had been a frozen blue-black all winter, is fluffier, a little pinker and pale greener day by day now. I can fall up inside the trees in blossom, my feet lifted up to where there is no gravity.
It takes me a long time to make a painting whole. When the parts don’t connect with each other, I search for how I can get them to call to each other. Each painting goes through this lengthy search process. Improvisation sets me free. Once I’ve found the image, in this case everything coming into blossom, it takes weeks to fine-tune it. Much still gets changed/enhanced in this last process. The painting teaches me by the choices my hands make. I have to step out of the way and trust the presence trying to get born each and every painting. There is no habitual seeing; this is a mediation in color.
