10 Year Anniversary: The Painting Diary 7 of 30
Painting Diary Day 7 of 30: Emerging, 2012
From June 2011 until well into 2012 I was traveling constantly and without a studio. During this travel phase I was drawing a lot but didn’t get to paint for a full year or more.
After a long beautiful summer in Italy, I came back to the PNW and went on a two week road trip all over the western US and then immediately jumped on a plane for South Korea where I visited my brother for 6 another weeks.
When I was in Italy I had been staying with my uncle and we talked a lot about family. Long story short I had not seen or talked to my dad in more than 20 years. When I found myself back home from traveling in early 2012 I decided that it was time to patch things up with dad and so I flew down to Arkansas for what I thought would be a three week visit. Things went well and I ended up staying a whole year. I set up an art studio in the back of his giant metal shop where I could go crazy and make a big mess.
That year turned out to be one of my most creative phases ever. I was experimenting wildly and turning out literally 100s of drawings and paintings in all mediums and styles. Many many quick paintings on paper. The challenge I set for myself was to loose all expectations and rules and just let go and create. Most of that work is stored away and has never been shared, it was for me, not for display. I learned a lot and reignited my passion for making art, art that was fun to make, not painstaking. Not that I was free of the painstaking art, I still had a lot of that left in me, but the time I spent in that metal shop, working until dawn many nights with the music cranked all the way up, playing with paint and whatever else I could find, was the most fun I’ve ever had making art. What a year.
This small painting was one of those fun experiments. I had bought some cheap tempera paints from a craft store in Fayetteville. I learned to separate egg yokes from the whites and mixed up a few colors. I had never painted in tempera and it was slow going and after awhile I grew tired of the way the paint dried quickly and was not very satisfied with what was unfolding so I decided to move back to oil paints. I didn’t know at the time that this was a process used long ago by the old masters.
This painting seems to be one of many that illustrate the theme of birth, or some kind of emergence. I seem to have crossed a tree with an octopus. The theme of water was very interesting to me then and I liked the idea of turbulence, this creature is thrashing about in the ocean as it comes to life and into full awareness.
At the center of its brain is a symbol that I would use many times since that first ayahuasca experience in 2010. The symbol came to me in a vision when I witnessed the eternal motionless flame of my own soul. It has become a symbol of my true nature, or a point of origin. It’s a source of pure energy and creative inspiration.
