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In making art, the wind blows through me, the memory of falling and alighting comes upon me. Then I put this feeling into paint stroke, mark making, a photo of a leaf, or the cascade of words. Who can say that it's “self” expression? Rather a way to consider it is, the self opens or quiets enough to let the elements arise and speak clearly. I remind myself of how I have helped others to open the door for a moment and play with what was found there. Painting imagery derived from the natural world is, at once, objective reality, totally personal, and accessible to all. It reflects the question inside: What is this life and how can it be expressed?
Moving in the landscape for days, I find images of fleeting breath, fragments of wholeness, dissolving forms. Instead of solid tree, I see, glimpses of wavering limbs in water. Trees are also everything else that's around them, they live in harmony. Tree forms grow from being rooted forever in one spot, living fully with whatever comes their way. It strikes me as similar to how the wish to control absolutely everything is just an impossible view.
Tips against the sky, vines and trees intertwined and growing together, not un-cooperatively. Complete reflections given their magnitude by mirroring ponds. Clouds float by, leaf on the surface, frog glints in sunlight. Certainly no chaos here, just simply abiding. Loose marks begin to break apart form. Sitting still and looking long, in deep woods, it happens. Colors and patches of light appear, pop out from the natural forms that produce them. The paint stroke takes on a life of its own.
These images are not vistas, not completely known, not unavailable, but need to be found. To see them completely as they present themselves, devoid of instruction, is to acknowledge and get familiar with what isn't clearly seen. Looking for progression, or sequence, or hierarchy, belies the fact of life and death, and how it happens. Fragmentary, elusive, complete perfection. Small, and intimate, true. The way into painting, from any side, no direction over another, that's how it really is. Painting, I go deeper into the lived in world.
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