Tumbled Logs; The symbiosis between forest and painter; Neil Welliver

Stormfall, Tumbled Logs

 oil on panel  16" x 16"

"There is some kind of symbiosis between the forest and the person who's there."

"It's the whole business about the relationship between painting and that which you painted and what happens, and how much you impose on it and how much it imposes on you. Whether you change it or it changes you."

Neil Welliver

I don't paint scenes or scenery. Perhaps you've noticed this by the entries in the blog. I have nothing against them, as such, I just get bored easily when involved in that kind of painting. While the presence of beauty and especially, rural settings can be an enjoyable kind of nostalgia, I don't trust those yearnings or inspirations or what they tend to give me.

Every painter needs an edge or a visual problem to spur on a process and a progression in their work. A kind of unspoken reason to work. Welliver's quote here speaks directly to something I use as a spur - the flux between presence and imposition - the self and the subject. Coloring that battle is the desire to produce something that speaks to the passage of time and the presence of pictorial space. I have found that abandoning myself to the shapes and relative intensities of the subject, ignoring what they are supposed to be - resisting any sort of imitation or illustration - is the challenge and the purpose. This requires a leap of faith that whatever the result, in the end will somehow grab the poetic essence that attracted me at the outset. The inevitable disappointments must lead to the next effort!

So here is my latest effort along these lines. Enjoy!