wandering in blackness

I've spent weeks with this large black canvas now, slowing applying thin layers of medium and paint.  During this time I've been trying to address the logistics of exactly how to move paint around such a large area that replicates the way I did it on small sheets of vellum.  I've had a couple of "ah-ha" moments and it's just been practice, practice.  The big canvases mess with you; it's a lot of work and visual real estate to screw up, so there's the pressure that weighs down creativity.  For my part I've been struggling to get the surface where I want it before the white gets laid down.

The demons of doubt and disappointment and frustration have descended on me and I feel like St. Anthony in that famous etching being ripped apart and consumed.  Try as I might, I can't catch a break; I no longer even get rejections, I only get silence.  Being ignored is far worse than being rejected because there is no closure; you're just left wondering.

There is nothing new under the sun; and so much more so with painting.  There's always some artist you never heard of somewhere that did what you're doing.  The best one can hope for is authenticity and hopefully that authenticity may afford a new vista for the audience, the artist and painting.  So back into the 100 degree studio I go, and I keep searching myself for that authenticity and honest expression onto surface that will break open my own ways of perception.

It's less stalling and more free falling.

Just one more second before pulling that ripcord, just one more, one more, one more.  The farther and faster I fall the quicker time becomes; the more the urgency is felt.  Let go of all that I know and accept the reality of my current being; hurtling toward oblivion at 9.8 m/s/s.  Because art/creativity should be dangerous.  It should come at a price, and a high one at that.  If you're not in some way risking your soul then you're not doing anything a monkey with a brush can't do.  You've got to be pulling g's up to the point that everything is about to fall apart and spin out of control, and then you've to pull out and touch the endless blue.

It's time we took painting somewhere again.