uncertainty

il primo fallimento [the third station], (in progress), December 2013

There is no satisfaction in art.  Not in the making, and not in encountering.  At the very least, a work of art should leave you uncertain.  There should be some amount of anxiety.  Martha Graham called the creative process a "divine dissatisfaction."  Artists live in a state of uncertainty; we are by our very nature not satisfiers .   

Failure is essential to the artistic process.  Without repeated and progressive failure, there can be no growth, and without failure whatever you're making isn't art.  I like to be surprised in the studio.  I prefer a state of ambivalence where I may even be frightened or hesitant about what I see; what I've done.

The Stations series is taking me into that darkness.  I did not anticipate what working with black on black paintings would be like, nor what they would look like.  There is an eerie subtlety and haunting sensuality to this work; but that's speaking about impressions, not process.

The process involves laying down lots of paint and taking it away.  With the white on black works this gave way to forms, but with the black on black, the paintings become as much about what is absent and what has been removed.  Fitting from a theological perspective I suppose.

condanna [the first station], (in progress), Dec 2013

My initial experimentation with the process caught me off guard.  The works were not what I had anticipated but a the same time so much more.  As one would expect, they are incredibly difficult to photograph.  There's a pathos to them.  There's a sense of naked humanity and transcendent emptiness that I find very difficult to express in words.