 "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 23), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"}  Drawing 02·19·2020, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches Better and better; my art, with every day of thought-labor and physical-labor, is becoming the visual representation of the omphalos of my being.
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 "Inertia to Movement" (2019 No.6, state 4), oil on canvas, 66.25x65 inches {"Emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light, or from inertia to movement, without emotion." -Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1955, translation R.F.C Hull} It is work to be open to surprise. The painting, "Inertia to Movement", is coming at me in a very different way than any painting I have worked on before. It looks different. Its process is different. It is an excellent surprise, one that feels right and good.
Yesterday "Inertia to Movement" underwent vertical expansion, as well as additional application of paint.  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 22), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} I wish this was easier. Being patient is painful. Waiting for revelation and realization distracts and annoys. I am required to bear it. Being mortal, having a limited time to get it done, worries me. This is constant. Revelation is also constant. The requisite activity is showing up, being awake and aware, reacting to truth and failure until satisfaction and fulfillment are achieved.
Yesterday's revelation is state 22 of "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4). It took a jump toward fulfillment by becoming atmospherically consistent. It is now close to completion. In fact, looking at it here, in reproduction, makes me feel warm with success. State 22 of "Something Else Entirely" is something else entirely from state 21. It has started making sense.  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 18), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"}  Drawing 01·26·2020, graphite on paper, 16x20 inches Never be said that quick beauty is upon us. Beauty may be quick in discovery, but quick to production, no. Through an enormity of temporal passage its unraveling approaches real. Even when there is a then, another step will make it better. Thus is it happening here. The painting, "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4), is in state 18. It is better than ever, but it fails in many way that I can see. Failure drives me forward. By risk and alteration I will bend this complication toward its required outcome.
Yesterday's drawing is powerful.  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 16), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} I deny everything and I deny nothing. Can there be any greater denial than a third dimension on a two dimensional surface?
 "Inertia to Movement" (2019 No.6, state 3), oil on canvas, 64.5x64.75 inches {"Emotion is the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to light, or from inertia to movement, without emotion." -Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious", 1955, translation R.F.C Hull} The two Carls believe the same thing; i.e., Jung and Mehrbach. There is no change from darkness to light, or from inertia to movement, without emotion. It is me that I seek. I seek me by practicing the best means I have available, my emotional responsiveness. I like the changes that occurred yesterday in the painting Inertia to Movement. Here is witness to my accepting emotional response as responsibility. In this painting the layers of mess are contrasted with clearness and light, they exist in contraposition, one to the other. Through holding two opposing conditions simultaneously this painting exhibits one as true if, and only if, its contrapositive is true. Contraposition  "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 15), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} "Something Else Entirely" is in state 15; it is beginning to make sense of itself. This process of allowing a painting to ripen by itself, it calling out its requirements, is a process of wonderment. It is nature at work; like weather, tectonic plates, and the development of species. "Something Else Entirely" has a few more states coming.
 "Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 14), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"}  Drawing 12·14·2019, graphite on paper, 20x16 inches Magic it is! Magical it is! Abracadabra! My art is stepping up and stepping out. The work I did yesterday is enormously good. The quality of my newest drawing, and state 14 of the painting "Something Else Entirely", is high. Am I satisfied? No way! There is so much more to do, so much more to express. I am happy because I have reached this stage of mastery. However, I am an infant in a realm of greater possibilities. In the media that is drawing and painting I have just touched the surface of a higher order of emotional and intellectual expression. My joy is me feeling the availability of greater possibilities, not me feeling a sense of accomplishment.
BTW, I have renamed the painting 2019 No.4 to "Something Else Entirely". As with this painting's previous title, this phrase comes from Tadeusz Dąbrowski's poem, "Sentence". "Something Else Entirely" is more apt; It invokes a response more directly related to the subject matter of this painting than the title it replaces.  "Gunfire Across My Consciousness" (2019 No.5, state 10), oil on canvas, 48.5x32.5 inches {"My mind is just like a spin-dryer at full speed; my thoughts fly around my skull... Images gunfire across my consciousness... I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind's expanse." -Christopher Nolan, Irish Writer on his reasons for writing "The Eye of the Clock", in November 8, 1987 "Observer"}  Drawing 11·24·2019, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches There is something magical and emotional about the negative. Forms dominate both the drawing and the painting in today's post, but it is the negative, the areas without form, that sing in emotional stress. The forms punch out of the negative, speak loudly in positive voices. Consequently the forms punch enthusiastically, in and out they go, undeniable they are. This would, and could, not happen without astute realization of negative spaces. I believe yesterday's drawing is one of my most fully realized. It was born in mindfulness. Its exudes delicate interaction between individual forms, forms against one another, forms against ground. Elegant they are, both painting and drawing, both are loudly original, loudly me!
 "Sentence" (2019 No.4, state 13), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"}  Drawing 11·20·2019, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Today I will let my work speak for itself. These are undeniably excellent. The painting, "Sentence" (2019 No.4), is very near completion.
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February 2020
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