Color Study

Over the years, my painting practice has become more and more refined. I always begin with sketches from memory followed by several sessions from life working with a model to achieve the subtlety and feeling I am after. I then begin to re-express the image with color before I venture into the larger, final image. This is a very important step. In a sense, I am setting the stage for my character- the lighting, the mood, for the performance. Color is critical. Color provides the emotional key. It acts immediately upon the viewer almost prior to his very recognition of the forms presented.

This re-expression of the image through color- the key- takes different forms. In most cases, I construct the image as I imagine it, including the color. I then look to several color combinations called chords and re-develop the image “color key” depending on which combinations I feel are most evocative and carry the emotional tenor I am after. At this stage, I lay the colors on my palette and work the possible combinations. My primary concern being, can I achieve the realism I am after along with a heightened sense of emotion? Can I achieve the lights and shadows, the cools and warms as I see them along with the temperature variance in the flesh tones? I am looking for the most dynamic color combinations that can coexist, providing an inherent unity as well as fluidity throughout the image.

I want the paint itself to be beautiful-the color to be full and lush. Paint must describe the form but it must also have its own beauty and sensuality- its very materiality  touches us in a sensate way. Color must exist in a duality-expressed as pure paint as well as a description of form. So the color must be beautiful in itself, impressive to behold.

Sometimes there are two chord combinations that are very close. And either chord would work effectively. At this stage, I take each combination and proceed to paint a study from life. It is only by working from life that one can examine those subtle shades of indescribable colors and how to achieve them. And in almost all cases the dominate chord will become self-evident.

In the present painting I am working on, I was torn between a more balanced “Major Chord” and “Three set against the complement” color combination. This terminology is derived from the notebooks of Robert Henri. In the 1990′s, I spent about 4 years researching Henri’s color theory, taking extensive notes which I still refer to. This has been the most influential study I have ever conducted and has effected my work ever since. My eyes were opened to a new world of color and its expressiveness. Here are the two combinations:

The “Major Chord”:

 O   -   G   -   BP

Yhue- GB bi  -  P hue

 

Y hue: O + G

GB bi: G+BP

P hue: BP+O

“Three Set Against the Complement”:

YG          G          GB

RO bi      R hue    PR bi

  R

 

RO bi: R+YG

PR bi: GB+R

R hue: O+P

In the end, I chose the complement combination of Red set against Green, bordered by its near neighbors because the darks held together in such a way as to allow the lights of yellow-green and red to feel luminous. I have included both combinations so that the reader could conduct their own experiment and see the variance between the chord and the complement combinations. One can only really get a feeling for color through mixing on the palette in a tactile way.

In my last blog I spoke about the ability of matter to evoke the imagination of the artist allowing him to not only take matter and give it new form, but also to transform himself and the world. But I am curious about the connection between matter and memory. Memory, like matter, is the basis of an artist’s ability to express. Memory attaches itself to matter in many ways. One’s memory recalls images- images of material objects that carry significance. Memory holds these images allowing them to live in the mind and soul of the artist. Memory allows the images to gather, collectively, reinforcing a sense of meaning. They are magnetic, a larger image gathering to itself smaller related images creating a conduit of thought. When images gather together in this way, the artist feels more compelled to listen to them. They take on an import that seeks expression.

As one is engaged in matter, the very act of painting and observing, memory is constantly recalling related images in its storehouse. This storehouse contains not only first hand memories of the artist but also those of the collective unconscious. These collective images give one’s own memories a context- they are images within a greater myth. One’s personal image fits within a larger story. It is why we are inherently attracted to myth. One’s vision is a smaller chapter in a larger work that includes all men and all things.

Although this is the case, it does not diminish one’s personal memory or personal images. Instead, the path between memory and image travels two ways. It moves one towards a greater myth but also returns one to one’s very center. There is an outward movement that ends in oneself. This movement gathers strength and momentum as it cycles to its return. This is the same movement that occurs in reverie- one’s thoughts gather around an object and travel beyond it connecting  all sorts of images to that object making it evocative and memorable- creating significance.

