Had a studio visit tonight, which I enjoyed. In the process of getting ready, I pulled out a couple of the "Anne Sexton" paintings and having not seen them for some time I realized how much they foretold within my current work. Clearly I was learning to use paint in a very different way, as well as to build deeper and more complex layers within the paintings. A few are damn good paintings, and others I feel can be gone back into. They modulate and breathe and float up on the wall. And while I can exhaust my own knowledge of art history by citing what I consider obvious references, I realize too that I don't see anything like this right now. My longing for my own voice seems to be closer to being realized than I sometime allow myself to think.
In a couple of months, these dogs must hunt. I have to find their audience, no one will do it for me. But what I find in my work, -in the majority of my work, is presence. I don't know how to describe it. They seem living, as though if you put them in a room it would feel at times that someone else was in the room with you. I paint from all different angles of the room; coming in and moving back and walking around and then locking in close. The whole process remains very physical for me in the studio, and perhaps this is what gives them that sense of motion and movement. Someone smarter and more eloquent than me can figure that part out some day.
Of course I left the camera at home tonight...
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