Paintings in Progress – Page 4 – A View from the Wheelhouse

All that is Golden- The Sun Standard

Posted on July 30, 2013July 31, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

It’s hard to say why we are struck by certain images.

20 years ago I did a painting inspired by a dream of a bullfight. Bullfight ticket sellers ask their customers: “el sol o la sombra? Meaning: “do you want seats in the sun or the shade?”. As the sun passed, the shaded seats commanded a higher price. This fluid standard seemed a true valuation system because of it’s cosmic scope. It might be called the Sun standard.

Gold and Sun are symbols that announce a new age ruled by the truest of values-that which emerge from the human heart.

In this Spanish interrogative I hear echoed the ancient Mithraic conflict between the Light of Glory and Ahrimanic Darkness. This is a drama which transcends religious history, learned judgments about dualism, and my own, personal revulsion at an act of cruelty.

The arena is a mandala-a microcosm. The ritual killing it sanctifies has echoes throughout the cycles of history as an archetype-one that charges a brutal spectator sport with religious energy. it is the reenactment of the primordial victory that ensures the perpetuation of the world.

In his book, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, Henry Corbin uses the striking image of the progersso harmonium to describe the relationship between Shi’ite Islam and the earlier Mazdianism religion. The relation is not the linear view of religious history by which fundamentalists of all faiths are bound, but the fundamental tone, the timeless Truth to which all religions are ultimately traced. It is ever present, running throughout time like a basso profundo under the higher registers of the octave.

To pass from one octave to another is not the same as to pass from one date in time to another, but is a progression to a height or pitch that is qualitatively different. All the elements are changed, yet the form of the melody is the same. Something in the nature of harmonic perception is needed to perceive a world of many dimensions.

So midway between the darkness of uncertainty and the light of inspiration, I revisit a related image, the altar. I set the stage with a yellow/orange ground. I want to hone my harmonic perception that I may realize my theme in a higher register, one that captures it’s elusive quality.

It now becomes an altar for the Day of the Dead. On it I place my mother’s ashes, the tattered image of dad, and all loved ones who’ve left the arena of life. Here is the true value-the measure of all that is Golden.

Paintings in Progress

Raven Window-The Albedo Phase

Posted on July 25, 2013July 28, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

The canvas is theTemenos, where I had earlier faced the black work of the Nigredo- where the inessential was burnt away leaving the skeletal composition etched in blackest black..

Stained glass framed the scene for my latest confrontation with doubt and the obstinate reality of the Prima Materia.

Now is the phase to which corresponds the Alchemical process of the Albedo-the whitening.

The Hermetic philosopher, Artephius said it is:

“That which is uplifted by the air…pure, subtle, brilliant, clear as the dew, diaphanous as unflawed crystal.”

The diaphanous in between I invoke, where light reflects both ways.

Julius Evola, says in the Hermetic Tradition says the Albedo:

“ …reintegrates the personality with the non-corporeal state.”

It moves me outward from this dark interior of crowded thoughts, into something vast-where the spectral colors of the work’s final phase finds its completion in harmony.

It is Raven’s call.

Paintings in Progress

Raven Visitation 2

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Carrying on with the Raven Visitation. As Raven is the messenger who dwells between worlds, the stained glass window motif fits the theme. It frames the shifty threshold where spirit travels between waking and dream.

Stained-glass demands a faithfulness to process which brings you back, again and again, to the logical form of it’s making. It is fitting that the material for scribing of boundaries in stained-glass windows is Saturn’s element, lead.

It is also fitting that the base material of the painter is charcoal, end product of the calcification process in Alchemy. Composition is a fiery process where all superfluous passages are burnt away, leaving only the original inspiration, the point of it all. It is a reminder of the point of all this shifting between worlds, and the spirit I need to maintain through the fiery calcification process: that my heart’s work may benefit all beings. It is Raven’s wake-up call.