The strength that returns upon the image is meaning. Without memory, one could not gather the import of understanding necessary to create. Creativity hinges upon the power of the image to evoke upon the viewer’s heart a memory residing deep within. Art touches that hidden memory, through the very matter which is the art piece, and calls it forth and joins to it a superabundance of meaning.

There is a collective memory that the artist taps into as well. It resides in the works of artist’s of the past, their material productions, creating a lineage of memory upon which the living artist is placed. Robert Henri called this “living” memory, the Brotherhood. One could call upon these artists of the past to help and guide one in the present.

Without memory one could not hold onto an image. Without matter, image could not be embodied. Image is the very materialization of meaning held between memory and conscious perception. Image embodies “…the oneiric forces which flow unceasingly through our conscious life…The earthen objects we work return an echo of the inner forces we expend on them.”      ( Gaston Bachelard, Earth and Reveries of Will, pps.3 and6) These oneiric forces we recall out of memory and materialize them through the art, the craft, the manifestation of both our conscious and hidden life.

Matter embodies more than its material existence. Matter engages us on a deeper level. It calls forth from us a response- be it a material response or a spiritual one. But the artists engagement is a spiritual one- make no mistake. Even if that artist sees himself as agnostic, his activity in the world is spiritual. He is engaged with matter on a spiritual level. He not only looks to matter to feed his imagination, but uses matter to speak again of what he has seen and felt.

In the very activity of mixing paint on the palette with a brush, he is manipulating the matter of paint, applying it to the canvas material in a physical process with arm and hand and one’s entire body. He observes matter- the object of significance. He uses matter- paint. He is matter engaged- the body. Matter is the key to unlocking his experience, but this experience is beyond the material embodiment of object and artist. It is its spiritual significance that the artists seeks.

Baudelaire’s concept of “correspondences” is all about the materialization of spiritual significances. All that we see speaks hidden words to the artist/poet, revealing and seeking a spiritual dialogue with him. This is the dialogue that the artist is in tune with. This is the dialogue that he cannot turn himself away from. Keats states it simply in Ode to a Grecian Urn”, “Beauty is truth and truth beauty this is all we know and all we need know.”

How does this engagement manifest itself and intern become a spiritual ground capable of transforming oneself and the world? When one is engaged with matter on a deep level one’s mind and soul can travel beyond the object observed. One becomes engaged in a deep reverie that carries the artist to an imaginal realm, and it is the engagement in this realm that brings insight and personal transformation, as well as the possibility of transformation in the world. The Sufi masters, like Ibn’Arabi, speak of the isthmus that must be crossed to the imaginal world. This isthmus manifest itself when the artist is fully engaged in his work. Engaged to such a degree that he no longer sees just the object before him but sees beyond it. It is the realm of memory and imagination speaking to him words and images that he could not have projected or forseen. Sometimes this imaginal space has an embodiment described as a muse or sometimes it is reflected in an insight that comes as a flash of understanding. And sometimes it comes as something mysterious that one does not have a clue about and its meaning takes time to be revealed. But either way, the artist trusts himself to it. He must. If he does not, his life becomes one of despair. It becomes the “Dark Wood” of Dante. One is forever lost among the trees where one cannot see in the material its significance. In this space, self-destruction is inevitable.

The artist observes matter, is engaged physically with matter but produces something of spiritual significance- that encompases the mind, the heart and the soul. What is this thing that comes to birth through this process? Is it not the art itself- the painting, the sculpture? Matter becomes transformed through the spiritual medium of the artist and again is materially manifested. What is this art? Does not this work become itself an object of significance? It not only becomes this type of object, but it also becomes matter that can engage the viewer spiritually just as an object in the world engages the artist and calls forth his own personal transformation and vision. This object, this art is capable of the same thing. Delacroix states in the journal that in and through the art work, ”…mind speaks to mind”(and soul to soul), from the artist to the viewer and back again. Art, itself, becomes the isthmus that again leads the viewer, this time, to the realm of the imaginal. It becomes itself, the Eurydice, calling Orpheus into the underworld so he can undergo his own transformation to his new self and become the person, the artist that he is called to be.

