on the inspiration to paint
one of the reasons why i do abstract art, i think, is because it allows a deeper expression of my personal feeling that i may not otherwise get. this latest painting is no exception.
i was encouraged this week by a wonderful artist, pilar jimenez who I am showing with (among many other wonderful artists), next weekend at American University. Last tuesday a pre-gala reception was held for the artists to meet each other and get networked at the wine and food restauraunt, Adega in Silver Spring—which is also the place that I first met Luis Scotti. But Pilar and I really hit it off well—we're both abstract painters, so we had a lot to talk about.
one of the things pilar emphasized to me was honesty. if nothing else, abstract painting is about the honesty of emotion. if you are not honest with yourself—which also requires humility—then you're doomed to create kitsche and cheesy art.
i suppose it was more the presence of a fellow artist—and one who is elder and much more experienced—that became something of a close kinship very quickly that i'll treasure most, even more than any advice or opportunities i may get through a networked connection. for me, friendship is pinnacle—and i think that is the case because it attends to the human heart, just like painting. but where painting is an outgrowth of expression, friendship is the genesis of it—and, to at least an extent all of life. where would we be without relationships? these relationships conceived of and maintained in love are the ones that harbor emanating spirit—an aesthetic memory, so to speak, of beauty—but an open ended beauty; a beauty that is growing, moving, and yet undetermined. this is why i call these things eschatological. they never fully reveal their total being, their total essence, until a moment that i think is constantly deferred, yet prophesied and coming (the messianic age).
i'm not much for theosophy. but i am for theology—and i am also for life. i have to remember that life is always the first event—the first cause, so to speak, and the cause to which all other causes must buttress. even in terms of christianity, perhaps it is our duty as followers of the nazarene to provoke life where there is death? to plant seeds of friendship—of philos, but wrapped up in the infinite love of agape. we can not do this by any theology, theosophy, or philosophy. we only do it, and can do it, because we were first loved.
so if painting is to be an outgrowth of me, and a constructive activity (yet deconstructive, constantly renewing and rejuvenating itself by refusing its own narcissistic image), then it is one that is built of honest. if Christ is right, and I have yet remained in him, there is a shard of his first love that loved, that dying love and impossible possibility, that inspires me to paint. it is love, not concept, that moves the hand to stroke. it is life, not mind, that creates more life, and also re-life-ifies it, pouring water over old wounds and letting scar tissue become the fertile dirt of new realities.
honesty. love, honesty, and humility.
things to meditate on.