Bringing the unintentional into light by making art of findings.
I enjoy altering standard practices in essay writing, so be warned if you find yourself frustrated while following all that’s going on below.
I was delighted to find that two accidental phone photos had qualities like Mark Rothko’s color field1 paintings. Because he is one of my favorites, I saw similarities to how colors related to one another. I noticed gentle, ethereal color expressions, and the calm of a visual color field. And there was the approximate 1/3 , 2/3 split present in many of his works.
Because there are Canadian wildfires happening right now, our Rhode Island sky and sun look a touch orange and hazy and the air feels hot and dry. The reddish image feels tied to the moment. Sketchy, hot and raw.
The blueish photo seemed an antidote to the red: a balance of cool rationality.
While working with these images, I thought about one of my unfinished manuscripts and how the reddish collage could be a solid illustration for a chapter. The blueish image felt like a call back to Ancient Greek myths, intellect, and the reflected light of the moon, which typically reads cool. Refined collage.
During the process of making, I had some sense of felt experience of several axes of dichotomies the images provoked for me, so I had Claude (AI alert!) draw up a quick diagram – kind of a 4D asterisks in space. I often have some kind of visceral sense around perspectives that become art made to only appeal to eyes and ears.
Representing this feeling state, and the tension I feel trying to find a perfect balance between opposites is challenging in a blog format. But I’m adding this side quest so you too can experience some of the things I experience while working. Sight, Touch, Sound (sometimes), and Position or Perspective.
That’s the beauty of a creative practice. It appeal to the entirety of a person. Turning a myriad of sensory data, memory, inspiration, and positional awareness into something concise and marketable is the challenge.
But in a daily practice, also unnecessary.
FOOTNOTES & SUB-SUBTEXT