The material world is the medium by which man can be transformed. He is matter. He manipulates matter. And he creates a material object. Yet, the product of all this activity is spiritual and the journey from birth to death is a spiritual one and the artist is at the center of this engagement and transformation not only for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the entire world. This is why he is compelled to this activity alone. It is at the very heart of existence.

It is in these pauses, these moments of intense recollection that one finds the source of one’s imaginative powers. These pauses are great gifts and from such a gift , the artist is able to return a gift by offering these moments back to the world, back to society. The observations, both interior and exterior, become the jewel held out by the artist for others to see and to hold themselves. It is in these small observations, these material moments of reverie that insight comes not only to the artist himself but to those that further contemplate these images.

I love how Manet would spend so much time composing his letters to family, friends and even clients and gallery owners. He would always begin by drawing something very ordinary that was before him- a peach, a flower, a chestnut in its case, even a tiny almond just split open- then he would write. I feel these small studies opened Manet up to a space of reverie and deep contemplation and in that interior space he was able to write what was in his heart. This exercise allowed his creativity to manifest itself on two planes- that of a visual acuity seeking to extract meaning from what appears to be ordinary as well as provide an access to his innermost thoughts. These simple expressions of observation became a jewel he could return as a gift to those he wrote to. And the fact that many of these letters have been preserved, they were small about 5″ X 8″, shows how much they touched the readers.

So I offer my simple observations back as a gift to those who wish to see and to see again the beauty that lies before each one of us if we only take a pause to see it in its fulness. Thank you for the opportunity, for it is in those that support the arts, we artists find consolation.

The show runs from Saturday, December 10, 2011 until April 6, 2012. All work is for sale and inquiries should be through The Erpf Gallery at www.catskillcenter.org.; 1-845-586-2611. The images presented here are on display. Several images from that week at the falls are not in the show and any inquiries for further images should contact me at attentiveequations@gmail.com.

This week, I have been working on a drawing of a nest. It is no ordinary nest although it was built by a common catbird. But this catbird, I have come to know as it returns every year to my yard to raise its young. It has built a nest in the pine, the ash tree and for the last two years in my forsythia bush. This year’s nest is quite beautiful. It is roundish with an extensive array of various twigs. Some are as fine as human hair while others are rough and prickly like a pine branch. There is a beautiful arrangement of strips of bark, paper thin, curled and wispy undulating around the circumference. There are arching sticks that could not be curved by the body of the bird and they hang separate yet integrated. They caught her eye during the gathering and embellish and compliment the nest. There is even a single maple seed, held like a coveted jewel lying where she herself sat. It is a beautiful, well-crafted vessel to ride the summer breezes-a place of refuge, a home.

It is interesting to meditate on the objects one chooses to draw or paint, to look for those significances that lie in front of us. In Bachelard’s, The Poetics of Space, he describes the “living” nest, “…it is living nests…, the nest found in natural surroundings, which becomes for a moment the center- the term is no exaggeration- of an entire universe, the evidence of a cosmic situation.” (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p.94) A nest is a bird’s house. I’ve known it since I was a child. Yet, it holds something within itself that is extraordinary. As a child, I loved to discover a hidden nest, to peer inside and to see if there were any eggs and what color they were. It felt like a separate world yet one that I was intimately connected to. How can such a little thing like a bird build something that would sustain the elements, allow the young to thrive, protected and safe? When I look at my nest now, I am so careful with it. It seems so fragile. I try not to jostle it so I will not lose any of the twigs. How did this fragile home, so precarious amid the branches of the bush, survive until the fall, until the leaves revealed its placement?

