Me (the painting): I see you looking with that side-eye… that squint. You're on the edge of a question... Well, ask it.
You (the artist): Okay, what is this? I mean, I know, abstraction and what not, but whaddayacallit?
Me: It’s the event of the thing not a picture of the thing.
It’s Rhythm-A-Ning, Bemsha Swing, Epistrophy.
It’s poems, story(ing), and the news—yesterday, today, tomorrow.
It’s dreaming elsewhere and right here.
It’s Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, Kamasi’s Epic, the Comet is Coming.
It’s notes on water and more notes on water and
a great blue heron’s reflection in a glass-flat lake.
It’s baring witness and witness(ing).
It’s a Carolina Wren declaiming the origin of the universe.
It’s Cape Fear River Basin, Wachusett Meadow, and Monadnock.
It’s “moon turn the tide gently gently away.”
It’s Spirit Counsel, black-crowned night herons, an explosion of pollen.
It’s deep time and the vast mourning buddha field of the Atlantic.
Psychedelic. Mythic. Poetic.
Psychemythopodelix over the Diamond Sea.
It’s deeply reverent and irreverent inside of that.
You: Oh, yeah, I see. That’s dope.
Enter Mr. Soansoansuch (the fearful inner critic): That’s all very nice and lyrical, but why abstraction? Can you say something about form and color? For instance, why the diamond? And what is going on with the color? And the mark-making?
Me: Well, if experience is embedded in the sensual, and if painting is a sensorial language, and if paintings are the signs that are used to translate experience, then abstraction seems the appropriate idiom. The diamond is there to subvert the illusion of a rectangular window, and, in a nod toward tantric painting, to reinforce the painting as an object of contemplation. The saturated color and gestural mark-making act in tandem in an attempt to bring about a kind of ambient, allover, ecstatic song that is sometimes performative and always evocative.It’s painting aspiring to the condition of music.
It’s a visual ring shout.
It’s “the drums are the sun.”
It’s… it’s… it’s…
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
You (the artist): Okay, what is this? I mean, I know, abstraction and what not, but whaddayacallit?
Me: It’s the event of the thing not a picture of the thing.
It’s Rhythm-A-Ning, Bemsha Swing, Epistrophy.
It’s poems, story(ing), and the news—yesterday, today, tomorrow.
It’s dreaming elsewhere and right here.
It’s Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, Kamasi’s Epic, the Comet is Coming.
It’s notes on water and more notes on water and
a great blue heron’s reflection in a glass-flat lake.
It’s baring witness and witness(ing).
It’s a Carolina Wren declaiming the origin of the universe.
It’s Cape Fear River Basin, Wachusett Meadow, and Monadnock.
It’s “moon turn the tide gently gently away.”
It’s Spirit Counsel, black-crowned night herons, an explosion of pollen.
It’s deep time and the vast mourning buddha field of the Atlantic.
Psychedelic. Mythic. Poetic.
Psychemythopodelix over the Diamond Sea.
It’s deeply reverent and irreverent inside of that.
You: Oh, yeah, I see. That’s dope.
Enter Mr. Soansoansuch (the fearful inner critic): That’s all very nice and lyrical, but why abstraction? Can you say something about form and color? For instance, why the diamond? And what is going on with the color? And the mark-making?
Me: Well, if experience is embedded in the sensual, and if painting is a sensorial language, and if paintings are the signs that are used to translate experience, then abstraction seems the appropriate idiom. The diamond is there to subvert the illusion of a rectangular window, and, in a nod toward tantric painting, to reinforce the painting as an object of contemplation. The saturated color and gestural mark-making act in tandem in an attempt to bring about a kind of ambient, allover, ecstatic song that is sometimes performative and always evocative.It’s painting aspiring to the condition of music.
It’s a visual ring shout.
It’s “the drums are the sun.”
It’s… it’s… it’s…
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
A Love Supreme.
