Happy summer, art lovers!
I just completed this new intuitive abstract piece that I titled "Poppies". She's 20"H x 16"W, acrylic on wood panel. I'll be applying her to an upcoming juried show at the San Diego Watercolor Society today, so wish me luck! (She’ll be available in my online store after the show.)
When I talk about painting an "intuitive" piece, this means I have literally no idea of what will come out of that painting session. There's no preselected subject. I start by sitting still and tuning in to what I'm feeling, maybe not in that very second, but I focus on the deeper currents of my last few weeks.
I select a color palette that feels right for those emotions. Then I sit down, shut off my brain, and just let the magic happen. Sometimes I'll sit and paint like this for 6 hours without a break.
Sometimes that coalesces into something meaningful; just as often it doesn't. But as long as I keep my left brain shut off and my emotions wide open, it can be astounding what comes through sometimes.
Yesterday as I looked at this new "Poppies" piece, I wondered about the sharp white line at the top right. I added that because it felt right to add it. There was no conscious decision about what I was adding.
I'm dipping my hands down into the ether, into the collective unconscious, taking whatever I find and adding it into my paintings, whether I understand it or not. My neurodivergent brain thinks in pictures, and often during deep conversations it can take time for me to translate the pictures that I see in my head into human words that I can share with others.
So afterwards, I'll often look at a piece like this and wonder what each element means. In this case, I was fascinated by that white line.
After contemplating this, I finally understand what's coming through, and it deals with dimensionality... higher dimensions and lower dimensions.
This is a subject I think about often... the idea that higher dimensions can see down into lower dimensions, but not the other way around.
The book "Flatland" explores this concept. If you were to encounter a truly 2-dimensional space that consisted only of width and height, no depth, then you could look down into that space and see it clearly, but any inhabitants of that plane would have no idea that you even exist, because there is no "up" for them.
So higher-dimensional beings could easily be all around us and we would never even know that they're there, even though they could see us quite clearly. What appears like the most empty stretch of space to us could be teeming with higher-dimensional life, and we would have no idea.
That concept seems to be coming through in some of my paintings, so I wanted to explore that a little more.
As I meditated on that white line in the "Poppies" piece, I came to understand that it represents a higher-dimensional being. It's positioned above the other elements in the piece to symbolize the higher dimensionality. It's both observing and influencing the red shapes, which are local to a lower dimension. The word that filtered through to describe this being was "overseer".
I've been painting for a little over 2 years now, and I'm starting to notice some through lines in my work.
One of these is this "overseer" concept. Below are some other paintings where the overseer has come through, in various forms.
In the piece "Hinterlands", 11 ghostly white shapes float above a haunting scene. I believe that these shapes are another form of the overseer, floating above a lower-dimensional scene. Also notice that large black sphere above even the 11… an even higher-dimensional being.
The same 11 ghostly white shapes (which I refer to simply as "the eleven") first showed up in this painting "Primera Sangre". I still remember feeling all the hair on my neck stand up after they appeared in this piece.
The overseer / higher dimension aspect shows up as a glowing white portal in this piece that I titled "Welcome Back".
And dimensionality appeared in my piece titled "Event Horizon / Der Engel", which depicts an energetic entity (angel or “Engel” in German) crossing a dimensional boundary.
I love that I'm starting to see through lines like this in my work. I'll continue to look for more as I go deeper into my work.
I hope you have a beautiful, creative weekend and week ahead!
James
I love this new piece so much! Thank you for sharing your process. <3