Close Call Painting

( 大器晚成 Tao 41) My paintings are events of paint, no meaning on an intellectual plain, nothing to “understand.” Worth looking at as one might look at a cut diamond, or polished turquoise. One looks for the occurrence of various kinds of junctures made up of colors, shapes, and line, within the painting. I want my painting to be interesting for a long period of time. Hence, the complexity of edge. I come back to these paintings and see painterly events I had not noticed before. A kind of play. Figure ground ambiguity is a major vehicle for me, to paint a kind of visual confusion. A way to shift - ever so slightly - ones paradigm. This newness, this exotic, is what I want to find in my painting. Therefore, I must paint far beyond my preconception, and hence the Abstract Expressionist accidents, the drip, the almost uncontrolled brush, the strokes, etc. found mostly in the first coat. Edge is fruitful. There one can see into the first coat, the under painting, action painting. Art is a mechanism of civilization used to replace certain ecstatic primal experiences that language has dysfunctioned. Painting is an aperture to the here and now. “There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.” Helen Frankenthaler. ”The purpose of art is the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." - Glenn Gould. "An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible." - Robert Henri "Art is the essence of awareness." - Louise Nevelson. "When you express your truth, you fall directly into your purpose." Vicki Howie "All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness." Eckhart Tolle.