A View from the Wheelhouse

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.