Hours spent hovering over a painting; once tender and nurturing strokes turn to movements of apprehension and fear. The surface has become a no man’s land where my direction is lost.
At this stage, paint becomes infuriating like a philandering man. The surface seems to unravel before the eye. It and I are at a standstill. How to proceed? Naturally, I move on to one of the dozen or so surfaces on the go, carrying forward something of the predecessor.
What goes on in my mind when engaged in painting?
That’s a dangerous question.
In the front end, I’m focused on the aesthetic and technical aspects. In the back end, it’s a dense forest. The effects of globalization, the quality of food and the resultant crop in life expectancy for the upcoming generation of children, the razor’s edge of hope and despair, just to name some.
The complexity of thought and inner ramblings imbue the body of the paint. James Elkins, in What Painting Is, describes this transference best: paint becomes ‘a fine tuned antenna, reacting to every unnoticed movement of the painter’s hand, fixing the faintest shadow of a thought in colour and texture.’
This is paint as liquid thought.