My hiatus from writing has been influenced by the mad rush to complete works for the upcoming December show at the Margaret Harwell Museum in Missouri. While I should be busy stretching paintings from the pile of completed canvases on the corner studio shelf, instead I find myself working to create from those final surges of mad energy often associated with works of greater dimension.
Currently, I have two large (3’x7’) oil map-paintings stretched and drying. Its never a question of what to paint, just one of where to put them whilst they dry and I carve out a new one. I’ve returned to oils with these last two works and I find myself swimming in the continuous inhalation of mineral spirits I temporarily abandoned. Maybe its related to the process of marking, tracing and manipulating the movement of space across a composition that forces the frantic desire to continue my painting narratives. I build these make-shift stretched canvas structures as quickly as possible so that I can lay my hands down and allow the rotation of my arms to overtake their sockets and my perception of depth. Painting with one’s entire body is a sensation unmatched by anything constructed outside the natural world. A computer mouse and Photoshop have nothing on a jar of the purest thinned paint and two fists of Chinese brushes, brayers and sticks.
Once the work is dry, I re-stretch over heavy-duty kiln-dried stretcher strips, exhibiting with wrap-around painted sides and deliver unto the outstretched paths of the world… allowing me to forget them and love another. - DN
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