pearls

June 24, 2009 | Filed Under Art | Leave a Comment

pearl, 40″ x 60″ monoprint on panel, June 2009

This painting was created for the Ironton group show that opens July 3rd. The exhibit is titled ‘decade’ to reflect the 10th anniversary of the gallery and studios. I had given the 13 Ironton artists the title and encouraged them to consider using it as a starting point for the work. Goofy, I know, but I thought it might make for a way to have some cohesion. Group shows can be schizophrenic, especially here where our strength as a diverse community can be our undoing in a gallery situation- with woodworkers next to painters next to metal guys next to stone sculptors, etc.

My starting place was ‘diamond’, the traditional gift of tenth anniversaries. A monk I’ve heard teach several times, Ven. Jian Hu, describes the idea of emptiness with the example of a diamond being tossed into a forest. With the large stone resting there among the sticks and stones, a bird lands and pays the cut stone no attention choosing instead a twig, illustrating that this object has only the value we have given it, it has no intrinsic value. I think about this idea often and love the concrete image for something so difficult to understand.

To begin I cut and printed 40 woodblock-type plates using polyprint (considerably easier to cut) to construct a Lichtenberg Figure like pattern. This represented the diamond to me. The panel is 40″ x 60″ made up of plates measuring 8″ x 10″ each printed sequentially. The all-over pattern printed in black was ultimately disappointing, too much like wallpaper and too dense. I reprinted all of the 40 plates in a muddy green/blue and that was worse; it looked like a Jimmy Buffet inspired underwater mess. Hours and weeks into the painting I couldn’t make it work and was at a dead end.

Watching a performance of Laurie Anderson helped me resolve this painting. During the evening, sitting in the dark listening to stories and music and mood I was familiar with, I wasn’t consciously trying to problem solve but by the end of the night I knew how to proceed with the painting. Though there were passages that were interesting I knew I couldn’t paint around what was working so the following Monday I ‘washed’ the water based printing ink off the whole panel. What was left was a lovely ghost image of the original black print. The bird was able to find it’s way into the painting, from the original idea of the bird in the forest with the diamond. The diamond becomes a pearl and the coral-like shapes I had cut intending a forest now were able to make some sense. The passage from Shakespeare’s Ariel song that Laurie Anderson puts to to beautiful use in ‘Blue Lagoon’ proved to be the key to the painting:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

mundane fact: This represents the first time that I have used a color other than black for the line. yikes.