Paintings in Progress

Raven Visitation

Posted on July 22, 2013July 22, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

I’ve gotten to work on my November art show, beginning with an image inspired by an encounter with raven.

In waking life, while walking in the forest I heard the a rush of a raven’s wings beating the air overhead.

Later, the same sound woke me from sleep. The clear call pierced my dream and I suddenly woke in my bedroom with nary a raven in sight and the doors firmly shut against intruders.

A visitation, a call? The light-bringer moved between worlds with a sign for me to to transpose into the language of art.

So this is where the work comes in. It is a Art Deco stained glass window motif I thought appropriate Raven’s boundary-crossing spirit. It is a spirit that, as James Fielden puts it in his beautiful post, A Lapse of Time, “pushes against the edges of mystery.”

Paintings in Progress

A summons to set out

Posted on June 13, 2013June 15, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

At ebb tide the water swirls toward a North forever receding beyond the gray headland. Shadows of cedars stretch along the foreshore where tanned ~~humans~~ tourists roast mammals on spits; their gaudy shirts billowing like the capes of fishwives on a storm-wracked shore. Otters writhe on the grassy bank.

I hear the north wind as a summons to set out. From the wheelhouse, my eye is led toward the harbor entrance where it opens into Port Madison Bay. Knowing such an expanse of open sea lies just around the bend gives me a sense of spaciousness and freedom. The immensity is continuous with the confined space of the harbor.

I suppose it also has to do with the long history of this historic mill town and shipyard where lumber schooners were built on the west shore in the late 1800’s. The 1906 tug, Noreen, lies at Halvorson’s dock just off the mouth of Salmon Creek, her high pilot house tilted back haughtily as if in defiance of the steep waves of the inland sea.

I’ve been working on two versions of the Vickers memorial, trying to get that feeling of expansiveness the sculpture seems to generate. I wonder how much this has to do with the harmonious distribution of masses and voids, and how much is due to her angelic status-what she represents.

There is too much emphasis on the precious object in art-on its monetary value, as if that were the sole end of art. The art scene is a big Antiques Roadshow. This fixation doesn’t see beyond the material product to the more ineffable virtues of what art does, how it feels and whether it confers upon the environment a greater sense of spaciousness. For greater spaciousness is always a virtue, and good art amplifies that poetic space which is continuous with the spaciousness inside ourselves we find in moments of revery.

Paintings in Progress

Our Lady of the Kedge

Posted on May 25, 2013May 25, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

There are infinite possibilities in art. When faced with an empty canvas an artist can be stymied by so many alternatives. It requires a narrowing of focus to hone in on intention, that particular thing you are called upon to express.

One needs set the right environment, speak prayers of supplication to the muse, and open to what nature has to reveal in the exuberant flow of her endless manifestations.

The challenge is to maintain balance, and walk the fine line between conscious intent and receptivity to what arises spontaneously when paint hits canvas and colors bleed in confounding ways.

I take a break from the mental gyrations of painting to work in the garden.

Thatcher Farm is big, with more rows of fertile earth than I can plant. I take an 8 by 16′ bed and divide it according to the square foot gardening technique. I lay it out with sticks and line, and plant seeds so many per square depending on the plant’s requirement for space. I impose an ordered framework, prepare the ground and trust that Mother Gaia can take it from there.

It’s like the layout for my next painting. But here the grid is based on the mystic proportion, the Golden Mean.

It is a major precept of spiritual and artistic disciplines to work like nature. The ancients discovered that the Golden mean is the proportion that comes closest to the original unity from which the diversity of life forms arose. It is this unity to which, in spiritual practice, we aspire to return. The proportion is expressed in plants, shells and seasonal cycles.

I lay out a grid of charcoal lines and, with color studies, narrow the colors to a triad of blue/green, red/violet and yellow/orange.

The sculpture on the Vickers memorial abides by the golden proportion, and its mystic rule sets the measure for creative expansion into the space around her. She is a portion of that spaciousness which is the ultimate nature of reality and she bestows it generously upon the graves of Port Madison’s founders lying at her stone feet. Like a beacon, she radiates light far over the bay.

