Re-vision

A Memory I Recognize, As Though We Had Been Children Together

Titled from a line in the poem The Pond by Louise Gluck

“When painters feel the need to make a shift toward self-discovery, they turn to black and white for a time.” An unverifiable quote from Barnett Newman.

It is impossible to justify everything by the logical. Andre Breton wrote about the sublime point (le point sublime) with which some part of the human mind communicates directly. The key to our mental prisons, a device for liberating thought, is the free play of analogies. In the case of automatic writing, it is the word that is "found" and a voice is given to objective chance. The find, whether object or word, represents communication between the mind and the world.

The changes for this painting actually came to me in when I was involved in some routine blah, blah, blah…but I knew I wasn’t satisfied with this piece for months (it was part of G2packet 4). It had been sitting on a shelf in my living room—where I don’t live much these days—passing it by on way in and out of the house. All of the painting antagonized me: ground color, the metallic red wire, the rusted concept…I took the spray paint to it- all matte finishes, no shine, I needed it to be more absorbent of light, physically. I wanted it to be more powerfully graphic.

My first intent was to spray it completely white. I stopped here to live with it and see what happens. There’s a process of listening to the paintings. I know when to stop if I can acknowledge its identity, its “wholeness”, its ability of converging meaning in ways I find interesting.