Tag: creativity

Posted in Paintings in Progress, Uncategorized

Mars-An Artwork in Progress

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

mars 3The paintings have each taken on planetary aspects and this one seems to be heading toward Mars.  I’ve been trying to preserve a  loose, fluid handling, but it always becomes a struggle.

It’s like meditation.  When sitting, my mind wanders into monkey territory and I need to refocus-come back to the breath, mantra or visualization.  And this is Okay.  I’ve heard it said that meditation was about shedding light into the darker corners of confusion and afflictive emotions; confronting obstacles, not avoiding them.  Something similar is being played out on canvas.

Ghostly figures emerge from pools of raw umber, terra rosa and paynes gray as if they wanted to give me tips on technique.  Maybe they want to tell me it’s all good-just chill and take up a new canvas when things get too thick.

And since these posts are a big part of this process, I’ve decided they should also be  more spontaneous-straight from the heart.  Just whip it out without worrying it too much.

At the same time, I’ve continued to grapple with Jerusalem.  I read of Los’s (poetic genius) struggles with Urizen (reasoning power) to re-establish harmony among the 4 Zoas (similar to Jung’s 4 functions) in the imaginative project of building Jerusalem.  There are are verses that, while memorizing them, beguile me with their stunning imagery and painterly use of upper case letters.  Some have all the pithy weight of a zen koan.

  In my Exchanges every Land

Shall walk, & mine in every Land,

Mutual shall build Jerusalem,

Both heart in heart & hand in hand.

Posted in Paintings in Progress

Baked Soul-an Artwork in Progress

Posted on by Dogfish Bay
death's door 3 cropped
Death’s Door-painting by Craig Spencer

I recently dreamed that I went back to my old studio in Seattle. Its proximity to the neighboring building cut off most of the natural light. The new tenant had hung a mirror on the neighboring wall that reflected sunlight into the studio, creating a greater sense of spaciousness.

This dream seems to reflect the dilemma I face with each new artwork.

Every painting presents an opportunity to break into new territory, beyond habitual modes, toward a more fully realized statement of my particular vision. Each stark white field stands before me like a challenge to move beyond easy solutions; invites the spontaneous gesture that preserves the initial inspiration.  It is the free spirit exemplified by Blake’s Songs of Innocence. But the luminous energy of spontaneous creativity is immediately followed by the discriminating mind as shadow accompanies light.  The state of Experience is Blake’s necessary counterpart to that of Innocence.

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Memory Station

Often, my own “strengths” are an obstacle.  I want my work to break boundaries, open spaces where imagination has room to expand.

I begin with laying out broad swathes of muted color to set the stage-to invite images into the memory stations, or conjure a player from behind the Gothic pillars of a Blakean stage-set.

A shift in perspective is also necessary to understand  Blake.

Blake recognized that God and Angels reside in the mind.  Unlike Christian dogmatists, he saw Christ’s resurrection not as a single event of historical time unique to a single individual, but as expression of the universal Christ-spirit within “…Heathen, Turk or Jew.” This interiorization of the mysteries is a step in the evolution of consciousness, a withdrawing of childish projections, and the realization of the Divine Human.gothic 1

Materialist science sees the phenomenal world perceived by the 5 senses as the only measure of reality.   Blake’s work reflects the Neoplatonic doctrine that acknowledges the primacy of the spiritual world and sees nature as the “vegetable glass” reflecting spiritual truths.  Post-Cartesian science that recognizes only natural phenomenon as sole measure of truth is the fundamental error which precipitated Jerusalem’s’s fall.  Los, embodiment of the poetic genius and agent in the soul’s recovery, takes a walk through London streets:

  (Los)…saw every Minute Particular of Albion degraded and murder’d

But saw not by whom; they were hidden in the minute particulars

Of which they possess’d themselves: and there they take up

The articulations of a man’s soul, and laughing throw it down

Into the frame, then knock it out upon the plank, & souls are bak’d

In bricks to build the pyramids of Heber & Terah.

-from Jerusalem

Posted in Paintings in Progress

Particulars-an artwork in progress

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

DSC02887 William Blake stressed the “particulars,” how the details of daily life are continuous with cosmic totality.  In Blake’s expansive vision the two perspectives interpenetrate and this all-inclusive vision animates and unifies his art in way that is unique in the history of art.  In Jerusalem, the local  village scene merges with vast space and opens on the mythic city:

  Pancrass & Kentish-town repose

Among her golden pillars high,

Among her golden arches which

Shine upon the starry sky.

So my Black Friday visit to a Port Angeles fabric store acquires new significance.  This particular Clallam anchorage is where the angels weave this narrative into the fabric of myth.  Or maybe it was just a place where I could score a good deal on the canvas I need for my February art show.

I am imagining some large canvases painted in the muted, earthen tones of the gray, English landscape overlaid with an architecture of arches and pillars of insubstantial, golden light.

jerusalem 1jerusalem painting 1

At the same time I continue the memory practice, learning Jerusalem “by heart” and using the mnemonic imagery of the memory stations as a starting point. These stations continue to evolve as I memorize the text and work the paintings.  In this way I hope to in infuse the paintings with some of Blake’s generous, all-encompassing spirit.

