Stones of the Sky

Center of the Stone, 2009, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
© 2009 Diane McGregor

This is one of the paintings from the previous post that I've just finished. The three paintings that are shown in the studio shot below are inspired by Pablo Neruda's Stones of the Sky, a suite of 30 poems that are love songs to the earth. "Neruda observes eternal metamorphosis at work in stone," writes translator James Nolan. "The permanence of stone in the ragged Chilean landscape becomes the emblem of spiritual transformation contrasted with temporal humanity." I have wandered the Andes and the regions of Chile of which Neruda writes, and I have always had a profound connection to the spiritual nature of stones. I feel connected to them living here in the high mountain desert of Santa Fe.

Here is one of the poems from Stones of the Sky, number XIX , that inspired this painting:

Silence is intensified
into a stone:
broken circles are closed:
the trembling world,
wars, birds, houses,
cities, trains, woods,
the wave that repeats the sea's questions,
the unending passage of dawn,
all arrive at stone, sky nut:
a substantial witness.

The dusty stone on the road
knows Pedro, and his father before,
knows the water from which he was born:
it is the mute word of earth:
it says nothing because it's the heir
of the silence before, of the motionless ocean,
of the empty land.

The stone was there before the wind,
before the man, before the dawn:
it's first movement
was the first music of the river.

(Pablo Neruda, Stones of the Sky, translated by James Nolan, Copper Canyon Press)

Work in Progress

This is a view of the studio with new work in progress, in various stages of completion. I am learning patience. The layers of oil paint need time to dry so that I can build up texture and luminosity. I find I enjoy this part of the process, it forces me to take time to breathe, to watch and listen. It can be frustrating too, as I often really want to keep working on a painting. Sometimes I know exactly where it needs to go, but I know it needs it's own time to wait and germinate. Then the ideas and associations germinate as I wait and watch. Time is a seductive element in the work, as each brushstroke represents a moment in time, each layer a practice in patience.

The largest piece shown here, 36x36, is one which I started a few sessions ago. At this stage, I just need to get the paint on the canvas, I'm not so concerned with where the imagery is going. The other two small ones are much further along. I usually work on 4 or 5 paintings at a time, as I wait for the layers to dry.

Poetry is a tool I use to help guide my paintings. The poems are a deep and subtle influence on the imagery, color palette, and/or mood. I have selected Pablo Neruda's poetry to inspire these three paintings. I often take the poems with me when I walk in the desert and reflect on the work in progress. Everything goes into a painting: the sunrise, the moonlight, the mountains, the music I listen to, the poetry, the fragrance of the wind.

Artist Statement

Aerial Boundary V, 2009, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
© 2009 Diane McGregor

My work has been evolving at a disturbingly fast pace -- the ethereal layers of blended mists are converging into raw paint, edges are opening up, and through a desire to "simplify" more complexity is exposed. I felt I needed to write a new artist statement to clarify this work that seems to be emerging on its own time schedule.

Conferring With the Moon, 2009, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches
© 2009 Diane McGregor

This is my new Artist Statement:

My work is informed by Nature -- specifically the landscape, the weather, the seasons. These images are not literal representations of a place or environment, but a synthesis of shifting viewpoints and moods. Painting is my way of going beyond the arguments of the conscious mind, allowing the brushstroke to be a quiet reflection of each moment. The painting, then, becomes a record of a solitary, contemplative practice that is both private and shared.

I begin each painting by methodically weaving together horizontal and vertical brushstrokes. This repetitive technique generates a grid-like structure during the very earliest stages of the painting. As the composition gradually emerges from the matrix of layered brushstrokes, a subtle balance of form, color, and texture is intuitively recognized and responded to. The process is extremely meditative, taking me back and forth between emptiness and fullness, surrender and control.

Perspective

It is winter here in Santa Fe, and the landscape takes on a mystery and solemnity that influences my perspective. Ravens flying over the frozen hills, shimmering snow-covered fields, everything rests in an otherworldly slumber. Although I am an abstract painter totally devoted to non-representational imagery, all of my work is infused with a rapturous experience of the natural world. My reductive abstractions reference nature and the landscape, and perhaps this is a doorway through which the viewer can enter the painting and connect with it on a deeper level.

Rising, 2009, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
© 2009 Diane McGregor

This perspective became very clear to me as I was resolving my newest painting, just finished a few days ago, Rising. The painting gives me a feeling of dawn, when the blue evaporates and the light rises. There are some calligraphic marks in the center which are partly submerged by a yellow-white crust (maybe a cornfield covered with snow?). A darker bluish band is at the top of the painting, where some black brushstrokes seem to be flying toward the upper edge of the canvas. I can see the painting as a field, viewed from high above, ravens flying across the landscape toward the shadow of the moon. Then the whole composition shifts and you are looking upward toward the sky, the horizon sits below you and the light is rising, the birds are flying up into what's left of the night. As an abstract painter, narrative is something I really try to avoid, but in this painting it opens up to me, and perhaps points toward a new kind of meaning in my work.

I struggled with this painting since last August; then winter arrives, my perspective shifts, and an inevitable poetry comes into being. The relationship I have with a canvas can be very intense and intimate, and this painting took a long time to resolve. Finally, when I saw the "field from above" it all came together. This is interesting since I consider the painting itself a field, in which my investigation of painting is defined by that field and its materials alone. And also interesting that my studio sits on top of a hill -- I look down upon the valley and across to the snow-covered mesas, the mountains in the distance, and the ravens drifting silently over the landscape below me.

The Direction of Light

Lumière, 2008, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches
© 2008 Diane McGregor

"The Direction of Light," a poem by Linda Hogan:

New stones have risen up earth's labor
toward air. Everything rises,
the ocean in a cloud,
the rain forest passing
above our heads.
Children grow inch by inch
like trees in a graveyard,
victors over the same gravity
that pulls us down.
Even our light continues
on through the universe, and do we stop to
wonder who will see it
and where,
when the light of this earth is gone?
May there long be our light.

And then it falls. Shades are pulled down
between two worlds, clouds fall
as rain, light returns
the way rain from Brazil falls
in New York and the green parrots
in their cages feel it, shake their
feathers, and remember home
and are alive
and should they be thankful
for that gift
or should they curse like sailors and grieve?

I tell the parrots,
I too have wanted to give up
on everything
when what was right turned wrong
and the revolutionaries
who rose up
like yeast in life's bread, turned
against those who now rise up.

That's why I take the side of light --
don't you? -- with the weight of living
tugging us down and earth wanting us back
despite great thoughts and smiling faces
that are prisons in between
the worlds of buying
and selling even the parrots
we teach to say "Hello."

Hello. Did I call this poem
the direction of light?
I meant life
so let this word
overthrow the first
and rise up to the start.

("The Direction of Light" is taken from The Book of Medicines: Poems by Linda Hogan, Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1993, pages 79-80.)