Peaceful photo of an almond that looks like a piece of wood. I’d quickly say that what I want to create is the negation of a painting, but would much more slowly (so slow as to effectively round down to never) reach an articulation of the status of or qualifications to the constitution of such a thing. More than that, I’d say working toward a negation is centrally about proceeding in a certain direction (not a forward one) than about trying to create a negative substance in the end. The problem (that I face in confronting the idea of making a painting) is that “forward” is supposedly a known direction. Maybe not even supposedly. It just is. And when I think of a painting (something properly and recognizably known as one [which I guess is what is taken for granted when you refer to any term]), I imagine it existing out in front of me (“in front of” implying forward).* Which is not to say that making a painting is a straight-line pursuit, but just that I can’t help but think of a pa...
One wall of The Pond Froze Over The other day, I dashed into what was a radiant and sensitive show up at Procession Gallery, The Pond Froze Over . I stepped through the space with the slightness and waver of a pencil’s line--just in the way that the space’s atmosphere compelled me to; you could not step boldly through the room for you would drown out the sound of the works--quivering as they were as though (or perhaps they actually were) balancing on a singular spot of softness. Early in my arrival, in the midst of getting my bearings, I happened to turn around and face the outside that I came from, and there happened to be someone out there, on the other side of the street, tagging, with black spray paint, a few objects that were leaning against the brick side wall of a building. This filled me with glee. It fulfilled the strange rareness of witnessing someone mark-make while being surrounded by mark-making in the past tense--unwitnessed marks already having been made. These few thoug...
It’s interesting that writing about painting sets up a relationship between writing and painting. That to write about a painting is to connect this verb (writing) with this object of the preposition (painting). If writing and painting are two separate domains (are they? aren’t they?), then to write about painting is to draw a line from one domain to the other. Like this: At least, that’s what writing feels like. Line drawing. Though, what does a line mean? As this diagram shows, writing about painting (if that was the title of the diagram) situates painting in space. Writing grounds painting--creates what seems to be an accessible path to it--by putting it in connection to another thing (in this case, to itself: to words). There’s a trickiness here--to the pursuit of writing about painting--because in this diagram, in this conception I have of the project that is writing about painting, writing is both the thing painting is in relationship to, and the act that creates the relationsh...
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