This process may sound cumbersome, but it works well in maintaining a broad perspective and helps avoid a myopic fixation on details.  This fixation is far from the non-dualistic attention to particulars Blake writes of.  I hope my art may be as expansive and generous as his.

If you look closely at the background, some ethereal light forms emerge; vague figures who begin to emerge from beyond a misty veil.  Or maybe the turpentine was just going to my head.

Posted in Paintings in Progress

The Memory Theatre-a Reprieve

Posted on by Dogfish Bay
DSC02850memory stations 10 tree
First memory station

In his wonderful book,  Little Book of Dreams,  Robert Bosnak says that the best way to enhance dream recollection is the classic memory practice.   This is important for many reasons.  Here’s one:

In a dream I was given a slip of paper on which was written the word HEARTNET.  The image was very clear and when I told Lily of the dream the next day, she suggested I google it.  It turned out to be a heart health website.

Taking this as a sign, I had a checkup and found my cholesterol levels dangerously high.  I became resolved to clean up my act and extend my life.  It gave  me a reprieve.

Tibetan Buddhist teachers say that the ability to consciously enter the dream state-lucid dreaming-is a good way to prepare for the bardo after death.

As I am not ready to face the bardo’s dangerous pathways, attending to the dream message allowed me more time to cultivate the qualities of compassion and wisdom that help to ease the transition.  This, it is said, increases the possibility of a favorable rebirth.

 

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Blake’s painting teacher, from his visionary heads series

I was thinking of Blake’s vision of Jerusalem as a Golden city of peace, love and harmony that, at some timeless time, was “on England’s pleasant pastures seen.”  Did such a city exist in prehistory? 

Then I read this in Eva Wong’s commentary in the Hui-Ming Ching (Cultivating the Energy of life:)

  When we are in our mother’s womb, we were filled with the primordial energy of the Tao.  In the natal state, original nature and the energy of life are united.

At birth we come into contact with the world.  When air is inhaled through the nostrils, the primordial breath is contaminated and the connection with the Tao is broken.  Original nature and life energy separate, the former moving to the heart and the latter moving to the kidneys.

Posted in Paintings in Progress

The Memory Theatre-an artwork in process

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

I’ve made some memory stations and begun the memory practice.  Maybe I’ll try to memorize Jerusalem (at least parts of it) by William Blake.  The organization of the space and creating the stations is not separate from the work of sketching out the composition on the canvases.  The placement and spacing are important. DSC02838memory stations 3

I imagine the paintings might take the form of a still life that opens onto a vast landscape. Blake had a vision that beheld the universe in a grain of sand, infinity in an hour and the celestial city built on the rolling green English countryside.  I want my art to share some of this all-encompassing perspective.

The fields from Islington to Marybone,

To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood,

Were builded over with pillars of gold,

And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.

I’ve found that memory practice leads to amazing experiences.  It is a way to attune to subtle influences and bring to conscious awareness the too-often suppressed messages from the unconscious.  In her brilliant book, the Art of Memory, Frances Yates quotes Cicero’s recollection of the poet Simonides, who was said to be inventor of the memory art:

…persons desiring to train this faculty (of memory) must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written on it.

DSC02844memory stations 9 white

Posted in Paintings in Progress

The Memory Theatre-Idea for my Febuary art exhibition

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

My next art show is coming up soon.  My idea is inspired by the Memory Theatre. This is an ancient mnemonic device used by actors and rhetoricians to commit long speeches to memory. The memory places are niches, or altars that contain imagery (the more outlandish the better) that facilitate recollection of the text. In ancient times, these features were incorporated into the design of theatres.

My idea is to make this part of the process of creating the work for my show. I’ll start with the basics: clean up my studio and create a series of 10 altars which I will decorate with whatever imagery will facilitate recollection of a long poem. At the same time I’ll prepare 10 canvases which will correspond with each of the memory stations. These paintings will comprise the exhibit.

I haven’t decided on a poem yet but maybe one of William Blake’s medium-length works will serve. This memory process will be concurrent with the creation of 10 paintings inspired by each of the memory stations.  The art show’s theme will be continuous with the theme of the poem.

The whole process from straightening out the studio to “completion” of the paintings will be documented in this blog with photos, text, video and recordings. Stay tuned.

Posted in Paintings in Progress

Studio Update 2

Posted on by Dogfish Bay

vickers cropped 10-13vickers 10-13 cropped DSC02808fall colors 10-13 croppedHere are a couple of paintings I’ve been working on for my November exhibit.  The top one is my first version of the Vicker’s memorial in Kane cemetary.

One of the most difficult things in painting is knowing when to stop, and maybe that time passed long ago. But I have another version which I began when I’d given this one up for lost.

The second one I just began.  The colors outside the studio window are more vibrant than I could ever hope to capture in paint.  It’s still a work in progress, though the show goes up in 3 days.