“God’s Appointment Book for November 7, 2011″
I’ve been collecting books on the creative process, and the latest one I’m perusing is “Creators on Creating” a collection of writings by authors, artists and musicians on how they go about doing their thing. One chapter that struck me was by the poet W.B. Yeats, who thought that “will is the enemy of creation,” that creativity comes in a flash of enlightenment when the mind is wandering or in meditation or even in trance. He strove to “prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the moment of creation…”
So I was right all along about the value of lounging in bed in the morning—my most productive part of the day!
I’ve seen a lot in my reading of this tension/balance between the inward and outward. Some take a scientific/psychological approach that meditation allows the subconscious mind to work on the problem. Others take a mystical bent (like Yeats and Jung) that reflection dials us in to the “collective unconscious,” the “great memory.” Still others take a spiritual view that in order to be creative, we need to be filled with the spirit of the Creator.
My vote? All of the above! Hey, anything that promotes letting the mind wander is aces with me.
It’s a central idea in theology— “Islam” literally means “I submit.” Bhuddism is all about emptying and filling. And—especially appropriate to mention this Christmas season—scripture says Jesus is “seated at the right hand of God” because he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” Power through relinquishing it. Cool.
So, does the will restrict creativity? Do we let something slip through our hands by grasping too hard?
To explore this idea in my paintings, I always deliberately introduce an element that forces me to relinquish control. In this painting, I submit to a random number generator, my good pals at www.random.org. Then I set out a 7 x 11 grid of 4″ square masks. Here I am setting up the grid: (Notice: this technique requires a lot of time spent on my knees. Hmm. Love it.)
Then I exerted my will and decided this painting would be created by removing 40% of the squares and spattering primary colors. So I generated a bunch of random digits 1-10, and every time a digit came up 4 or less, I removed a square from the grid. Then I spattered blue paint. Here’s what it looked like at this point:
Below is the grid after spattering a round of all four colors. You can see blues and pink and yellow squares, and also orange and green and purple starting to emerge. Notice in the lower left I’ve begun to inset the squares by half to divide the 4″ grid into 2″ squares. I’ll do another round of four colors with the masks in this position.
Then back to position 1 for another round of all four colors:
Here we are after a few more repetitions of the process. Remember, I have no control over which squares get exposed each round, because the pattern of the masks is dictated by the random numbers. Always a random 4 out of 10.
It’s wild what patterns the numbers come up with. Look at the second and third rows from the bottom in the photo below: almost all the masks remain on the 2nd row and almost all are removed from the 3rd row. Then on the 5th row only one is removed. It’s an interesting art experience to just let the process do its thing, rather than enforcing aesthetic judgments of my own.
The staging nails pounded through the plywood squares keep the masks off the surface so paint doesn’t creep around the edges of the masks. The strict grid is made by a soft fuzz of droplets.
So, how to get more creative? I give up!
Filed under: Developing the Process
I’m pretty excited that I’ve been accepted to the artist’s registry at The Painting Center in New York City! It’s a non-profit organization “dedicated to the exploration of painting in all its possibility.” Guest curators draw from their artist registry to plan group and solo shows at the Center, and the registry is a resource for other galleries as well. I’m listed on both their artist’s registry and their online art file. Check out the site, and of course, systematically pester them to schedule me a solo show!
Filed under: Developing the Process
When I started work on the series, “God’s Appointment Book” back in 2008, I found that getting ideas out on canvas brought with it a strange and wonderful by-product: more ideas. Each painting opened up a rabbit warren of more paths to explore, variables to try, and ponderings that needed further pondering. So much so I would lay awake at night thinking, “Oh, that would be so cool to try. Gotta remember that!” Someone would mention an artist to look up, a website to check out. I’d come across a quote that hit the nail squarely, or I’d think of supplies to experiment with, things to build, things to buy. You get the idea. Too many balls to keep in the air. Too many ideas, too little brain capacity. A pleasant surprise, and not a surprise.
Solution? I bought a paper brain. A sketchbook/notebook/journal where I could dump all the plans, ideas, lists, sources, quotes, drawings, notes, doodles, everything.
My criteria were:
Consistency: I didn’t want a mishmosh of sizes, bindings, shapes. I wanted it to get to be familiar—a fixture.
Availability: So, if consistent, then it had to be commonly available, not a one-off, made by one-dealer-who-promptly-goes-out-of-business thing.
Size: Big enough to draw in, not so big it was a pain to carry around. A plus if it could fit in a large jacket pocket.
Cost: Reasonably affordable and not fancy so I wouldn’t treat it too preciously, i.e., “Gee, is this idea worth wasting a sheet of deckle-edged, handmade paper?”
