practice stillness

Althaea (in progress), oil on canvas, 48" x 60", Rico

I was able to get into the studio for a long session yesterday and made tremendous progress on two paintings I've been working on; one since last year and the other since February.  I am fighting a cold I'd very much like to rid myself of before my NYC weekend.

I read one of my favorite art blogs and there's much to see in Chelsea, so I'll ask if anyone wants to make a day of it with me.  Basquiat is top of my list.

The rare times when I'm able to log hours in the daytime make me wonder what my work would look like if I did this full time.  As it stands, I can hardly keep up; I'm limited only by time and materials.  Increasingly I can afford the materials and I keep myself well-stocked, but time is always against me.  With oil, time is a medium in and of itself.  I love that paintings take multiple sessions, because coming in and out of a picture enables me to see more than I would if I were able to plow through.  Sometimes I miss acrylics for their immediacy, but mostly not.  I'm interested in the Way of painting; the eternal journey towards perfection that manifests itself in daily practice.   Keeping it slow means I spend most of my time looking in an attempt to see.

Something is reoccurring in the pictures as of late, these wide passages of emptiness; gaping orifices that recede into blackish void.  They remind me of Caravaggio in the overt reference to the Nothingness; that backdrop of our conscious lives and the curtain that will eventually fall on each of us.  Light and motion punctuated by eternal stillness.  I think about the placid lake we hiked around on Paris Mountain last month.  How ripples dissipate and stillness is itself a presence.  Since the beginning of this body of work I have noticed references to the anatomical and the sensual.  They often begin as gesture drawings, which of course also reference the body and nature.  I don't think about these things in the studio when I'm painting.  I attempt to clear my mind and paint with the non-mind.  I'm interested in what the paint wants to do and I try to follow it.  But here at home on a Sunday, I take a moment to consider.