“A nest, like any other image of rest and quiet, is immediately associated with the image of a simple house. When we pass from the image of the nest to the image of a house, and vice versa, it can only be in an atmosphere of simplicity.” (Ibid.p.98) In order for one to appreciate the image of a nest, one needs to have a strong feeling for a place that has acted as a home. I often think of my grandmother’s house in Philadelphia. It was a not so fancy row home in the Polish section of the city, but upon entering it I felt transported into a past that was very real. There were remnants of her Polish immigrant roots as well as photographs from the past and not so past. Late in her life she traveled much. There was one black and white photo that stood out ( she had it stuck in the glass door of the china closet),it  was taken in Egypt in front of the pyramids and my grandmother is aloft on a camel with the vastness of the desert behind her- a real dream image. As soon as I walked into this house, I felt I was at home. After my grandmother had died, I often dreamed about returning there- meeting her there. Bachelard adds, “not only do we come back to it (the home) but we dream of coming back to it, the way a bird comes back to its nest, or a lamb to a fold.” (Ibid,p.99)

The nest is such material for the imagination. Its physical properties evoke reverie and image. This is matter that is charged with significance. One unconsciously ‘relives the instinct of the bird, senses its place in the world, a cosmic unity’. The bird is so much a part of the living. Its ability to endure the hurricane, the snowfall and the frigid cold in all its fragility gives one an enduring feeling of security and comfort. “And so when we examine a nest, we place ourselves at the origin of confidence, an urge toward cosmic confidence. Would a bird build its nest if it did not have its instinct for confidence in the world?” (Ibid, p. 103)

It is important when one looks at an object, paints that object, that one reveals the depth and intimacy that resides there. It is why Van Gogh’s paintings of nests are so beautiful. He relates the nest to the many peasant cottages he painted. He wrote to his brother, Theo, “The cottage, with its thatched roof, made me think of a wren’s nest.” (Van Gogh, Letters to Theo, p.12) “For a painter, it is probably twice as interesting if, while painting a nest, he dreams of a cottage and, while painting a cottage he dreams of a nest…For the simplest image is doubled; it is itself and something else than itself.” (Bachelard, p.98) Isn’t this the real task at hand- to carefully paint what is before you while revealing in the process its deeper underlying significance?

“Man himself is mute, and it is the image that speaks. For it is obvious that the image alone can keep pace with nature.”  Boris Pasternak

oil sketch "After Delacroix"

Reading about color theory is quite a dry experience which I engage in periodically because I am always on the look out for a new approach to enhance my own understanding of painting. Most of it is so rational and system based, reflecting the 19th century academic approach, that one wonders if they have truly engaged in observation for its own sake- because it is beautiful in itself and should be the basis of one’s engagement with the world. I am not saying that there should not be a practical system, that can be taught, in order that observation as well as a scientific knowledge of color and its effect on the visual field can be translated and advanced. But “life” itself must be the goal of all engagement. As soon as this is disregarded, the work loses its efficacy and becomes dead. Hence, the predicament of academic painting in the 19th century as well as much of modern art.

But when I read the Journals of Eugene Delacroix, I am once again inspired by his vital approach to “living” and how all painting must spring from this intense engagement with life. Delacroix is the modernist that one should look to. Baudelaire hailed him as the true modernist because he was able to translate his “illimitable” experience to paint, expressing an imaginative dream- like state where his experience in the world merges with the expanse of his imagination.

Delacroix was a “keen” observer of the world around him and through that constant approach to life he finds ways to enhance and activate his work in the studio as well as his grand murals which depend on his imaginative genius.

“During a walk…I noticed some extraordinary effects. It was sunset; the chrome and lake tones were most brilliant on the side where it was light and the shadows were extraordinarily blue and cold. And in the same way, the shadows thrown by the trees, which were all yellow and directly lit by the sun’s rays, stood out against part of the grey clouds which were verging on blue. It would seem that the warmer the lighter tones, the more nature exaggerates the contrasting grey…What made this effect appear so vivid in the landscape was precisely this law of contrast. The general rule is, the greater the contrast, the more brilliant the effect.”(Journal,p.146)

This observation, where the compliment to a color emerges from a neutral tone, had not yet been thoroughly discussed by French artists. It was not until Michel-Eugene Chevreul’s essays on color that it became a part of the artist’s toolbox. Delacroix trusts his observation and transforms it into a possible effect for his own painting. His mind always set upon the emerging work.

