Seven See-Through Stones

Enamel on heavy gesso-coated paper, 61.5" x 72"
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Predicament

Enamel on heavy gesso-coated paper, 71" x 59"
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The Color of the World

Enamel on heavy, gesso-coated paper, 61.5" x 72"
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It's always an open-ended journey with these paintings. This trip took me to a land of rich, deeply saturated color.

Celilo

Enamel on heavy, gesso-coated paper, 60" x 68"
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In 1981, artist Bill Viola made a videotape he called “Hatsu Yume (First Dream)”. In it there is a sequence where a fixed camera views a rock on a mountainside for a long period of time. People move around the rock, at first 20 times normal speed, then gradually slow to normal, then slow-motion. Here’s what Viola says about it:

“...What I look at in that scene is the rock, not so much the people. I thought it would be interesting to show a rock in slow motion. All that is really happening is that the rock’s time, it’s rate of change, exceeds the sampling rate (the recording time of the video), whereas the people are within that range. So the rock just sits there, high speed, slow speed...it doesn’t matter. I think about time in that way. There are windows or wavelengths of perception. They are simultaneous and interwoven at any one moment, but we are tuned only to a certain frequency range. This is directly related to scale changes in space or sound, proportion in architecture or music. A fly lives for a week or two, and a rock exists for thousands or millions of years."

Fly By

Enamel on heavy, gesso-coated paper, 60" x 72"
$6300. Free shipping in U.S.
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For check payment or other arrangements, email don@dailyartwest.com

Work in the studio continues on these large paintings in my stone series. I love the creative freedom this type of work affords me. The process is almost diametrically opposed to the controlled, goal-oriented approach of my realist paintings. I begin without a goal in mind, just applying paint very freely and intuitively with large house painting brushes. Instead of imposing an image, I try to discover one by developing an ongoing dialogue with the painting, letting it tell me what it wants to become.

At some point the shapes of the stones suggest themselves in the marks I've made, and I begin to more or less define the forms. The rock forms give me a malleable structure for the paintings that provides an anchor, or focus for the paint. I'm happiest when the final result is a balance of representational and abstract.

Many changes occur. Traces of previous colors and shapes show through succeeding layers of paint in the search for something that feels resolved. In the painting--as in life--yesterdays affect tomorrows.

So much of the impact of an original painting, especially if it is large, is lost in reproduction. I'm including this studio shot to give a sense of scale.

New in the Studio

Bluff
Enamel on gessoed paper, 59" x 68"
$6000.  Free shipping in U.S.
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Things Go Either Way
Enamel on gessoed paper, 59" x 68"
$6000.  Free shipping in U.S.
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Blue Fog

Acrylic on board, 49" x 54"
$5000 plus $75 shipping in U.S.
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I recently changed the proportions of this painting from the Stone series and did a little more work on it, so here's the current version. 

Four Stones (Higher Ground)

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Four Stones (Higher Ground)

Oil on board, 4 panels, each panel 23" x 23", 2009

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Four Stones (Higher Ground) Studio view

Detail, Four Stones (Higher Ground)

Oil on board, 23" x 23"

Detail, Four Stones (Higher Ground)

Oil on board, 23" x 23"

Detail, Four Stones (Higher Ground)
Oil on board, 23" x 23"

Nine Stones

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Nine Stones (Progression 1)

Oil on board, 2 panels, each panel 23" x 23", 2009

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Nine Stones (Progression 2)

Oil on board, 3 panels, each panel 23" x 23", 2009

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Nine Stones (Progression 3)

Oil on board, 4 panels, each panel 23" x 23"

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Nine Stones (detail from Progression 1)

Oil on board, 23" x 23"



Nine Stones (detail from Progression 2)

Oil on board, 23" x 23"

Nine Stones (detail from Progression 3)

Oil on board, 23" x 23"



Nine Stones (detail from Progression 3)
Oil on board, 23" x 23"

This series is intended as a single work, composed of  nine separate panels.  They are displayed in three groupings, or "progressions", with 11" spacing between panels.

The piece had a pretty prosaic beginning. It grew out of my becoming aware of boulders that had been placed around the edge of a small gravel parking lot out at Ladd Marsh, near my home. Their repetition and regular spacing appealed to me--I had done paintings in the past using multiple panels and repeated images.  Their visual narratives always seemed to me to be reflections on the nature of time and states of change.

I got to thinking about these common rocks, and how uncommon they really are. Native American and other indigenous peoples around the world think of the entire earth as a living organism, while the history of our modern culture has been one of separating humans from nature. It occurred to me that the only reason we think of a rock as inanimate is because its lifespan is unimaginably longer than our own. Suddenly I could sense the "life" in these stones, as a vital part of the living earth.

In the paintings, it seemed important to stay true to their individual shapes--after all, these are "portraits." It may seem silly, but it's even important to me that they are displayed in the order I've placed them, which is their actual relationship at the Marsh. But I've tried to paint them in a way that is less literal, in hopes of expressing the living energy I sense in them. My hope was to somehow ground them in observed reality, while at the same time implying a larger reality beyond our comprehension.