“Pattern and Dispersion for November 21, 2011″
You can’t step in the same river twice, Heraclitus tells us, but is it possible to make the same painting twice? If it’s the same idea and same events that produce them, are they the same? Accident and chance and human error always interfere, but suppose chaos is part of the plan?
So to investigate this, I prepared sixteen 12″ x 12″ panels and set out a 4 x 4 pattern of sixteen froot loops in the center of each. Here’s a shot of just getting started:
I decided to spatter four rounds of four colors (sixteen layers of paint—are you starting to see the deep web of repeated repetition I’m weaving here?) I then worked out a plan for each spot masked by each froot loop. Each spot would get different exposures to the layers of paint, but they’d have the same plan from panel to panel—so the spot on the upper left would get all four rounds of yellow and all four rounds of red. I’m aiming at sixteen different color recipes. Here’s the schematic I did to help me keep track of which loops to remove each round of paint:
But the spattering process is inexact—I can’t get the coverage perfect. You can see how some panels got more yellow or blue than others. How does this affect the plan? Will the target colors be the same from panel to panel?
To add another level of obsession to the project, every round I randomly placed an additional loop on each painting. But exactly randomly: I divided each panel into 12 x 12 and randomized two sets of digits 1-12 to provide me exact coordinates for where the random loops will go (the example below shows me placing a loop at the 4, 4 position: 4 spaces over, 4 spaces down).
So all this to say—what? Well, what happens to our intentions when exposed to happenstance? Does repetition reveal intention? Each painting imperfectly reflects my intention, but do the images accumulate and present a clearer vision of my intent? How does revelation happen through accumulation of layers of data?
How does the experience of seeing only one painting alone differ from seeing all sixteen? The randomized loops initially look scattered and apparently chaotic, but can you can spot the light blue one in each painting? Look long enough and you’ll see other patterns. But they sure look accidental at first glance, no? How is the perception of these works changed by hearing the obsessive, detailed plan behind them? How is your experience of the art changed by knowing what the heck I was up to? Does it enhance or spoil the experience? What does it say about my intent as artist to share or hide my process?
And finally, what about life’s chaos around us? See any patterns? What’s hidden? What’s revealed?
I’m continuing work on the 150″ x 70″ canvas, arranging the masking blocks to grade the randomness left to right for the red layer, right to left for the blue layer and exposing the black and yellow layers completely randomly at a 1:3 ratio. I’m spattering very light layers of paint, using a technique I’ve been working on and used on the painting I posted on the “Spatter Obsession” entry. The droplets are coming down great: consistent, small, opaque.
But after a few layers of paint, it’s really hard to see what’s actually happening. Or IF anything’s actually happening. The droplets are so sparse, I can’t see any change to the canvas. Usually it’s a great moment when I lay down a cloud of color and watch it transform everything on the surface. But with so few droplets falling, nothing appears to happen. I’ve had to turn off the radio and actually listen for the droplets to make sure something is actually hitting the canvas.
Something is happening, though—the color is building up, and the very sparse, spread-out block pattern is beginning to show the influence of the red/blue bias I built into the math.
This got me thinking about how slowly and subtly God speaks stuff into being in our lives. An awareness dawns on me and I remember it’s been something I’ve been praying about for a few months. Or I realize I feel certain about something I had big doubts about a few years before. How did it happen? I didn’t see it in process for sure. Maybe instead of trying to see, I have to learn to listen to the colors falling.
I’ve been thinking about the wise men from the East—most scholars think they were astrologers from Iraq, or thereabouts— and how little data it took for them to get up and go to Israel to look for the King. And mounting a caravan expedition any distance in those days was a major, big deal. The prophecy in Numbers they probably acted on is oblique at best:
Numbers 24:17 “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; A star shall come forth from Jacob, And a scepter shall rise from Israel, And shall crush through the forehead of Moab, And tear down all the sons of Sheth.”
This messiah business wasn’t part of their culture or tradition. But, they were astrologers and saw something remarkable in the sky and took what they could piece together and went. And ended up with more revelation as a result.
Revelation is always partial. Nobody gets the full picture on anything. Revelation comes in layers, and following up on a little revelation seems to bring on more.
I’ve been working on a series made on gloss-primed masonite, and have been experimenting with techniques to produce tiny, consistent, opaque spatters. The droplets bead up on the gloss surface, and make a nice rich texture. The 4′x4′ square above is the proving ground, and I’m making some headway. I love the imperceptible shifts that go on within these fields— how one color will assert itself and influence the overall tone, and then another. The color field effect is very atmospheric and soothing. But then, I relax pretty easily, and teeny droplets of paint fascinate me. (I’ll have to test this on some type-A friends and see if they’re soothed too.) Plans in the works to explore this on a large scale.
But I wonder— how much or little spatter causes the viewer to see a pattern? How much revelation does it take to cause enlightenment? How much or little does it take for us to see, understand, and then act? (Musical interlude with Tracy Chapman’s song, “Change” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drXwsVYrd20)
In this work, I lightly spattered the remaining layers over a loose gridwork of ping pong balls. Here’s a close up:
Here’s the whole painting. (Pardon the bad lighting.) Is there enough here to mount a caravan expedition to Palestine?
Filed under: Revelation Layer Cake
“God’s Appointment Book for 3_10_09″
In this diptych, I saved the random numbers from the first painting and used them to create the second. The paintings, as you can see, did not come out entirely the same— for a few reasons. First, spattering, by its nature, never comes out the same twice. Even if the spatter path and rate and volume was duplicated by a machine, the droplets would fall differently. Second, I’m part of the process, and I make mistakes. I lost track of the number sequence at a couple points, so the resulting image is a little different. But it still reads like two copies of the same image. How different can two images be and still be the “same”? Paging Dr. Warhol…
This makes me think of God’s situation: He’s perfect, flawless powerful, unlimited in his abilities. And, he has a perfect message to communicate. But he chooses fallible, mistake-riddled people to communicate his message. Then, say he decides on the Bible as a way to speak. He chooses 66 books, written through fallible individuals, and these books have to travel across time and translators and preachers and governments and egos to get to me. Yet he says these books are good enough, clear enough, to reveal himself to me. Inspired from him and suitable to teach and lead me. Perfection thinks it’s cool to express himself imperfectly.
My brother Jim said, “You should paint 20 of these—none of them would be the same, yet by the time you viewed the 20th painting, you’d have a pretty clear idea what the essence of the ‘real’ painting is like.” Jim thought this shows how confident God is in his message: he allows it to go out in such a matrix of imperfect ways, knowing it’s so powerful, and he’s so in charge, the message will get through anyhow.
Kind of a Christmasy thought after all— “Word made flesh.” Infinity in a pair of Pampers.
