Yellow Violet Light and Clouds and Square Series

Yellow Violet Light, 12" x 10" oil on canvas

Clouds and Square 1, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

Clouds and Square 2, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

Clouds and Square 3, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

The Cloud and Square Series were done immediately after the recent, early, sudden death of my husband's cousin. The squares show an empty space, a void, a loss. The inky, semi-transparent black is mourning but #3 is lighter, more at peace. The squares hover and demand attention; feelings that may otherwise be invisible become palpable. They make tangible the disappearance of the loved one, from being present to gone. A blue sky has frequently been used as a transcendent space, harmony within the universe, resurrection if you will.

Yellow Violet Light is similar in intention. Yellow and violet are complementary colors so especially vibrate when juxtaposed. They radiate together here causing some kind of visual sensation of motion like the hovering of the squares in the digital images which is less the effect of color than contrast, scale, handling, density, and context.

My good friend from grad school, the painter Aaron Brooks, told me this weekend that he thinks, "All art is a way of mythologizing our lives." I agree. I've written previously about Joseph Campbell and his assertion that mythology is the public dream. Artists create the myths that reveal universal truth. I've always felt my work is autobiographical and can envision a chronological cataloging of my work alongside, within my journals. They are about self-discovery, the phenomenon of living, a vehicle to process experience. Art is all that and a new experience, experience and ideas re framed. Art Weekly is like a book of hours, the medieval prayer book form structuring a day with times for specific prayers. I thought of making one of prints, but it turns out this blog does it for me. It has reflection, ritual, image and text, and is solitary on my end. Living and painting are the main things while galleries and sales are an annoying buzz in the background, a drain and potential distraction from the real work. Right now I'm left alone with my rituals, not such a bad thing.