Paintings in Progress – Page 5 – A View from the Wheelhouse

Putting it all together

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

I’ve been cloistered in the studio, getting ready for my April art exhibit. Its been a challenge to bring all these images and colors into some coherent form. Having an art show forces you to bring work to, as Marcel Duchamp called it, “a state of definite incompletion.”

A way to get them up on the wall is necessary. I’m attaching hooks and wires, trying think of titles, and bringing some paintings back from the edge of oblivion . To do this you sometimes you have to be radical. Painting is a complicated business, and to narrow the focus can be, paradoxically, liberating. After putting this painting aside for a time, I covered the whole thing with a coat of indian red. It was the ground color I began with and I return to it in order to unify the disparate elements again. I then used my favorite tool, the paint rag, to reveal the under lying color. This gave everything a reddish tinge and shadows turned from cool blues and violets to warm red.

For a long time I’ve been interested in the Temenos, the enclosed, sacred space set off from worldly concerns.

The figures in this picture suggest gnomon. This is a greek word meaning both a column on a sundial indicating time of day, as well as one who knows. The gnomen are guardians of the spellbinding circle where we safely confront the unconscious and undertake the magic of creative work.

Paintings in Progress

Window on the Pureland

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

pureland window — Window on the Pureland by Craig Spencer

A few years ago I was engaged in the Buddhist practice of Amitabha visualization. Amitabha is the western Buddha of infinite light. It is taught that if we practice his mantra and visualize Amitabha’s Pureland as made up of insubstantial, jewels of luminous light, we can visit his peaceful Pureland in our dreams. This is of immense benefit for readying us for a peaceful death and helps us navigate the dangerous pathways of the bardo.

It is also said that, ultimately, this very samsaric realm we inhabit is no different from the blessed Pureland.

pureland painting 3 — The Pureland by Craig Spencer

Once, as I slept in my studio on a Spring night, I dreamed I flew over a desert landscape chanting the Tibetan version of Amitabha’s mantra: Om ami dewa hri. I flew over a bombed out village and saw scenes of bloody violence and suffering. I thought: Strange, the mantra doesn’t seem to be working. This is no blessed pure land but a vision of pure hell. I chanted the mantra with more intensity: Om ami dewa hri, om ami dewa hri. But all I saw was hellish torment and fighting. All I heard was the sound of screams, gunfire and explosions. Finally, the dream faded and I woke in my studio where all was peaceful and quiet. The only sound was the singing of birds. I lifted myself to see, outside the window, the cherry tree sending forth radiant blossoms in a lovely vision of luminous, rainbow colored jewels of light.

An Artwork in Progress-The Dream Oracle

I begin this post with only the vaguest notion of what it’s about. A feeling, a mood that has to do with twilight is all there is to go on at this point. Sometimes we are simply empty of ideas. Nothing of worth seems to loom on the horizon in the way of inspiration. There is nothing to go on except some vague feeling, and an impulse to create. This fear of abandonment by the creative muse has given me much angst but, over the years, I’ve developed strategies for dealing with this problem. One way is to begin with a color, to paint a canvas with a ground of a single hue and visualize it as I drift off to sleep, asking that an image come to me in dreams. As for the question of to whom I am making this appeal I can only say that it is addressed to Great Spirit, Hypnos, the Household Gods or maybe even my own inner wisdom. The problem of from where dream imagery originates has never been satisfactorily answered. I used this method in the painting Oriens. I asked for a symbolic image for one of my Four Directions series-that of East. When I woke next morning and, disappointed with a lack of response from the dream oracle, I opened the hatch on my boat and saw, rising from the low-lying fog, a vision of a celestial city bathed in the glorious morning light. It was Seattle, a city very much situated in the waking world. What this says about the efficacy of my method I don’t know, except that it inspired me to look at the external world in a fresh way.

Here is a canvas covered with atmospheric veils of blue/violet and red/violet that suggests a seascape on an inland sea. In fact, it looks like Port Madison. I evoke the ineffable feeling of the moment between two lights-that of day and nocturnal luminance that lights the inner workings of soul. When one is illuminated the other falls into shadow.

In my research of Port Madison history, it seemed those who inhabited these shores appeared to me in the violet hour, spectral forms who emerge from the shadows to demand remembrance, nourishment from the life they’ve long left behind. These phantoms seem to advance and recede as I work the material.

This image was a rubbing/transfer from a photocopy into my sketchbook. Only after I photographed and enlarged it again was I able to discern the presence of figures who eluded me before. They emerge with the process of working the image with different media. It’s as if the artistic process is a form of conjuration. In contemplation of these sombre hues I call forth the restless shades who reside beyond the dusky veil to take their places in the visible world.

