en sueños

I dreamt I walked through my studio. There was nothing in it but giant painting walls, and on each was a 5' x 7' black canvas with ghostly abstracted gestures and forms. The works hung two feet off the floor and towered above me.

Readers of this blog (all half dozen of you) know that I am cigar enthusiast. Like everyone who has ever smoked, I'm fascinated with the twirls and undulations of the smoke itself as it floats up into the random currents of the air. I was thinking of this a few weeks ago sitting the rear gardens at dusk.

When one brings the images and forms of dreams into the physical world, there is always something lost in translation, but I have also found that if one allows for this there is something gained that takes those ideas and breathes life into them in a very different way. To me, these initial studies bring to mind x-ray imagery and paranormal associations. They seem more specter-like than smoky.

I love paint. I love what it can do and what it never fails to show me in terms of new possibility. The 50 are in some ways archaeological; they are about reduction and uncovering a historical record within each picture. I spent all morning on a single piece, watching it change a dozen times into decent pictures before obliterating it over and over and over.

My time with that body of work is nearing an end and it remains to be seen if I'll continue it into next year when I thaw out the studio. Whether or not I will realize these ambitious canvases from the studies shown here is yet to be known as well. These are the first drawings; a shorthand of concept and a familiarizing of the hand to the mind's eye. All I know is I'll be buying a few dozen of these post-card canvases next week, a couple of tubes of black and white paint, and we will go from there.