P287 Growth

P287 Growth
18x24" oil on canvas
$400.00

March 26, 2002: I moved on to the other oil, P287, and filled it with black outline patterns, after painting a face in the middle. It had occurred to me that it was very much like page one of my illustrated poem; the face looks like it is appearing out of heaps of blankets, or sedimentary deposits full of fossil remains and striations.

May 25, 2002: I worked on P287, growth anomaly, using a permanent marker to make some lines and dots, everything streaming in and out of the central visage.

January 10, 2003: I took down the even more annoying Growth, P287, and determined to finish it. There is certainly something compelling about it, and I need time to think about the new sketch that Ted posed for. I want vectors running around and through him, but don't know whether they should be patterned. And should I continue with the outlining? The bands running through the sketch lead me in many directions, as I intended. Perhaps they should have unexpected patterns or textures.

January 22, 2003: After breakfast and reading some history of the Incas, I cleaned up the kitchen, and went up to the studio. Leaving A289 to dry for the day, I picked up work again on A287, Growth, drawing and filling in patterns in various colours.

The face in this painting, actually a visage, is flat and graphic, a contrast to the realistic face in A289, but it has much the same feeling of thoughtfulness and meditation, of the myriad symbols and varying motifs of our thinking, and of the outside data that intrudes its own patterns. I always listen to music while I am painting and writing...Mahler and Wagner's Ring Cycle for most of this series...and the music definitely weaves itself into my work, just as what I write appears in my paintings, and what I paint become words in my journal. But there are other outside bits of information, some interesting or a pleasant surprise, such as the song of a bird outside the studio, or the cracking of ice in the lake. And other input that is intrusive, such as the phone ringing, someone distracting me with useless talk, or worse, someone at the door. While I am painting or writing, I am definitely anti-social.

But the best part, as my characters seem to verify, is making sense of all the motifs, fitting them together into your own, new pattern. We are all experts in recombinant theory, blithely stitching together the disparate elements of our daily lives to form a mad quilt, our carapace and our comfort.

I finished A287, surprising myself when I suddenly arrived at the group of patterns I had begun with. A sort of Möbius...I was quite comfortable with it flipped upside down, and disconcerted when I arrived back at the bottom.

Paleozoic Series