the primordial gaze

I'm deep in the work. The associations are obvious: 19th century photography, early x-rays, paranormal photography, deep aquatic life, the celestial. Beyond those thing there is, for me, the freedom...the invitation to breath life and association into the work at will. I see the Why that cannot be answered, the curiosity of the beyond, the ephemeral nature of the now, of life. There are lots of formal things going on but honestly who gives a shit except a handful of painter friends? No, there's something tapped here; something real and visceral and shared. The Sublime and I'm not afraid to say it.

Another 10 tonight and each one is autonomous and self-referential even side-by-side to others. One can look at these for a long, long time.

I took it large to some effect. I prepared another large canvas tonight and we'll see.

Picked up an old book on Mexican art and flipped to this dog-eared passage....

"Between our gaze and the world, images previously produced by habit, culture, museums, or ideologies impose themselves. the first thing a painter must do is to brush away from his eyes the spiderwebs of styles and schools. The experience is dizzying and blinding: the world leaps to our eyes with the innocent ferocity of what is too alive. Seeing without intermediaries: a painful apprenticeship that never ends. ...Asceticism of vision: the hand learning to obey the eye and not the head, until the head stops thinking and begins to see, until the hand conceives and the eye thinks. To see the world in this way is to see it with one's whole body and mind, to regain the original unity in order to win back the original gaze..." -Octavio Paz, from "From Criticism to Offering"; Paris, December 29, 1960


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