Note on the post:
Please feel free to skip the words & just enjoy as a wander through a work in progress.
Or go ahead and dive in to it all…because that’s pretty much how I do what I do. Sometimes, words give. Sometimes, they take..it’s really just a mystery.
It began with water. It began with paper.
No like other myths it began with a tree.
It’s about beautiful parts unable to connect anymore.
It’s a tangle. It’s about the invisible.
About emptiness. About loss.
It’s pouring out. It’s cutting. It’s burning.
I don’t know what its story is.
I can’t find the ending.
I not sure it has one.
Sometime in August
I burn out.
I crave silence like water.
Because…
I want more
I want less
I banish distraction & ambition
is harder.
I’ll try…
No news.
No social media.
No projects.
No plans.
No art making.
Imagine…
if everything goes
something fresh
will emerge.
simple rarely is.
Silence is so loud.
Is nothing even possible?
Tell me exactly
how
does loss get lodged
in the muscle?
I mean…
in the heart.
Does anybody know?
Does everyone know?
nothing is a myth
About the Work On Paper:
I’m not sure what comes next for this elaborate…intensely labored piece.
In my mind, for a work on paper it’s the most like a “painting” I have made to date. There is something so layered about it.
It’s very slow going. It has my hands aching. It has me totally locked in. I feel like it keeps asking me to follow it.
I’m wondering…
over and over…how much loss is bearable? I mean how much can be punched, burned or cut away? Is it possible to stop…or will the paper totally disappear?
How is it that light changes everything at least for a moment?
Why so much beauty from a thing going missing? Why can I see this beauty only sometimes?
∞ another infinity of unanswerable questions ∞
If you have come this far…
through the ramble of my mind thank you for being here! In a world of sound bits & information overload it rare to find someone like you who can go the distance down a winding creative river.
ps: Some of you may already know that my father has vascular dementia. It’s been a very long journey of loss. I’ve been watching for years now as my father both disappears and endures. Each visit I look harder and harder for a glimmer of my Dad. Occasionally…there is still a soft smile but I haven’t seen his eyes open for weeks now and his words are so few. Some days it feels like loss in every direction.
I imagine this intense witnessing of loss is showing up in this artwork. Art making has always been my way of being with emotions and energies that words can never really make sense of.
There is a mystery in that bond between beauty and destruction. It both breaks my heart and makes me believe it might be the closest thing to wisdom that I know. Maybe…I’m looking for evidence of life after death. Only curious about the possibilities because…do I really want to to know for sure? I imagine that ultimate mystery is the thing that keeps creativity moving.
“Layer by layer art strips life bare. The more abstract it gets, the more transparent the air is. Can it be that the farther it is removed from life, the clearer art becomes?
”
And, one more detail snap because the process like life…goes on & on.