Durability: It had to be tough enough to be carried around for a few months and not fall apart. Spiral binding proved bad at this.
After a little experimenting, I settled on the black 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ hardbound generic sketchbook. They’re available pretty much everywhere, cost 6 or 7 bucks, and if you scout it, you can find the occasional good deal. But your desires and criteria may vary. All I know is that it’s been a good thing—and a bit of a relief—to carry a paper brain.
Filed under: Developing the Process, Duality in God's Nature, Random (Ha!) Thoughts
“God’s Appointment Book for 2-16-09″
I owe a lot to www.random.org for supplying me daily with wonderful “true” random numbers. Their website also provides a copious supply of math philosophy that dumps me pretty quickly into the deep weeds. In reading the ponderings of these high-octane math minds, I can see I’m definitely just skimming the surface of this whole idea, but It’s fun to see what goes into the search for “true” randomness.
One irony I love is that this random number stuff is a great balance of opposites. It’s NUMBERS, right? How more technical and cold and mechanical can you get than that? I view the numbers part of my art as the “control” end of control/chaos, the “head” part of the head/heart balance. But, random.org tells me their numbers are generated “by atmospheric noise,” which I understand as basically radio static picked up from charges in the atmosphere. So, what turns out to be the source of the mechanical, strict control aspect of my artwork? It’s nature! Apparently a machine can’t do as good a job at manufacturing randomness as nature does. Now add on top of this that the Bible says randomness is solely the province of the Creator: Proverbs 16:33 “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” So is randomness a kind of signature of Deity?
My usual procedure for making my paintings is to set up a canvas on the floor, and cover it with a grid of wooden blocks to act as masks for each cell of the grid. I then go to random.org and have it generate enough numbers for all the blocks, and appropriate digits for what I have planned. For instance, if I have a 20x 20 grid and want to remove 1/5th of the blocks, I’ll have random.org generate 400 digits between 1 and 5, and remove a block every time a “1″ comes up. Instead of printing these integers out and having to look at a piece of paper and remove blocks at the same time, I have my Mac speak the number list to me which leaves both hands free.
The result? I make my paintings by listening to and obeying —quite literally— a voice from the sky.
God’s Appointment Book for 4-6-2009
I heard someone say yesterday, “God is so powerful he doesn’t have to be in control to be in control.” He allows randomness, evil and chaos and yet isn’t thwarted in his overall purposes. How much control can I “give up” and still control my paintings?
Each of my paintings are an exploration of the balances of control and accident. This painting is an experiment with one of the control parameters of my art—the percentage of canvas exposed by the movable grid. I generated a fresh random number table of digits 1-10 for each layer of paint, then chose a color target of 50% blue, 70% red, 10% yellow, and 20% black to act as an element of structure for the painting. I then removed 5 out of 10 of the masking blocks of my grid for the blue layers (to make a 50% exposure to blue), 7 out of 10 blocks for red (70%), and so on.
The result is a “color portrait” of the target, an essay on a mix of purple. Some of the resulting blocks are almost a perfect match of the 50,70, 10, 20 swatch, others are aberrations darker, lighter, more yellow, more blue, etc. Is the whole painting a perfect match of the target swatch? No. But in exposing the elements of the color and revealing the parts that make up its whole, doesn’t it become it a “truer” revelation of what the color really is? Isn’t deconstruction part of investigating the true nature of a thing? Maybe God’s purposes in the world are somehow going to make his character and purposes all the more vivid and distinct because of the chaos and randomness he currently allows.
Filed under: Developing the Process, In process #1, Revealing and Obscuring
I’ve been noticing how droplets are a lot more defined on a glossy surface– which fascinates me in the ongoing quest for the perfect spatter. The pointillistic effect has a sharper feel when the dots are distinct. I’ve been working on a series of paintings on gloss-primed masonite and wonder if I can get the same “droplet crispness” on canvas. So, I’m spraying white gloss enamel over a 12′ x 5.5′ stretch of canvas. I plan to do more with white, especially with the idea of defining / negating an image. Hmmm… More pondering to come on the idea of revealing / obscuring.
“God’s Appointment Book for 11-10-2008″
I’d been pondering the balance of control and chaos in art and life since studying art at University of Maine in the late 70s. With a background in graphic arts, I began to ponder using spattering and the 4-color process through a random system that would allow a painting to “paint itself”: colors to build layer by layer and mix optically, as in pointillism.
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The big hurdle for this technique was getting the droplet size consistent enough and small enough so the colors would mix optically. The paint had to be thick enough so a yellow droplet landing on a blue droplet wouldn’t look green. After some prayer and experimentation, I found paint and equipment that made it happen. November 10 2008 is the first of the “God’s Appointment Book” series that really worked.