In the Journal, Delacroix allows his imagination to flow between the sensate world and those interior movements of soul that speak on another plane. The artist is the bridge that binds those two opposing movements. “To imagine a composition is to combine elements one knows with others that spring from the inner being of the artist. Then from a well- stored memory forms are brought to an apparent reality.” (Ibid.,p.21) The artist binds together those experiences and transforms them into the vision that forms the work. “Whatever his apparent subject, it is always himself that the artist paints. Subject merely exalts his inner feeling”. (Ibid.)

Two weeks ago, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Frans Hals show. It was quite hard to call it a show since most of the paintings are regularly on display. But there were many surprises. The first negative surprise was that I thought the original “Malle Babbe” was going to be there- but on display was a “Malle Babbe” that was considered an original until the 1980′s and now is considered to be a copy. It is part of the permanent collection as well. It is still quite beautiful and one can easily imagine the virtuosity of the original. The image itself is all Hals but the brushwork lacks the fluidity that is Hals’ signature style.

In the second room there was a truly beautiful Hals called the “Fisher Girl“( from a private collection). In this painting, a girl of about 14 is outside on a beach on a cloudy day. There are dunes and flying crows in the background. She is holding a basket of fish in her left arm and a small, wet fish aloft in her right hand. She is joyous and alive, smiling and laughing. The brushwork is amazingly brief and fluid. There is no interest in recording forms as forms to be modeled but rather how these forms appear as a visual phenomena on the retina of the eye. There are so many passages, especially on the shadow side, that are slashed and zigzagged. They have nothing to do with the solidity of the form. They are true and accurate, but they speak of an accuracy that goes beyond what we “know”, that rational part of our brain, and represent instead a fluid visual experience manifesting itself on the picture plane. This picture plane mimics the image as it appears on the retina of our eye without our translating it to pure form. Hals rejects form and takes a leap of faith that these strokes are the thing itself-the only thing necessary to convey the image. And within this boundary, Hals breaks from all that is past and projects himself into the future. He is the only one of his time that goes beyond form itself into a purely visual expression of life through the paint. Rembrandt is all form- solid, hard form. Vermeer is onto the same thing as Hals but he holds back. He reconsiders the picture plane through the camera obscura but he does not entirely succumb to it as Hals does.

The mastery of Hals lies on two planes. He is a master craftsman and he is a soul penetrated with pure emotion. His portraits speak of his love for humanity whether they be children or drunkards or old men who have lost a sense of self. His humility is ever-present in his work and through this humility one sees his amazing contact with other souls. His work is a record of this. The “Fisher Girl” is so profound. Her childish joy at being in the world and being with a painter, who is socially out of her realm, who finds companionship with her is evocative. It almost supplants my favorite Hals from The Museum of Fine Art in Boston, “The Man in the kimono” where the duality and division within a man’s being is laid bare but not with a brutality of judgement but with a generosity and communion- Hals recognizes his own inherent division and the division within everyman.

But the greatest surprise at the exhibit was a painting of Robert Henri. This painting , “Dutch Girl in White“, is in the permanent collection but is never on display. I’ve been waiting 20 years to see it and there it was like a vision- Frans Hals translated in a modern idiom. It evoked the wonderful brushstrokes and fluid application of Hals but was charged with brilliant color. This color transformed what could easily have been a traditional painting into a modern masterpiece. There was the same joyousness and child-like vivacity that Hals captured, but now there was no longer a social barrier to be overcome. Henri plants himself with the “every man”- as he called them,”my people“. Henri adds to this equation his own unique craftsmanship a superior color sensitivity. He fluctuates between his love of 19th century form modelling and the fluid visual experience of paint on canvas mimicking the image as it appears on the retina of the eye. He is the most satisfied with himself when he applies the paint freely as Hals did. He remarks in his journal that he wishes to repeat that flowing quality that he achieved in “Gypsy Man with Guitar“- the inherent liveliness and freedom of stroke that Hals would approve of. But now color, so important to modern man, becomes his hallmark and leads us into another dimension- one of unspoken feeling, that Hals was not able to express fully. The challenge is how can a contemporary artist build on this in a new way.

