Notes on my Creative Process

Notes on Painting [2009]

Paintings as a meditation on light:

The nature of light =  the light of Nature.

My practice is to condition my mind by immersion experiences in wild places. The observation of light and weather and natural form,

• Geo-logic/eco-logic

• Photosynthetic

• mineral

• animal

Attune to the interrelation of systems…

• First stage process: listen. Observe changing light and how form is created by it. Travel into secluded and wilderness locations if possible to completely immerse the observer.

• Next stage process: distill forms from these experiences.

• Develop vocabulary of forms/marks/shapes and applications.

• Next stage process: combine and recombine forms according to chance and aesthetic sense.

• Next stage process: experiment with intuition + chance + material nature

• Next stage process; experiment with human scale.

• Next stage process: experiment with materials, natural and synthetic

Combine in forms that evoke nature and seek to understand nature.

Final Stage: Throw all that away. Relax the mind.

Possess No-mind.

Feel only what wishes to come through you. Unhook the mind from its cart of thoughts and feel the universe moving through and within you.

There is a flow, veins of energies and material gestures that run throughout the earth. The forms repeat and are undeniable in their strength. They can run right up your spine and out your brush or pen.

For, the analytic process in studying nature thus conditions and invites the creative, synthetic process of improvisation and play in the mind. First we must know in order that we might love, and then out of love comes relatedness, and out of this comes co-creation.

The mind can become progressively unfettered through deep study and observation of the inherent creative processes of the universe and organizing patterns observed throughout. One can only really find meaning or significance in a thing to the degree that one attunes and harmonizes one’s consciousness with it.

This in turn can lead to the recognition that true human nature and Nature itself are the same. A-HA! When this is recognized, then the mind can partake in all the creative processes at work in the natural world.  There is no mistake. There is no accident. It is all working in process and flow.

This is the allure of painting and drawing for me, for it allows a full, plastic expression of that understanding.