square. stations?

The weekend was a blur of furious construction.  I am no carpenter, but pneumatic tools and sunny skies blessed me and three new stretcher frames emerged.  I have decided to embrace the square, for wherever may go with it; stand or fall.  In the journey I have been thinking of a particular space, and these new canvases seem for that space.  As I thought about my intentions towards composition, I suddenly thought of Newman's Stations of the Cross and something clicked.  My fascination with Catholicism as mysticism, -that is to say, viewing it as a non-believer I tend to focus on how transformative space is used to serve spiritual/religious means within the codex of (visual) language.

Growing up a fundy I was deeply moved the first time I walked into a cathedral.  I simply had no context for the wealth of visual imagery and other worldliness of the space.  For the first time in my life I felt that everything within a worship space pointed unflinchingly towards the Divine.  I had been raised in a tradition that viewed ornamentation (ANY ornamentation) as idolatry.  In my artistic journey I have increasingly embraced the visual representation of the spiritual as a pathway to god, or that which moves the all.

I wrestle with it.  I despise pseudo science and I have a particularly aversion to all things fundamentalist.  But some myths are beautiful.  Some stories are indelibly scored onto my consciousness, and I find a power when I embrace them rather than resist them.

So the square.  Limitation and constraint.  Symmetry.  Balance.  The square is difficult for me because the square is authoritative and final.  As I looked over my sketches I considered the stations.  The Way of Sorrow, as it were.  This perspective of religion as a Way is uncomfortable for me, and yet....

So I brave the sub-freezing nights ahead.  I will paint, and wrap, and bring home paints to protect them from the frost.  The work feels good.  Seeing this first square canvas tonight; naked and full of unknown.  It stirred something in me.  I'll see what happens.