The Metaphysics of Painting

Vibration, oil on canvas, 30x30 inches, © 2009 Diane McGregor

I am an abstract oil painter who creates ethereal, inner landscapes. My current body of work is a meditation on the light, colors, and textures of the American Southwest. I apply the paint as a repetitive, zen-like practice. The image is gradually woven from an accretion of horizontal and vertical brushstrokes, which informs the work with a grid-like structure. Like a mantra, repetition opens the painter's inner essence, an archetypal truth, as it relates to the landscape and one's place on this earth. My work is to pay attention to the emanations and vibrations of Nature, and to express this in a context of spiritual contemplation.

Although eventually obscured within the matrix of layered brushstrokes, the grid transcends narrative and reveals a pure abstract expression of Nature's essence. I build up the painting slowly, with fan-shaped brushes and grid-like brushstrokes. Each stroke represents a moment in time -- the texture and beauty of a single moment. It is overlapped with another stroke, perpendicular to the previous stroke. It goes on like this for days: vertical, then horizontal brushstrokes, each one a moment, the essence of moments from an inner landscape. Music is a big part of this process for me. I listen to medieval sacred chants or Native American flute music in the studio. This music, and its repetitive aura, puts me in a meditative state, and the sequence of brushstrokes becomes a visual metaphor for the chants.