An Artwork in Progress-A Cinderella Tale

My boots are heavy with the soil of Thatcher Farm. This is the foundation from which I begin this homage to a hallowed place, and invoke the Genius Loci of the old harbor community I’ve come to call home. Among last year’s pumpkin vines I sift the refuse of common household objects. To ground this narrative I reach across time and make contact with the elders through the humble detritus of everyday life. I touch cup fragments once held in living hands around the faded embers of the ancestral hearth.

There is also the secret record. It’s a spiritual history that, some say, dates back to the Rosicrucians, who preserved the remnants of Solomon’s wisdom. But we must forego linear chronology to enter the transhistorical and poetic record of events that transpire in the soul.
Just down the road is Kane Cemetery.
Many of the headstones of Port Madison’s founders are inscribed with Masonic symbols. This secret society played a major role in much of Port Madison’s early cultural and artistic history. The Kane No. 8 Masonic Lodge Hall was situated on a dock in the town center. It was said that Edwin Booth performed there. I can’t verify this, but a world where the great actor brought his melodious interpretation of the Melancholy Dane to sleepy Port Madison is a world I prefer to live in. He did perform in Oregon territory.

Port Madison photos 005 — Some in this photo actually played roles in the production.

I read of a production of Cinderella staged by the MacDonald sisters in the Hall. I find the choice of this particular tale for the entertainment and edification of the community significant. It was, for a time in the mid 19th Century, the myth which inspired the rough and tumble loggers and mill hands toward loftier goals than decimating forests, whoring and drinking. A wild west mill town staged a pageant honoring the Anima. “The Anima of man,” writes Jung, “has a strongly historical character. As a personification of the unconscious she goes back into prehistory…she provides the individual with those elements that he ought to know about his prehistory.”

The curtain rises on a poor maid covered in ashes. She fans the faded embers of a secret tradition based on humility and good works, preserving in the vestal flame an esoteric knowledge of salvation.

Jacob Boheme says : “The inner light is the natural ascent of the spirit within us which at last illuminates and transfigures those who tend it.” She ascends by degrees (symbolized by her changes of clothes) to her royal estate and abides among the envoys of supernal light. Swedenborg, in his Concordance, says that shoes correspond with the lowest natural things and that beautiful shoes symbolize the delight of making oneself useful. This has long been the Freemason’s credo. She teaches us that we are exalted through selfless servitude. Her lost shoe forms a link between her role as humble servant and her radiant heavenly counterpart. This ascension provides a model for the spiritual adept. Perhaps these mysterious changes of raiment are reflected in the robes of office and pageantry of Masonic Rites.

Lost in these speculations, I return to till the soil. Maybe I’ll find more spiritual artifacts or the way to elevate this arcane history by tilling the rich soil of good works.

An artwork in progress-Port Madison Reverie

Reflections of brilliant red kayaks fall vertically into the mud off Reah’s dock . The gray water stretches toward steep soundings off Jefferson Head and a fitful northerly brightens the harbor entrance with catspaws . An ancient tug nudges a barge off Meig’s old mill site, while the sqwak of a blue heron echoes from tall cedars veiled in ghostly fog. The fog creates vast space by removing nearby objects beyond this present time to maroon me with only my dark thoughts. A little mystery by way of atmospheric perspective.

Strange to think how the population of this quiet port dwarfed Seattle in the mid 19^th Century, when Meig’s mill belched acrid smoke into the northwest gloom and the west shore shipyard built lumber schooners for the coast trade. Then, the steam side wheeler’s whistle sounded along these shores. Venerable tugs like the Politkovsky, brought passengers, mail and logs to the hearty inhabitants of a thriving boomtown built with the lumber milled for distant ports. The long history of this now peaceful anchorage holds some dirty secrets- like when Meigs suddenly fired all Chinese workers or used trickery to monopolize the mosquito fleet, the main form of transport on Bainbridge Island.

I’ve taken a break from painting to work at Thatcher Farm. My art work has long tended toward abstraction (the term is used loosely since my work is figurative) and I needed connection with our ancestral earth to ground my mercurial mind. Speaking of Mercury, it seems significant that Thatcher farm was the main switchboard for Island communications for much of the 20^th Century.

So now I’m sending out a communique into an ever expanding cyber network where few have time for an old sailor’s questionable yarn. Among crockery shards I disinter rusty hinges for a gate that opens into another time. How many have turned this soil over the centuries, have pulled crabgrass, hacked blackberry vines into submission and bent hoe blades on this weathered rock? I till midden heaps of kitchen ware and toss rocks into a plastic bucket with a loud, dull thunk!.

