Untitled ("Nothing is separate and nothing is missing")

Untitled, 2007
Ink on paper

I'm just getting comfortable with the idea that I am making abstract drawings. I'm also very excited that my studio time and my blogging time are weaving together. I am learning, and being pushed to question my own intentions because of this medium. I would like to pull up a comment from the last post and fold it onto the surface. Geoffrey is starting to convince me that, with these drawings, to title them, would be a mistake: "This is process work however, not conceptual (to make clear my point from earlier, chris) and therefor needs no title. You (any artist doing this) are investigating something by following it by riding perhaps even the strongest intuition towards "something" that you are overcome with and have to follow. With a concept... you do the leading (and continue to learn). The process work informs the conceptual hopefully. "

I get it. I have been rattling the reference to Rorschach around in my gray matter and recognize that my paintings from 2003 enter into a this category.I took squares of stone, like the one above called One Finger Over, and rotated them in my hand until an image screamed out. Then, I would rotate it again, just to make sure that I was pulling out the obvious image. The unforced image. The best paintings, in my mind were the ones that I painted the least. Some freak me out still. What is the value of me dipping into my sub-conscious? I can't really say that there is any, for anyone other than me. In fact, we've had over a century of discussion about this new thing called the sub-conscious and we are not better people because of it.

I would see things in the stone. It is an ancient Chinese secret, and a da Vinci device too. It is all documented in Hubert Damisch's A Theory of /Cloud/ TOWARD A HISTORY OF PAINTING which I touched on in a post in December of 2005. But seeing things is different from me doing the leading, as Geoffrey says. With last night's drawings, there was nothing to see. The paper is white. A drip enters the field and meaning blossoms as tendrils extend and capillaries trace out an animation for my mind.


I begin to see some law of nature transpiring that reminds me of how society works. I try to amplify or magnify the law. Often times these drawings are about the meeting of two opposing laws of nature and their resulting harmonic balance.


I think I do come to these drawings with some pretty clear intentions. I'm hoping however, that I can't articulate them for awhile because I'm really enjoying the drawing for now.