Over the past month, I have been teaching a class on Journal Writing and Nature Drawing and in many ways it has been a new experience for me. I have been painting landscapes for almost 20 years and have spent so much time observing the land, sea and sky. They have become such a part of my interior space that I almost paint from a very intuitive part of myself allowing the landscape to so penetrate my being that there is an inherent unity between myself and the outer world. My whole sense of being merges with the visual expression being sought. But on the other hand, I have spent very little time drawing or painting smaller specific elements that exist within the landscape. I have painted numerous fields but have not studied the milkweed plant up close. I have painted many marshes and ponds but have not specifically studied the cattail plant.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been foraging for specimens for my students to study- sumac flowers, ash branches with seeds still attached, bamboo stalks, seed pods, rose hips, abandoned bird’s nests, unhatched eggs and a wooly bear caterpillar crawling on a willow branch. It has made me pay attention to this very specific time in the fall when the growing season has ended long ago – the birds are on there way south and the plants are in the process of dying back to let their seeds go before the onset of snow.

Although I have set these things up in the studio for the students to study up close, they all tell a story of their “living” quality even though they are now in a static state. I especially like the catbird nest that I found in my forsythia bush. This cat bird has returned to my yard ever since I moved to my present house. She has built may nests- one in the ash tree another in the apple and for the last 2 years in the forsythia bush. The one from this year was especially beautiful. She used the forsythia as a base, added the stems from maple leaves and finished up with some pine branches and apple leaves. Really a work of art. I can imagine her sitting aloft on such a vessel in the brisk wind. She is a metaphor for the artist who navigates the world riding upon the crafted image.

I find it important to convey this attitude of “wonder” that exists in all things. It is easy to disregard this arrangement of sticks as just another ordinary phenomena. But “awe” and “wonder” must be the attitude of the artist and “praise” his task. Without this platform in which to create, the artist cannot present the world with the “new” and “vital”. We all yearn for the good, the true and the beautiful. Art can present these things in such a way that we feel the power and grandeur of existence in an immediate way. We let go of a rational explanation of the world and embrace “being” as it is.

Already my students have said, “I didn’t know it really looked this way” and I hope they never stop really looking so one day the blinders may fall away and they may come to really “see” with vitality and present their singular vision- a healing vision for a blind world.

I love old books. There is something about their inherent history that appeals to me. So when I read about someone like Baudelaire finding a certain text compelling, I find myself searching for the original text rather than accepting a modern interpretation of someone elses reading. So recently, I went on a search for the original version of Wagner’s Prose Works: Art- Work of the Future. During Baudelaire’s time Wagner was just coming onto the Paris scene with “Tannhauser” and was in the process of defending his “new” approach to opera. This piece, Art-Work of the Future, had just come out and Baudelaire being a critic for certain Parisian publications included his reading of this piece along with, Wagner’s, The Music of the Future. These texts I found as part of the Nabu Public Domain Reprints where the book is an actual,  scanned copy of the original English translation of the manuscript. It has not been edited. I do not know if this was the version Baudelaire read, since he knew English and had translated the works of Edgar Allan Poe, or whether there was a previous French version at the time of Wagner’s, “Tannhauser” in Paris.The copy that I obtained also included markings by a previous reader from1895. This also gives me a sense of what Wagner’s contemporaries found interesting- an added layer to contemplate.

Wagner’s approach in Art-Works is very phenomenological. He takes human experience as the basis of his analysis. He defines art as such,

If Nature then, by her solidarity with Man, attains in Man her consciousness, and if Man’s life is the very activation of this consciousness- as it were a portrait in brief of Nature,- so does man’s Life itself gains understanding by means of science, which makes human life in turn an object of experience. But the activation of the consciousness attained by Science, the portrayal of the Life that it has learnt to know, the impress of this life’s Necessity and Truth, is- Art.

