Now that I have gotten that out of the way, let me address the reason for today's entry. I have been working on a very large painting (45" x 72") which consists of a pixelated version of a woman's face in close-up. It started with a limited color palette, four colors, five if you include white, and was painted by me stamping 1/2" squares with a 3" stob of wood trim. This was never intended to be the final product, however. I planned to use the eraser end of a pencil to put a contrasting dot in the center of each square. Having experimented with this method a few times, I discovered that this allowed me to both mute and accentuate edges where colors changed.
As I proceeded, I grew bored, as I often do when engaged in repetitive tasks... (Some readers may find this difficult to believe since most of my art shows evidence of endless repetitive tasks...) and I considered what it would look like to take the cap of my eyeliner pencil, dip the open end in the acrylic paint, and paint a circle around each dot. Here are some examples of the resulting surface:
For example, have you ever been writing a poem, with say four line stanzas, and all of a sudden nothing will do but to include a five liner? What causes that? Is it for emphasis? Elaboration? I don't know that I have the answers or even if it is necessary to have answers. I once had a wise friend tell me that we as a culture tend to treat every situation as a problem with a solution when sometimes things just are.
Don't get me wrong--there is no harm in examining anything. That's pretty much what I do with my time each day.
1. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
2. Let us go then you and I when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table.
3. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me.
The following seems an apt closing for today: