Painting
“I Read Blake and Feel the Spirit”
Of all the paintings and poetry I have ever examined, Blake’s have by far the highest Life Energy, because of his devotion to the realm of the Spirit. As Catherine, his wife, said of him: “I have very little of Mr. Blake’s company; for he is always in Paradise.”
He was an emissary of the Spirit World.
Read More » “Why Did I Paint That?”
“There are reasons of the heart of which Reason knows nothing.”
— Pascal
Why did I paint just that, just there, just then? I don’t know. (And the less representational a painting is, the less superficial the explanation for it.)
There are reasons of the Soul of which my mind knows nothing.
Read More » “Jackson Pollock Dances”
You might think that Jackson Pollock’s movements when flinging the paint would be awkward – even violent. But look at the films of him in action: he’s dancing! There is rhythm and flow; there is grace.
My canvas is much, much smaller – no room for my body to dance – but when I look at it, my hand always is.
Read More » “Every Painting Is Alive!”
Yes, I am pantheistic. Everything is Spirit – is its own unique individual manifestation of The Spirit. Everything is Alive! And the more we Know this Truth, the stronger can be our relationship with It.
Every painting is Alive! Every painting projects, emanates, This into the space before it, into us in that space.
Read More » “Now I’m Painting as a Child Again”
“The reason we find nothing to dislike in the drawings made by children is that in them the inherent nature of man finds expression without being thwarted or frustrated.”* That is to say, they are free to express their Muse, their Souls unrestrained.
But then, “The moment children become self-conscious, their pictures degenerate.”
Read More » “An Homage to the Dot”
Very many of my paintings contain a dot. Some more than one, but usually just the one – the One.
The dot always comes first, placing itself seemingly as it desires. (Sometimes that’s all I do. It resonates by itself on the otherwise all-white expanse of canvas.) It is the dot that inspires all the painting to follow.
Read More » “Three Chinese Gongshi”
In the room where I paint there are three Chinese gongshi, scholars’ rocks, as a tribute and a remembrance to my Chinese painting guides, members of the literati, the scholar-painters. It is as if I am triangulated by the Energy emanating from the rocks, from them as the rocks.
When I was in Japan, I searched for the equivalent of a Japanese scholar’s rock and found in a junkstore in Kyoto a cut-off section of an old tree root.
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