Monday, December 16, 2013

Stump #8


Stump #8
  oil on canvas  22" x 28"

"There is a time in life when you just take a walk.
And you walk into your own landscape."
Willem De Kooning

There is a great feeling when one simply paints and finds answers to the puzzle as that process unfolds - a feeling of freedom and 'absorbedness' - being lost in one's own landscape. Why a stump? I couldn't exactly say except that the color, the texture, the way each one relates to its surroundings, even as it disintegrates into the surroundings, all are attractive to me. These aspects allow me try to conjoin abstract action to concrete subject - emphasizing what I love about oil paint - its viscous, almost clay-like quality.
Now I will go and find another stump - or some other combination of visual effects and poetry - as I walk into my own landscape.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

December Oak, Robert Frost, Andrew Wyeth, Dean Taylor Drewyer


December Oak
  oil on canvas  12" x 16"  

"Like ice on a hot stove, a poem must ride it's own melting."
Robert Frost

"Time is holding it's breath for an instant and for an eternity. 
That is what I'm after."
Andrew Wyeth

One could substitute 'a painting' for 'a poem' here and not be far off the mark. Frost knew the fleeting sense of a moment passing by and the difficulty of staying withing the idea sparking the original act, of orchestrating all the tools at hand in one direction. The constant battle is to enter into the moment, remain focused on the original expressive intent, and discover time-less imagery as if by accident. 
No small task but one that seems hypnotic in its persistent attraction.

I am never far from these fields,
buried as they are in my deep.
Their wind sounds find me
encased in my dreams, lost
in the darkest night's shadow,
slant light running loose in my sleeping eyes.