A289 Anomalous Inclinations

A289 Anomalous Inclinations
20x24" oil on canvas
private collection

January 1, 2003: I draw him (Ted) reclining, looking slightly up at his chin, which shows off the classic angles of his face, and deep cleft of his chin. Ted and I had an interesting conversation the other night, about alternate universes and pathways, and I want to get some of this in the picture. I will have bands of light and pattern streaming around and through him.

January 10, 2003: I started the painting of Ted, using various combinations of Alizarin crimson, raw sienna and ochre. It is shaping up nicely, though I think I may not use the outlining of the last two paintings, rather painting the patterns in and outlining with a brush where necessary.

January 13, 2003: ...went upstairs to the studio to work on A289, and listen to The Flying Dutchman. On a whim, after painting Ted's shirt ultramarine, I drew little people with black oil, what I imagine to be events or dreams in his life. Tomorrow I will fill them in with colour, like cartoons. I also began outlining some of the patterns I had made in the background.

January 14, 2003: I had my coffee and read for a while, then got dressed and made for the studio. With more Wagner on the CD player, I worked steadily on A289, filling in patterns with colour on the shirt, and drawing more outlines. The entire painting is taking shape now. Using the traverse stick, I am making larger pattern shapes and filling them in with colour. I will paint one layer of rough patterning over the entire painting this way, then decide which areas need more detail, instead of completing all the detail in each section as I go along. As well, I am waiting to see how much outlining I want in the face.

January 19, 2003: Back at work on A289. The patterns on the shirt now seem to merge with the background patterns, but I will complete the first layer before deciding what to do. Some heavy outlines will help, and if I confine the copper to the background, it will also help redefine the areas. I will also use the copper in the background to make other patterns, so the background will have lighter details. What a patchwork our lives are, of repeating motifs and variations. What a conglomerate our lives become, of patterns we can't escape or forget, the fossil remains of bits of our lives, merging with other bits, forming our being and our burden. The background in this painting humps forward, over the shoulders of the character, who stares out of his patchwork, all the pieces of his present, into another place. His thoughts are projected out of a mass of incongruities. It seems impossible that he should be ignoring all that colour and design, but there is no doubt his mind is elsewhere.

I have always been fascinated by the mind's ability to ignore the chaos surrounding us, or to pick out a single idea out of it all. Our brains can single out a colour, a shape, a sound, or a smell in the cacophony around us, isolating it for contemplation. Or our brains, after observing an endless array of patterns and shapes, can invent a new one. We thrive on chaos. We desire complexity. We seek the thing that is different, even while we stop to admire the thing that matches or complements what we have already experienced.

And then there is our brain-talent for splicing things together, taking disparate elements, patterns we recognize or shapes that divert us, ideas that come to us, and recombining them, or simply concatenating them into new mosaics. The mind can play at this forever. The more sciences and fields of knowledge we add, the more personal experience, the more varied and complex the mosaic becomes. Ideas weave together, separating some concepts, bringing others closer together, and the tapestry continues to expand, ever rich, ever changing. It streams before our mind's eye, never quite repeating, often familiar, more often strange and disturbing.

In spite of all this chaos, we live, each of us encased in our own universe of memory and experience and information bits, and we interact with others, each also surrounded by their own chaotic universe. So much pattern, so much information noise, yet we function. In fact, if we were isolated from it all, we would starve for want of sensory and mental input. Severance from the kaleidoscope of our world would mean intellectual death, the greyness of dreams, fading afterimages and then blankness.

Strangely enough, that blankness is often sought, in certain meditative states, for example, and in writing and art, where one seeks to empty the mind of all the accumulated detritus of daily life, and find a truth, or an inspiration. If an artist doesn't do this, he keeps repeating himself. A series can quickly become iterations. Or stutters. An artist is always trying to trick himself out of his comfortable state of ritual and rewind.

January 23, 2003: A289 keeps changing, as I add more layers to the patterns. On this painting, I am working more to formula, each area having patterns detailed with its main colour, so the background patterns have copper details, and the shirt has blue details. It is a way of achieving separation without shading.

January 29, 2003: I worked for several hours on A289, which I had abandoned for a few days, letting it dry a bit before I added more patterns. The freehand brush drawing in black takes me to another place, as I add characters and events and whimsical ideas, all in black oil outline to be coloured later. The background, in stylized geometric patterns, is accented with copper oil paint, lending it a Byzantine or Moroccan air. So, the character has his life surrounding him, his background, parcelled and organized in a formal patchwork, his daily life, worn like an embroidered, fantastic shirt, and his thoughts streaming through and past him like beams or ticker tape.

January 31, 2003: I ...set to work on A289. I still wasn't happy with the separation of the character from the background, so took the bold step of placing a white line around the character, which I have been considering for several days. I had been using white to delineate various patterns in the blue shirt, also as a device for making the shirt stand out. The white outline had an immediate effect, and I continued it up into the character's hair. For a few moments, I was reminded of an Elvis impersonator in one of those embroidered costumes, or perhaps a Flamenco player. But that is life, over-embroidered, flamboyant and a bit gaudy. This character is literally wrapped up in it.

Then I spent an hour or so painting in more patterns on the shirt, a bird, golden scales, and fish leaping out of curly waves. The little motifs and characters within characters take me various places, each section a total immersion, either fanciful or vaguely familiar. I have a strong urge to continue off the canvas and onto the walls of the studio.

Anomaly Series