Wisdom of the Paint

Butterfly's Dream, oil on canvas, 24 x 19 inches, © 2009 Diane McGregor

"Intuition without experience is embarrassing and naive. Only when you have enough experience, can you trust your intuition. When I am painting I find myself in an unnameable world; it is undefinable, but tangible. I manipulate shapes that are completely invented and yet it's as if they must be this way or that. I realize that I am the only person who knows how these forms need to be.

"Now all you have to do is ruin a number of paintings to realize how many pitfalls there are in this process. Holding on to a good detail just for the sake of it is a recipe for disaster. Holding on to something that is not functioning with the whole will ultimately destabilize the painting. I have to be ruthless and throw away what is not functional."

Wise words from Caio Fonseca. This was also an important point that many of my professors would try to get across to us in art school. I believe the paint itself holds a kind of "knowing," and it is up to the artist to commune with the paint, the color, and the process of application. Sometimes, one must realize that the best part of a painting must be destroyed (i.e., painted over) in order to save the entire painting from failure. Over the years, I have become a little more experienced and a little more fearless with every painting I create. I think this is the reason why my newest work is becoming rather painterly and spontaneous. I rely upon my intuition to allow a brushstroke to just BE, without feeling that I have to tidy it up or blend it or "fix" it. This has opened up a new way of being with the paint -- allowing intuition to guide me, and trusting my experience to select what remains and what must be surrendered.

Influences

Crossing, oil on canvas, 18x18 inches, © 2009 Diane McGregor

Lisa Pressman has been orchestrating a wonderful project on her blog that she is asking fellow artists to participate in: what are your top ten artistic influences, and why. Well, it was almost impossible for most artists to stick with just ten, so she eventually raised the bar to fifteen. Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking a lot about this aspect of my work, how the influence of other artists has inspired my own work, and why certain artists have been so important to my development as a painter.

Here is my list (the names are in no particular order - I can't imagine choosing the number one artistic influence!):

1) Rebecca Purdum - contemporary artist who I've been following since the 80s - ethereal abstraction (shows at Tilton Gallery, NYC)

2) Sam Scott - my professor at University of Arizona, initiated me into the true painter's life and practice; lyrical abstractions of nature

3) 12th Century Chinese Southern Song painters - poetry of nature and the seasons, veiling and unveiling of forms, contemplative technique

4) Georgia O'Keeffe - paint handling, morphology of forms (the major influence upon my early work)

5) Agnes Martin - repetition, natural order, poetry of painting, the grid

6) Mondrian - composition, subtle balances and rhythms within geometric structures

7) Jackson Pollock - the spontaneous gesture; the importance of psychology and the unconscious

8) Rothko - the luminosity of color

9) Bonnard - light and color, paint handling

10) Turner - abstraction of landscape, use of thick and thin paint, use of light and dark

11) Kandinsky - for the spiritual in art

12) Cezanne - the importance of the underlying structure of a painting

13) Monet - the way he perceived light and color, the broken brushstroke

14) Donald Judd - clean lines, no-nonsense Beauty, repetition, transcending the grid

15) Joan Mitchell - abstraction of nature, luscious use of paint, use of the white ground, importance of the single brushstroke

Spirituality of the Earth

Emanation II, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches, © 2009 Diane McGregor

I love this quote by Thomas Berry, who died June 1, age 94. This is an excerpt from his article "The Spirituality of the Earth" (1990):

We need a spirituality that emerges out of a reality deeper than ourselves, even deeper than life, a spirituality that is as deep as the earth process itself, a spirituality born out of the solar system and even out of the heavens beyond the solar system. There in the stars is where the primordial elements take shape in both their physical and psychic aspects. There is a certain triviality in any spiritual discipline that does not experience itself as supported by the spiritual as well as the physical dynamics of the entire cosmic-earth process. A spirituality is a mode of being in which not only the divine and the human commune with each other, but we discover ourselves in the universe and the universe discovers itself in us.

This painting is part of a series I'm doing about memories of growing up near a lovely lake in Connecticut. We had the quintessential babbling brook flowing through our one-acre property. It flowed under a bridge into Canoe Brook Lake, which was across the street. I spent hours at the lake, by the brook, in the forests, with American Indian artifacts and burial mounds. I don't know how many years I lived there, but it was magical.

Creative Space

Deborah T. Colter brought up a great theme in her blog post last week, about finding the space and time to be creative and nurture the muse, without getting blocked by all the extraneous and irrelevant "stuff" of life. This has always been a challenge for artists, and particularly women artists, who have very often put their families and homes before their own creative pursuits.

Emanation I, 2009, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
© 2009 Diane McGregor

I have found that nurturing the space within is the most important factor when it comes to finding the time and space to paint. I've gone from a huge warehouse studio to a spare bedroom in my home. I've stopped making excuses. I think I procrastinated more in my large spacious studio than in my home studio, where the detritus of everyday life somehow floats in and clutters things up. I have tried to clear my creative mind by being very clear on what my goals as a painter are. I am very clear about what I want in my paintings and what I don't want. I write it down. I contemplate these ideals daily. Somehow, this practice has enabled me to be very creative and productive even in my cramped studio. And I also love being in my studio -- it does not feel like a cramped, unworkable space -- I have a corner where I do my painting and I just love sitting there writing, reading, looking, listening, painting, dreaming. This is very important: to love being in your creative space, internally and externally. But it's the internal clutter that needs to be swept away, not necessarily the bills, pets, books, and papers that make their way into the studio. This internal space needs preparation, supervision, and nourishment. This is where we make our art, in our minds and in our hearts, this sacred space that can give us all we need to create if we just keep it nurtured and free.

Secret Sky

Fly Toward a Secret Sky, 2009, oil on canvas, 72 x 40 inches
© 2009 Diane McGregor

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

-- Rumi