Under golden maples that sway over the harbor entrance, a cemetery holds the remains of Port Madison’s founders. Here I came upon a stone bearing this simple elegy:

…Gallieau, 1905-2005, Lost at Sea

What an epic sea romance is encapsulated in this terse inscription! Would that my own humble literary efforts were enlivened by such economy and expressiveness. I see Gallieau as a Conradian swab on a lumber schooner bound for Frisco after the big quake, or an ancient mariner going down for the last time off Foulweather Bluff in a squall. May he rest in peace.

Paintings in Progress

An Artwork in Progress-The Post Deluvian Perspective

Posted on January 14, 2013May 18, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Here is another go at an old unresolved work. As this blog is about the art process, I include it despite its cloying sappiness. It was inspired by a story from the same manuscript in which Gawain’s story is told. It is called The Pearl. By a stream, the poet falls asleep and dreams of a maid who leads him to wondrous visions of salvation. Nearly 20 years ago I decided to memorize it and can recall some of it still.

From the memory practice unfolded a long period of work with lucid dreams, of bringing conscious intent to bear on the spontaneous flow of dream imagery by doing walking meditation and mantra within the dream itself. The dream mantra invokes the aid of compassionate deities as we wander alone through the hazardous pathways of the dream bardo. According to Tibetan Buddhists, This prepares us for the bardo after death.

opposites 002 — These illustrations are from Carl Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy

In the poet’s dream, the unconscious is pushed into conscious awareness like oceanic tides flooding upriver. This inundation has been long expressed in flood myths. Its flow forms an imaginal landscape and the sudden release of its energy forces a breakthrough of vivid imagery. This can form a tsunami if not channeled through the creative process. It demands integration with our logical mind. It becomes necessary to reconcile the irreconcilable, to balance contrary states into a healthy, creative relationship. This is the artistic process.

stream drawing 002 — This drawing is for a new version.

This harmony is represented in Alchemical imagery as the mystic marriage. Sufi’s have a phrase, ishq’ allah mabudlilah, which means something like: Love, lover and beloved are One. This sacred phrase speaks of how we are continuous with all we behold, and that knowledge of this truth transforms us through knowing it. It is the Gnostic vision. The subject/object dichotomy is illumined by a larger, more inclusive totality that embraces paradox.

The Golden Mean expresses this truth and is the proportion closest to the original unity from which multiplicity arises.

Paintings in Progress

An Artwork in Progress-The Burning Shrine

Posted on January 11, 2013January 12, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Some years ago I became aware of a recurring dream image. That is, of the cardinal points and my endless pilgrimage in a northerly direction. Something was endlessly drawing me toward a north not found in a geographic atlas but whose co-ordinates marked a visionary topography. It is part of my personal myth, which has followed a trajectory along this longitude throughout my life. It’s a physical migration as well as soul quest.

Cowlitz shaman Grandfather Roy Wilson took me to a mountain top with instructions to call forth the energies, qualities and color of each direction. He made a medicine wheel of stones and sat me down for 4 days with no food. Finally, after 3 days the high cirrus clouds disclosed wonderful visions. The same, old cirrus fly over me still.

Sailing has taught me the lethal consequences of losing one’s bearings. From the ever shifting vantage point of Old Hand’s wheelhouse I’ve descried hidden shoals and sailed congested highways in dreams. And such lessons are so burned into us they become part of our psychic makeup.

They are the epic sagas of exodus, the collective dream of humanity.

Odysseus, on his epic homeward voyage, followed Athena’s way points to the Southern Gate and an Ithacan homeland that was fated to shelter his tomb. Through this portal pass those who’ve gone beyond the individual destinies the fates have woven them, and are no longer subject to the pains of mortal existence. Through it pass the Bodhisattva’s who, moved by compassion, re-enter samsara in order to relieve the suffering of others. It opens both ways.

In many traditional societies, it is through the south facing door the dead are carried to their final resting place.

I reworked the Southern Gate many times. If my endless northward travel is a flight from mortality, the continued attempts at the Southern Gate may be a compensatory preparation for the inevitable denouement to come.

In a Renaissance manuscript illustrated with woodcuts, I found The Dream of Polipholo, which provided the image of Adonais’ tomb. The garden bower scene was bathed in impressionist light.

On a new canvas I again reversed the color of the original painting. This transformed the vibrant yellow of the original into a cool violet arboreal scene. I’ve yet to decide whether this reversal makes the theme of this new painting the Northern Gate.

And now the fountain blazes, a cauldron of fire.

Dust to dust! But the pure spirit shall flow

Back to the burning fountain whence it came,

A portion of the Eternal, which must glow

Through time and change, unquenchably the same..

Adonais, by Shelly

The fire has spread to the tomb itself. Is this a sign the painting is flaming out of control?

