Creating new

...works takes up most of it's time in the creation process due to my need to just look at it. I can spend the afternoon, many noons over and over, just looking at new work.  This becomes especially true when I am working on the next phase in the evolution of my work. Sitting about ten feet away, and staring. Routinely walking away from the piece and then returning. (Something I learned to do when I was a college freshman, with a drawing of mine that looked finished. However I felt every time I glanced at it I saw that it wasn't fully realized. I propped up this drawing at the far end of the den outside my bedroom and stared at it from a distance until I understood what could be done).  If it is the day after I just started a new piece, I make a point upon my return to the studio the following day to not look at the painting until I am fully settled and situated, with a cup of coffee in hand. Then I finally allow myself to face the work and stare at it.  It is as if this new work showed up in my studio and I am seeing it again for the first time. I quiet my mind, and listen to it.
Yes. Listen.
Some of my paintings are much more talkative than others. I have a painting I did several years ago that spoke incessantly to me while I worked on it.

You, Me, God

48" x 54"

Watercolor, graphite on the backside of gessoed canvas

1998

This painting is deeply personal, and unfolded it's purpose of aligning me with myself, where I came from, love and the struggles I face, and how God reveals to me.

Some paintings don't talk to me until much later. Saving their thoughts until I am ready to listen and hear what it is they have to say. Most all of my paintings tell me their name, or title, if I ask. Putting a word in my head that frequently isn't a word I am familiar with, causing me to have to look it up in the dictionary.

Now, I'm not trying to sound all mumbo-jumbo here. Although if you know me, you understand that this is a natural part of the world I inhabit, and is part of the alchemy in my process. My goal is to impart the importance of listening, of looking, of being quiet. Quiet allows me to see something I may not have realized is there. Quiet gives me room to hear what is there if only I just listen. A painting is always like that, and I can look for hours. I must. I encourage all to allow the time to take in a painting in this way. That is why there are always wooden benches in museums placed back from paintings, so you can sit attentively and look and listen. Often I hang a particular painting near my bed so at night it is the last thing I take in. Quieting my mind to listen, opening my eyes to see so when I fall asleep I am open to my unconscious, and all the unseen worlds that my conscious eyes and ears don't connect with during the day. Plus, it gives me the opportunity to check in with a piece and see generally what I am up to. Giving me the option to go further if need be, to reflect, and then the following day when I go to my studio I have that information distilled for me when I work.

My new paintings which I am currently considering as "(The) Space Between" pieces are taking much quiet consideration. I was thinking while I was working on the current studies that I needed a reference from an artist before me, and was trying to think of who or what that was. The name Franz Kline popped into my head. Not an artist I have spent any time considering, nor can I say his work has stuck with me from anything I saw. However I am always trusting of quiet information so I googled images, and there they were. The first remark in this historical line of work (not ultimately 'the first' but first in terms of contemporary art, that reflects this direction for me...I could also site the line drawings of Van Gogh, and Picasso...but then I am not here to do research for you...just ask that you look as well), that gave me encouragement to continue. No artist in any medium works in limbo. To fail to question what came before and not recognize your place in the historical line is to deny your place alongside those that came before, and those who will stand next to you, after. So while I make a point to always work originally, I make another point to know what was done before me. Listening to what others have said too.

Study for (The) Space Between

8" x 12"

Oil, Oil Stick on Canvas

2011

The Space Between

...is where I/we all seem to be right now. So much dismantling of the land is shaping up. Tornadoes, earthquakes, floods. We have to remember we are on a ball made of rock and water held together by unseen force and floating through space defined by the lack of substance in between objects. So much and so little happen; royal weddings come and go of a privileged class by birth which are media-vomited down our throats as if they were all that mattered, terrorist leaders taking their last stand behind sandy walls, and celebrity children of celebrities selling out Radio City Music Hall on account of bad behavior.
I am reading Life by Keith Richards. He writes of the silent quiet spaces between the chords, the drums, the vocals that become interesting, beautiful.
I think it is the many dazzling facets of ones Life that become the brilliance. The facets. The flat blank spaces between the hard angled ridge in a diamond.
The space.
We are so compelled to fill our lives with constant, that the moment of pause makes one unnerved. Fidgety. Vulnerable.
Keith is right. It is the space that is beautiful. It allows you to recognize where you just came from, and gives clue as to where you may be headed.

Study for (The) Space Between 

Oil, Oil Stick on Canvas

8" x 12"

Michael Gardner