Occult

Striving to create new work is a lifelong goal. After all the work that has been created and produced I wonder, "is there anything left to do?" I know, I know... like I said here in the beginning, "not been said by you though, George." However the desire to create something that opens a new vision, a new idea, is so compelling that it is always at the back of my mind when I work. All that comes is from what I have seen before, just distilled and computed by my creative self into a new series...and then through that it is new in that it came from me, directly, honestly, compelled by a force in me that strives to make something that hasn't been made before.
There are those accidents that spill out. Like Kate Bush sings in An Architect's Dream:

Watching the painter painting

And all the time, the light is changing

And he keeps painting

That bit there, it was an accident

But he's so pleased

It's the best mistake, he could make

And it's my favorite piece

It's just great

Kate has a new work coming out, I am listening to it on KCRW a free preview:

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/ap/ap111114kate_bush_50_words_f

It is different, a new expanse for Kate. It must not have been easy, knowing her music as well as I think I do. The tonality of the chords, the harmonics of the voices, the etherial lyrics. More light and opaque than usual. Inspiring to listen to an artist who continues to push her own envelopes like that. I listen to music constantly when I work, Kate being one that I've mentioned before who takes up much speaker time in my studio. It is like a drug to me, enabling me to escape into my own depths so I can work. Undistracted, hiding from the rest of the world in my studio. 

Why does the painter paint? Why work to make new art? I wonder that as I am at it. Unable to stop if I wanted to, but not an addiction, an extension of how I came into this world and what I desire to do. Even if that desire is coded and screened from my conscious mind. I do link to my unconscious, my superconscious, seeking from where the work comes. My job is to bring it out. Not quite sure why.

My new works are coming from this place. New works that started out as leftovers, accidents and spills. I had a few of these from over the years that I kept. One of them I put on a wall in my office and I have an understanding of now that previously was only a hint. I have always liked it, wondered about its significance. It is abstract and yet is very much a picture as the picture that it creates in the mind. Well...I don't want to over analyze now what I will be showing later. I think of what is hidden behind the screen, what the opaqueness remains, and that is what these works are. Occult.

On another note, but in the same vein, it feels like 1987, 88, 89 to me...those were years shortly after the huge New Age convergance that swept the country, and the world really. Books referenced in The Occult section took up more and more shelves in the Barnes and Nobles. Shirley MacLaine, Whitley Streiber, Ramtha...they occupied my imagination, took ahold of my fear and eventually set me free. 

More on that in a later post, but for now it works with the new works I am working on and is part of the inspiration for why now is the right time for these new paintings. 

Study for Occult

Watercolor on Paper

5" x 7"

2005-