When I thought about making art the other day, the word “transcendence” came to me. But then I realized that word can be judged in a much too narrow way. As mystical perhaps. And then it occurred to me, the word “mystery” would suffice.
As part of what I , as an artist, am both responding to and searching for.
These mysteries, these questions about life are all around us. And each unique life has its own mysteries that perhaps transcend the concrete, condition-driven world.
Momentum is the other word that came to me. The movement that begins and carries on.
The jet as it crosses the sky. The tree as it falls. The sweep of wind that trembles the flowers.
Subsiding and then gathering speed, momentum.
How to capture momentum in a still image?
The wide open feeling of running next to the ocean as the waves, in their own momentum, move towards shore. What is that thrill?
When the wind takes off and moves objects in my world, in my path.
I’m thrilled by the wind. Inspired by the gentle sway or the full force gale.
And here I am a painter so in a way I’m always stopping movement! I want to fill my stationary observation to remember movement. For the viewer to know the movement that takes them to this moment and then moves them away.
What came before? What comes after? Movement and time in painting.