Building a Galaxy

Here are parts one and two of videos of me making some art in my backyard in Litchfield. This is part of my venture into mixing painting and sculpture to create images the viewer feels they can "enter." Or to create new miniature worlds. I've been doing a few space paintings like this, combining insulation spray foam, drywall spackle, spray paint, and acrylic paint. I like the dual creation of outer space as the place where creation happens as stars are formed, destroyed, and formed again, and physically creating my own outer space. Both outer space and the space of the canvas hold the same limitless possibility- the ability to add on, to pull from, to give birth, to rub against, to rip and tear, to pull apart, to punch a hole through, to cover up, to go over, to build.

I have always loved painting- the technique, the sense of pride of the created image. I hate feelings of not knowing what to paint or which direction to take the painting in. One of my art teachers once said in respect to painting on a black canvas that sometimes it's not so much about putting color onto the canvas as it is about pulling the color out from what's already there. It's sometimes difficult to let go of my anxious control, but I've tried to let this philosophy guide me in my work, especially in moments of painter's block. I try to let the canvas guide me, for the color to tell me where it wants to go, for the shape to appear on its own. I think often of a sculptor who told a similar story about carving from marble, and they were asked to carve a sculpture of a swan, but they ended up carving a lion because the marble wanted to be a lion. He could tell that forming that specific stone into a swan would never look right because it was never meant to be a swan, it was a lion. I might be getting the animals mixed up, but I often think of this when I'm getting frustrated with a painting, and sometimes completely cover it to do something new. What was the painting "always already" going to be?

It's ironic to think of creation as something that was inevitable, especially with painting where you might mess up, or start over, or not be happy with the final product. I suppose what is then inevitable is not the final product, the creation, but the continual act of creating and continually arriving at something within itself.