Summertime Paintings 2015
Years ago I got into a kind of creative flow that went like this: winter was when I worked on large, detailed paintings while summer was for getting out and doing things and events and traveling and the like. I found myself painting and sort of hibernating during many winters because life feels quieter and more internal. It’s helpful for allowing my mind and body to settle, focusing on the finer details of my work. Come summer – when life bursts with exuberant busy-ness, I’d pick up and go out and share and be more social. During those summer months, I often plan out a course of paintings to work through the winter – a general game plan, if you will – a setlist of paintings – and return to the studio.
It’s like a moebius strip where I would go far enough inwards in one direction that I’d eventually circle back in the opposite direction… and then far enough out in the other direction, and so on. Back and forth, round and round.
Things flowed differently this summer. Violet was deep in the final throes of grad school and her dissertation which meant fewer events (if any) for us because it was better having me around so I could help out, make tea, etc. I also somehow ended up with several large canvases and a good chunk of time by myself while Violet was away for a few weeks mid-July.
One of the tacts I took was maintainining that exuberant summer flow. SoCal is hot and sunny and wide open in the summer. I wanted to work with that and translate some of it onto the canvas.
I’d also just finished The Crucible of Love sometime in May. It was a monstrously beautiful painting to work on. The level of detail, the quality of light, the movement – I was very happy with it but it was deeply challenging as well, as love can be. Upon completion, sitting back from it I felt like ‘Phew! Love! What a ride!’
“Big Sky Mind: Where Do We Go From Here?”
36″ x 60″ | Acylic/Canvas
After the fine precision of The Crucible of Love, the painting I’d worked on all last winter, I wanted big brush strokes and broad expanses. I also liked the crystalline structures at the top of that painting, feeling like they extended on into the heavens. I wanted to paint that part: the light cascading and refracting through the crystalline and clear Big Sky Mind. It felt like an appropriate next step and at 60″ x 36″ was big enough to let my hand fly free for a while.
“Molting”
30″ x 40″ | Acrylic/Canvas
{ Prints }
Dropping down into fierce emotional movement, ‘Molting’ stemmed from a flash of an idea I’d had the previous fall in the midst of personal transitions. It’s a visceral piece that careens out of the big blue skies with a momentum that eventually finds ground and precision within its own unfolding.
“Lightning on a Summer Cloud”
48″ x 36″ | Acylic/Canvas
This is a breath of fresh air – like the crystalline core after the just shed skin. I was invited to paint during the Dalai Lama’s 80th Birthday event at The Honda Center in Anaheim. I wanted to paint something that breathed beauty and openness. The name, “Lightning on a Summer Cloud,” is drawn from a line in the final stanza of “The Diamond Sutra”.
“Samsara”
60″ x 36″ | Acrylic/Canvas
{ Prints }
I returned to my sketchbook and said, “Whatever I draw right now I’ll paint.” I made a very rudimentary sketch, painted a 60″ x 36″ canvas black, and, with a very focused edge, started laying down the beginnings of this piece.
I worked on it throughout July and August while Violet worked on her dissertation. If you’ve ever been with someone getting a PhD you know it can be a slog. It just goes on and on with little sleep, a lot of questioning of purpose, and seemingly endless amounts of writing. I spent a lot of time making beverages, taking care of things, being a listening ear, and painting. And the more I worked on this painting, the more I meditated on the wheel of life and death and time and space, the more I realized what it was – and what it is – Samsara.
“Promise”
24″ x 18″
A gift for my brother and my new sister-in-law on the event of their marriage last summer.
“Self & Other”
18″ x 22″ | Acrylic/Canvas
A thought form given life from a small sketch, an exercise in stylistic choices and deceptively simple motifs. Self, Other – we are all the same stuff and we try to wrap the Other into a neat box but it refuses it and even our boxes are transient.
“Ascent of You”
18″ x 18″ | Acrylic/Canvas
On a flight home from Hawaii last summer, I sketched a few quick lines that turned into this painting. I began work on it last fall and has sat in my studio since then, getting taken down now and again to be worked on, and I finished it this summer in the midst of the others – and the abundant blossoming that is summer.