Wood Panel Progression No.1 (2015–19)
Wood Panel Progression No. 1 (2015-19)
In the Spring of 2015 I had a new group of shaped panels made up by a friend. I had a great deal of respect for the work that went into them, and the cedar trees whose lives had gone into the patterning of the veneer. Those patterns, along with the music I listened to in the studio, are what activated the movement of my hands across the pieces. Their built-in story activated my own.
They were an odd and at times vexing shape. I had determined that I wanted the egg-like shapes to include a straight line for a side. A horizon line I called it, to keep the shapes from taking over the content. I had been sketching ideas of what to do with them.
A few of the sketches took place directly on the panels, using the grain as a template and activator. Two had resulted in dreamy planet-like or Spring egg-like pastels. But it was now late Summer, and I yearned for something meatier. In the meanwhile I sketched and painted on watercolor paper and canvas mining other veins of thought.
Eventually one tear-dropped shape drawing caught my attention viscerally. It was a sad colon—“Seussian” a friend called it—a cartoonish drawing of a colon connected to my battles with my aging body’s function. Before I knew it, I had traced a life-sized pencil drawing of this colon onto a wood panel, thinly colorizing it with acrylic wash (Figure 1). This pop-humored drawing of my interior troubles hung on the wall all winter. I envisioned it finished in enamel like an old gas station sign, but that was beyond my technical capacity. My problem with the image was that it pulled me away from the more conceptual formalism I had been painting: the aforementioned planet and egg. I had my mind set on showing in a nearby gallery, and was driven towards such restraint, but the challenge of the drawing pulled me to go in deeper. I started to wrestle with the painting.
The ensuing blobby versions satisfied the object-field balance of the piece but little else (Figures 2, 3).
Winter turned into Spring. I finally paired down the blobbiness by focusing on the content of the flowing shape, allowing a dominant figure to appear. A interaction of figures—a fragmented totem—symbolic of Spring appeared with the dominant figure dancing lightly within the teardrop shape, reaching out its hand like that of Michelangelo’s God in the Sistine Chapel. I photographed my own hand pointing to get it right (Figure 4). A bouquet of animal nature welcoming me to Spring. I was particularly fond of the painted butterfly-like wisp flying in the crook of the neck (Figure 5).
This lightness was not to last. Whatever personal rapture and seasonal reverie that had briefly landed in my studio was usurped by the reality of the election campaign rumbling in the background. Taking over my emotions, and eventually the painting. Summer was being trod on and as the year progressed to Fall a muddied, confusion reigned (Figures 6, 7). Our nation was being stripped of its veneer of civility.
Amidst the mud slinging and the cultural chaos now embodied in the work, a new figure emerged in the painting: a little pip squeak on wheels with a wisp of blondish orange hair and a red white and blue pointy hat (top of Figure 7). A first: The pathos of human planetary events (ad two images) had appeared with regularity in work, but never a political figure.
Struggling with the mess that ensued, the painting was a sea of brown goo that almost swallowed the imagery. A memory of Spring. I eventually tried a triage of soothing blue-green. A rushing in of ocean to clarify and separate the contorted masses of image as best I could. I tried to at least restore sense and balance to the visual (Figures 8, 9).
Then the election came. Mud again infused its way into the painting. A new image—an ogre—appeared, carbuncled and foul mouthed. The painted butterfly of Spring had turned into a skull of a heart.
A white paper star affixed to the surface symbolizes a tenuous hope for our nation.
...and then the sea washed in plastic islands and all to cleanse away the morass, the destruction, and the filth. It took many years to re-balance, and heal, but you’ve got to begin somewhere! (Figure 10)