Light Work

Something wouldn't let me sleep Sunday morning. At 6:30 I was awake. The first conscious thought I remember on waking was the same as the last one I remember before sleep overtook me the night before: "In him was life and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." The words of these lines kept tumbling about, pacing poetic the hallways of my foggy mind. I dimly wondered how I would make that picture. A response came to me as I lay there, eyes closed to the morning.

A few minutes later I was up, in my painting pants, making a three-song iTunes play list which I set on repeat for the morning's work. Then I set to stirring the paints with my sticks.

Using a high powered heat gun enables me to work fast, building layers quickly as I dry out a spread of paint in a few minutes. It literally boils the water (and other chemicals I don't want to think about absorbing into my skin and lungs) out of the paint on the paper -- it roasts and steams and fries and burns and bubbles up to bursting if I let the gun tarry. If I'm careful though, with a bit of patience I've been able to dry huge puddles and globs of paint quickly and preserve the smooth, wet texture and 'skin' of the paint.

I stopped between layers/coats to take pictures as I worked, and they follow below in sequence. The process, the steps, the layers themselves, are actually essential points of my response to the text. In them, and the completed piece, there is a story, and a way of telling it that details and reveals my understanding of the inspired words and the man he wrote of.

I join praise.

Dots and Trees

These are a few shots of some stuff I've been making at night. I sort of wallpapered my little studio with them and a heavy duty stapler yesterday. It feels like a nice space these days.

Sticky 1

Still haunted by Picasso's "Picador", obviously.
And I'm still working on very vertical pieces.
One of the things I search for in my meditations and my art responses are the essential lines and shapes of things, in this case, a man in an action.
Because I lack the schooling, skill and craft for complex, detailed replication or compilation, I really just go at the surfaces with the simplest plan or goal and some paint.
I've been listening to a lot of music while I 'work' too, especially Moby.
I'm working in an unfinished room of the basement I live in.
For the last few weeks I've been painting with three gallons of interior house paint: white, black, red.
Instead of brushes or my fingers I'm using the free stir sticks you get when you buy a gallon of paint. In this case I've whittled my own stick out of part of one of the stir sticks.
I'm painting on pieces of brown butcher paper duct taped to what was part of my bed frame.
I spent two nights thinking about what kind of stick man to put down.
This is who I found.