a few new things

I spent the summer, after moving into the new studio in a good deal of pain, and finally ended up in surgery this past fall.  While I was trying to cope through the heat and exhaustion of a Tucson summer I was able to focus on the changing colors of the sky.  I wanted to watch the events above but not paint them in any literal way.  Watercolor is great for fast applications of washes.  I was thinking about Eveningglow, one of my abstract observational oil paintings from Minnesota, where I tried to capture light from evening walks.  The first watercolor is in that spirit where I washed one color on top of another and turned the surface 90 degrees.  I would come into the studio with a color in my mind and place it on the surface, trying to leave some white of the page.  Usually only one paint application per day so that the surface had time to fully dry.  Some days I could get away with two, it's so hot here.  Then another color on another day.  The process is super important to me.  A painted image all at once seems to imply a certain level of pre-meditation.  I'm not interested in that kind of visual manipulation.  Ideas are great, but when a painting is all mind and no lung I get a bit bored. The same holds true if it's too feelly.  I mean paintings need to make the viewer breath as well as think, otherwise we're caught in a Cartisian mind/body separation all over again.  I think the two working together is the way we experience the world, so that's how I try to make a painting.

In these watercolors I respond to the the light of the page still emanating through the density of washes.  I also respond to the failure of watercolor to remain on the surface after repeated washed.  In the center(ish) portion of the painting you can see ghost markings beginning to surface.  I like when a mark is created as a byproduct of process.  It's a mark not made by the hand, failure of materials as a distinguishing feature of art production.  To my mind this is an exciting moment.