While working on this painting my mind returned repeatedly to the burnt Sufi shrines in Libya that were given brief mention in the news. This painting has now become a heartfelt elegy for the holy tombs where the faithful followed secret way points through time and space to drink from the living fountain of departed masters.

Paintings in Progress

A True Paladin part 2

Posted on January 8, 2013January 12, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

It’s time to set aside A True Paladin 2 and try it again on a fresh canvas. Artists have strategies to break habitual patterns that can bog painting down. A reversal of perspective is one. If we radically shift the view, shadow becomes light and all colors turn into their opposite complimentary hue directly across the color wheel. This helps move color and shape forward to the picture plane and gives a greater sense of immediacy. There is a rise in pitch and vibrancy that effects us on a physical level. Colors are interwoven into a pattern of dynamic color relationships that are in integral, sympathetic and interdependent accord. It’s like the pentagram on Gawain’s shield.

Gawain, in accepting the Green Knight’s challenge is forced beyond Camelot’s cozy society into the wild forest to receive his due in the head trading contest. This pushes him beyond his comfort level and causes a reversal of perspective and a life transforming experience. It’s like art.

The poet says the pentagram on Gawain’s shield is the symbol of Truth. Solomon’s Seal expresses the truth of interdependence and is also an image of the artistic process. The passionate, sensitive Gawain is not only an artistic creation, but something of an artist himself. His story is true because expresses the hard-earned equilibrium of contrary states held in dynamic, harmonious accord through the medium of poetry and song.

One of the 5 points of the pentagram is Charity. For me, this solidifies it’s status as Truth’s emblem, and it starts to look more like a Buddhist mandal.

Symbols are a different order of Truth. They start with the idea that all we behold symbolizes with it’s True form in the higher spheres where it has it’s complement and origin.

Those who deny that what we perceive has correspondences in the Divine Intellect have no use for symbols, and things and events of the natural world no longer express spiritual truth but remain objects of knowledge themselves. Poetry has no meaning in such a world.

Literalist’s on both side of the debate over God’s existence back their claims with empirical data, but never raise the discourse to the level of Shelly, a poet who despite his avowed atheism, shone light through the veil of appearances, revealing the hidden, Divine Presence behind the natural world.

The 19th Century Realist movement renounced historical, mythic baggage, thinking prostitutes more real than Venus on a half shell and the shades wandering sidewalk Cafes held the key to Truth’s hallowed halls. True enough, in it’s way, but only provisionally.

Ultimate Truth takes no sides in the Symbolist/Realist debate, but inhabits a pure realm, beyond our isms and most cherished opinions.

Artists can only, like the Medieval Alchemist, use the base materials of paint and canvas to transmute the elements of color into Gold. Not the fool’s gold of the literalist, but the true gold of Solomon the wise.

Gawain’s Shield

Image• Posted on January 5, 2013January 12, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Paintings in Progress

A True Paladin- An artwork in progress

Posted on December 31, 2012January 12, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

This is the original 1995 painting of A True Paladin.

After a recent flood damaged a number of drawings and paintings, I felt compelled to take stock of some 45 years of art and rework some old images. This painting from 1995, called A true Paladin, was inspired by a dream where the knight, Gawain, stands on a balcony over a city square on which corpses lie bleeding. I was struck by the painterly quality of the blood-soaked earth.

It’s hard to say what grabs us about certain images. Maybe it was the stark melodrama of the scene framed by an ornate, wrought iron balustrade. Perhaps it was the reflections. Or maybe it was the ambiguous space generated by the open window and fons perenis (eternal fountain) rendered in stained glass. The city square is a Temenos, an enclosed space where the dark figures of the unconscious are met and death looms in the shadows.

I divided the rectangle of canvas according to the Golden Mean, which is based on the number five. Gawain’s shield displays the pentagram. It is a mandala, a symbol of wholeness, of equity between parts, interlocked in an insoluble whole. All the Paladin’s thoughts, speech and actions are harmonious and abide by the Golden Mean. It is an ideal to which all knights must strive- in love, spirituality, ethics and life in general.

this geometric drawing informed the composition of A True Paladin2. Next to it is the Golden Mean Caliper, an essential tool of the artist’s paintbox.

With a palette of raw umber, paynes grey, black, white and indian red, I lay down broad washes of rich tones to evoke the earth of the city square. In contrast with this, the flat plane of the window projects sharply into the foreground. It is both, at once, interior and exterior scene and this dichotomy reflects the mood of sad revery.

The next day sees the introduction of more vibrant color. The ground color is blue/green. It is the key color to which all other’s refer and I will return to this hue when the bewildering possibilities of color relationships get out of hand. It provides a bearing (true north, so to speak) in the navigation of the color wheel.