Art directly springs from man’s activity to know. It can take the form of science or art- art being both a scientific inquiry into the nature of things joined to a consciousness of life itself. This is the very activity that is art. Science is built on “keen”observation of the factual nature of things of which an artist, in order to represent things in nature, must have an acute awareness of. But the very pulse of Life must also be a part of his inquiry. And, in a sense, this is the main focus of the artist’s life. Shelley states in his prose piece titled,”On Life”, “Man is a being of high aspirations, looking both before and after, whose thoughts wander through eternity, disclaiming alliance with transience and decay; incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and in the past; being, not what he is, but what he has been and what he shall be… This is the character of all life and being. Each is at once the center and the circumference; the point to which all things are referred, the line in which all things are contained.” ( Percy Bysshe Shelley, “on Life”, 1880). Wonder is the very element in which the artist must exist and maintain his gaze. And in this state of wonder, from this platform, emerges through his art the very grandeur, the immensity and the profundity of existence. It is the very reason man finds art so intrinsically important.

The artist, in a sense, follows an inner natural necessity that he is compelled to acknowledge. The force of reality makes its mark. He must be true to this call and not find himself subjugated to an outward idea alone. The real guide must come from within and act as a mirror to Nature itself. Wagner states, “Man only then becomes free, when he gains the glad consciousness of his oneness with nature; so does art only then gain freedom, when she has no more to blush for her affinity with actual life…Art can only overcome her dependence upon Life through her oneness with the life of free and genuine Men.” (Art-Work of the Future, p.71)

The root of creativity, I believe, springs from two things-” keen” observation of the natural world as well as of man and secondly, taking note of what lies within oneself at all times. The artist must be an attentive observer of the natural world both of large and small phenomena- the motion of the sun in the sky, the variety of shadows, the color of light and its effect on objects, the feeling for a specific day and time as well as a turn of a leaf, the shape of a twig, the movement of a bird, the feeling expressed in a face- all are part of a larger unity of all things that one only senses when one has seriously taken note of the world in all its manifestations. This intensity of observation is one root to the tree of creativity. The other is being an observer of oneself- those thoughts, dreams and intuitions that come to us in a blast of insight as well as in a quiet whisper. One must take note of  those things that strike one in profound and subtle ways. I often think of the quote of St. Augustine in his “Confessions”, “that I might know myself in order to know You”. Only by observing oneself and those inward manifestations that produce insight is one able to be connected to one’s deeper self and, in a way, to all humanity. From this double root springs the tree of creativity that one hopes, with deep longing, will flower.

Artistic creation is the fusing of both types of observation. But how do they come together? Reverie and intuition when joined to sensory observation release, what many artist have called, the waking dream. This waking dream, this deep sense of reverie melded to our inmost feelings, produces the “creative insight”. I find that when I am in the act of painting my mind wanders in and out of my subject and puts me into a state of reverie and in this state many insights come to me- ones specific to what I’m painting presently but also those images that are seeking form and have yet to be manifested. I also receive intuitions about my work in general or my personal relationship to the world.

This waking dream not only produces the creative insight but allows “images” that are unsought for to present themselves. The Sufi masters described this waking dream as the “isthmus” to the imaginal world of images. This image appears with such force and conviction that one becomes compelled to manifest it. This inner compulsion cannot be ignored. It eats away at the artist until the work comes to fruition.

So much passes before our eyes and is lost. One cannot “hold” it and look at it keenly because we have not developed the capacity through these two forms of observation to seize it(either insight or image). Keeping a journal is a method that aides in both the inner and outer observation necessary to be a creative individual. What seems at times to be unimportant later reveals itself to be significant. It is these threads of “significances”, when joined together, that act as a map. I like to think of the artist as a cartographer mapping his own myth that is at once himself as well as a microcosm of the” soul of the world” as Carl Jung called it.

Many times, I have felt a new insight and noted it in my journal only to look back on older notes from years past and find that I had observed the same thing then. But now this idea is more developed and more closely linked to the way my painting is unfolding. It has taken on more significance. I begin to see how something that was latent within me has come to maturation in a hidden and subtle way. If I did not have a journal, I would have to rediscover the same idea over and over again- re-invent the wheel. The journal not only reveals how one sees the world and how one feels but also leaves one open to the unexpected. What appears as a passing moment or unexpected revelation, takes hold within our soul and adds to our own transformation as well as that of the world.