With a Reference

The way a plant grows, the way a thing develops, the way an idea is presented comes out as reaction. To what though? should I ask, about creating from the mind without a reference from the world outside my eye. What should I react to, what impulse is the most urgent?

I can start at a point and continue for a distance and create a line. It may not be straight or maintain a specific width but it goes on until I stop and start another. The whole thing develops from here through decided reactions or spontaneous unaware choices. My task is to know what I am doing while I am doing it. Maybe I will never know why but most people, it seems, do know why, they have reasons, good reasons and they are sure it is the way.

Do they know what they are reacting to? Religious prophets know because they have read ‘the’ book. There are thoughts we should eliminate from our minds. What are we reacting to? Reference the unpredictable.

How Real am I?

To be honest, I am at a loss. I am lost on the internet. I don’t really know where I am when I visit a site. I don’t know where we are as the world is plowing through space. How close am I to the day I will die? It has to happen one day for sure, but what kind of space will I leave behind and how long will it be before that space is filled again by another. It is all sudden and spontaneous. Well, it only seems that way. I gradually wake every morning. But the realization?, that is a slap, a drop, tic, in the bucket of time.

Yet nothing goes without notice to the world at large. Me and you, we know what we know and the planet knows that too, subconsciously. It all adds up, one plus one plus one…. and a cup of water is emptied into the ocean and is lost immediately.

I try to simplify but it comes out corny, already done the longer I look. Yet I can recall far back to the street I grew up on to an incident clear to me today as then, that was an actual dream that I woke up to sweating, knowing it was not real.

The Act

“Take Franz Kline. There is no “plastic experience.” – There is no “painting” in the ordinary sense, just as there is no “painting”, for that matter, in Piero della Franchesca or Rembrandt. There is nothing but the integrity of the creative act. Any detail of the work is sufficient to establish this. The fact that these details accumulate and make what is known as a work of art, proves nothing. What else should an artist do with – time?”  Morton Feldman

It is how I feel about people who tout superiority of intelligence. It proves nothing. Craft proves nothing. Intelligence is a by product of what we are. The consciousness that we know could be a by product of this planet and the one before. For me to depend on knowledge to create is like I am getting away from knowing what creation is. There is this awareness that I see the simplest of life forms have. They move to survive. I survive and keep things moving. What does this prove?

Can I be aware of the subconscious at work? Can I deliberately put the subconscious to use?  Can I give it directions? But I am finding the tool designed to master intelligence  is becoming my tool into  intentional chance selections, unpredictable outcomes and identical productions all at once.

These are some of my sketches.

Spontaneous sketches

Improvised notations are immediate with ‘paint’. Sometimes I have not enough patience with myself. I try to keep abreast with the passing of time whenever I am jotting down ideas. Working from scratch with paint, charcoal or pencil is slow and it sort of disrupts my flow of thoughts. The computer, though it is limited with color and quality of line it enables me to work fast. This clears the way for me to do a formal execution of the sketches on canvas. I have not done any of these as actual paintings yet but as soon as the temperature gets above freezing I will be able to get into the studio to work. The colors and hues may change then but it is a part of the process of spontaneity that is important to me. It is subjective, subconscious selection at work.

Time as an image

Aristotle suggested, Time as an Image. “This is the area which the visual arts later began to explore.” Morton Feldman.

I try to present a passage of time in my paintings. The layers convey this. And this ‘passing of time’ is held together like a collective memory in a persons mind. The surface of the painting presents them all at once and they can be identified as to which came first and last by their overlapping. The surface of my paintings are not illusions the way early abstractions were done. Doing realistic paintings we have to consider illusions because it is not real. But when we consider the surface of the picture plane, we are looking at the real and nothing else. My paintings are evidences of a passage of time and collective subconscious suggestions.

Irregular Boundary

In using the line as subject I am confronted with how the two dimensional space is used. The boundary is not at the edge of the paper,it is defined as the line progresses within the limits of the paper. I still maintain a reference to the four sides of the two dimensional space, thought the form is irregular. There is only one main line, it defines the boundary and the internal composition simultaneously.

I am not concerned with calculations in doing compositions. They evolve openly and spontaneously with the main line (tracks) which is the evidence of an activity that had just taken place; a trace of the energy that just expired. In mapping or charting an activity  within a contained space I at first try to imagine the type of energy I  am about to dispel.  I am concerned with space and movement through the space. Limited movement composes with minimal lines and the boundary defines the character of the energy. It is safe for me to say what I am doing is related to Surrealist Automatic Drawing in a vague way. They were concerned with mining the depths of the subconscious as opposed to where I am, adding to the depth of the subconscious.

The irregular boundaries are a direct reference to the unpredictable nature of chance and change. I believe that we the living are constantly adding to the collective subconscious therefore making it more importantly to provide positive vibes to the growing collective memory bank for future generations. We constantly inspire ourselves to do more if what we do is positive, beautiful and clear.

This irregular boundary has a relationship to the shaped canvas. 

Free and bound

It is repetitive and sighted on  mass production. It is so simple a computer robot could do it. The simplicity or complexity is irrelevant to the act. But the act, it is relevant to the simplicity and complexity of the idea.

Read the lines

Lines are like particles,there has to be enough of it around to define a form. The main line in these works,which I feel are drawings with color, indicates a continuous cycle with unpredictable orbits. These are all acrylic and oil sticks on Ink Jet paper, 3′ x 5′ .  I am allowing an amalgamation of my thought process, ability and personality. The lines trace the movement that started a reaction of energy. Each work leads to another.  My approach is a direct and spontaneous action.And I should point out that spontaneity is not necessarily a fast, swift act.

Object Lines

I once saw lines as a way of dodging the object. I felt there is no need for the object in abstraction. But I was wrong. For all the forms that arrive out of the intentional theoretical doodle and abstract shorthand writing my thoughts were mainly on the forms produced and not on the lines that make them happen.

Yet lines by themselves are strong objects and formal forms and not to be confused with the objectified brush stroke.Here I have an example of a line created with the intention of filling in alternate spaces created by line crossing line .I use one continuous line that starts and end at the same point for each group of forms. Eventually I come to the conclusion I don’t have to define a company of forms through blocking, instead, let the lines mature into their own rights like hand writing/penmanship, or algebra and geometry on a school room chalk board.