Wood Panel Progression No.2 (2015–17)
Coming to terms with Parkinson's Disease and working through the terror of having a Deep Brain Stimulation operation (DBS) in order to improve my quality of life.
Wood Panel Progression No. 2 (2015-17)
Two of the panels were made to be landscapes, and are quite large: 2 ft. x 12 ft. The drawings were to be brought up from the patterns in the wood, and this is how they started. The first panel's drawing stuck to the original conception. The patterning in the veneer inspired a watery or cloud-like drawing, one that, when painted, kept the story in the wood. You could see the wood through the thin acrylic glaze. This dialogue with trees was more than a conceptual device. It related back to a profound spiritual connection in the forests of California and New Mexico (figure 1). For a more literal illustration see “Tree of Life,” 2000 (figures 2a, 2b).
The second panel initially veered away from concept. Its drawing laid the seeds of discontent (figures 3, 4). Often there is a restlessness of vision. It may play itself out in one visit (painting). Or, it may come back in a different form. In this case there was a physical restlessness that took over. Rather than rooted and calm, the drawn energy was leap-frogging across the panel. Further painting only increased this agitation as forms within, some acquired a crabbiness—perhaps inspired by the sighting of a crayfish on a Yuba river trip at that time—that suggested other than repose (figures 5, 6). This unresolved conflict between concept and execution slowed down the progress of the work, taking a full two years to get to this stage. It took a road trip to the Southwest, and a retreat with a Dharma teacher high in the Colorado Plateau to bring it to a restless, if temporary, resolve (figure 7).
This was in the summer of 2017. I had been on retreat to prepare for a series of brain operations coming up that fall. These were for DBS, a deep brain implant to help mitigate some of the effects of Parkinson's disease. Strong emotions were emerging around this. Two paintings that were in the studio at the time became their sink. The aforementioned landscape, the other a much-changed painting that became “In the Vicinity of Hope and Fear” (figure 8).
The landscape painting, left restless to begin with, was reactivated at its center by an emotional surge—a sudden diving in with a loaded brush of black paint. A hole was opened: perhaps a metaphor for the brain surgeon's drill holes? The landscape panel was now a vertical figure (figure 9), the hole briefly becoming a sacrificial lamb's eye (figure 10) and then, using myself as a model (figures 11,12), the blackened hole became a mouth—my mouth. Head and body followed, the panel going through transformations as I searched for comfort and meaning in the paint.
With the date of the first DBS operation fast approaching, a representation of the device known as “The Halo” (the measuring cage the surgeons screw to your skull) was painted in all its medieval glory. But instead of being placed on the skull crown-like, here it was painted around the neck nearly choking the bellowing figure. Representational reality usurped by feeling (figures 13, 14).
What finally drew the panel back from being ridden full throttle by the forces of deep emotion was two-fold: the grounding practice of Vipassana, and the legacy of what I might be leaving behind (death?).
During the practice of the New Mexican retreat, my walking stick, in a state of Jhanic concentration, had powerfully transformed into the sword of the dharma, cleaving away the darkness in order to protect all (my fellow practitioners) who were threatened. Referencing this strong moment of clarity helped me to shift through the riot of pre-op emotions.
So I made adjustments, using myself again as a model (figure 15). Among them, a phallus, became the figure's staff, a symbol of power (figure 16). Rather than acting as a crutch, in the final version it radiates the wheel of the Buddhas eight fold path (figures 17, 18).
Visual references that popped up in my painted process include: Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son; Robert Mapplethorpe, “Self Portrait 1988”; and Michelangelo's self portrait in the Last Judgement panel of the Sistine Chapel.