This isn’t about me having fun driving off-road in a big truck. But the 4×4 grids you see are a bit of a departure from my usual roads. For starters, they involve some tools I’m normally a bit suspicious of — arithmetic, the English system of measurement, long rulers and straight lines.
The paintings started out with the organic layer that is really just about playing with colour, celebrating my palette, and trying not to think too much beyond that. That step is mostly abstract, but if objects drift in — hearts or trees — I let them. If you are meditating and a thought drifts in, you don’t let it bother you. You give it a little space and go back to breathing.
I chose the grid size afterward so what you can see through the windows is a matter of random chance. My man Cloudy doesn’t believe me entirely. He thinks I could probably eyeball where the windows would line up, and so this influenced the outcome, consciously or not. Nevermind, that’s just how Cloudy thinks.
As you may know from following this blog, I have this tug-of-war between abstraction and representation. When I try to do one, the other creeps in. In this round of paintings, the two seem to get along just fine. I think it is time to declare the war over. Why now? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because I chanced to hear Ram Dass today, or because I didn’t fall down in pigeon pose at yoga this morning.
There is joy in randomness and also in trying to hold a pose.