I recall what my Eastern European sculpture teacher told me: sculpture is, ultimately, about light and space. He talked about how Michelangelo distorted David’s head so it would catch light and project it upward. Maybe it had to do with chakra’s. But I did learn from him that the ultimate end of the sculptor’s work is emptiness.

It is the quality of spaciousness and light she projects that is the theme of my painting, and her expansive energy inspires a harmonious distribution of color and form on the canvas. For, in the end, it comes down to this: to call upon the muse of art (and gardening) to favor us with her bounty and use the brute material of the tangible world to evoke the intangible spirit.

Paintings in Progress

Monument for a Liverpool engineer

Posted on May 16, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

I return to Kane Cemetery often to draw the Vickers memorial. A stone figure stands on a high pedestal with a great stone fisherman’s anchor steadied in her left hand, under the patchwork of golden light at the tree-lined harbor entrance. It’s a monument the citizens of Port Madison raised to honor a poor engineer on the Russian built, steam side paddle-wheeler tug, the Politkofsky.

I like to think Vicker’s went easily. That he never felt the shaft handle that fell on his head, delivering the humble British immigrant into the hallowed halls of Puget Sound maritime history. The good citizens raised a charitable fund to have this sculpture shipped from Italy. Here it stands, a century later, a moving gesture of honor for the bygone age of steam paddle wheel tugs and the men in them. I am heartened by knowing how loggers and mill hands paused from clear-cutting Bainbridge Island’s forests to pool their hard-won dollars to honor a humble seaman with a fond tribute.

It is such monuments that mark high civilizations. I hope that we are still capable of such moving, selfless gestures of magnanimity. For, often, it seems our culture has nothing to leave posterity but endless strip malls, business and theme parks and miles of consumer-friendly, soul-denying landscapes.

I’ve tried many times to capture the essence of this angelic figure in paint or charcoal, and her spirit has ever eluded me. She seems to rise by the power of her fisherman’s anchor, as if that very symbol of hope and faith had lifted her into the empyrean vaults by its dumb weight; and the toil of a Liverpool engineer is rewarded, finally,with the grace of an angel’s smile.

Paintings in Progress

Artwork in progress-a look back

Posted on April 6, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Here’s an installation photo from my show. It’s good to get it done. Now I can move on to other things. Like gardening, chopping wood, and writing blog posts again.

Putting up a show is always a double-edged thing. There’s the excitement and sense of accomplishment, but it’s also something of a let down in the end. It’s a summation, of sorts, a statement of where I’ve arrived at this point in time, life and career. It’s strange to think I did my first oil painting 50 years ago. I thought of showing this painting too, but couldn’t hang it without a little more work on it. Would this be cheating?

Paintings in Progress

Sufi Shrine updated

Posted on April 3, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

It has been a long struggle to arrive at this final version of this painting. I hang the show tomorrow, so it will have to do.

There’s a quote from Rumi: even at the grave of a master the adept takes in light…

Paintings in Progress

Last touch up for April art exhibit

Posted on April 3, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Here are some paintings I’ve been finishing for my art exhibit this month. I’ve been too busy getting them ready to find time for a blog post.

The Sufi Shrine has been a real challange, but I believe I pulled it out at the last minute.

The Sleeping Poet (not sure of title) has a long history as well. It was inspired by a medieval poem called the Pearl-a pious allegory where the poet falls into a dream by a beautiful river bank. I’m not usually into allegory-especially pious ones-but something about this story has grabbed me ever since reading it (and memorizing some) 20 years ago.

The Square Rigger is my latest, unfinished painting. It evokes an earlier time of Port Madison history. She emerges from the sunset mists like a ghostly presence.

Here is my version of Dante’s Inferno. I’ve been listening to a recording of the Divine Comedy while getting ready for this show.