Wonder embedded in darkness.

St Gregory of Nyssa wrote:
"Concepts create idols, only wonder comprehends anything."

This season of waning daylight heightens the mysterious clarity held in darkness. What concepts do I hold that cannot stand to the dark, pregnant silence of early December nights in the mountains? What concepts of painting have I made into idols that would rob my work of wonder? I find that this time of solstice invites to wonder. I think back to my studies in theology. Advent; the great season of anticipatory "almost, but not yet", the season of brilliant darkness prefaced with the rich gradient hues of purple-pink-red-orange evening skies. I still believe a painting can create such wonder that the viewer is held if even for a moment in the space of unarticulated "knowing".

Nietzche's 'amor fati' & painting

I frequently take my questions and ideas for long walks. Today Heidegger and I hiked the mountain path from the studio up into the forest behind our home. Accompanying me were thoughts partnered in dialogue. The first dialogue partner is from Enrique Martinez Celaya's latest blog about PAINTING & STRUCTURE . He invites us to view painting as a "state of thought". In doing this he posits that the "underlying supports that give shape to the state of thought will soon become clear." Enrique defines thought as "the entire force of spirit: reason, emotion, intuition." I am abducted by this idea and find a dialogue emerging in the studio as I sit with my current painting.

My current immersion in reading about Nietzche's teaching of 'amor fati' is challenging and affirming. I find it is giving me a grounding in my work, answering unformed yet intuited questions that I have about the purpose of my painting. Do my paintings reveal the state of my current thought? I realize I engage in thought exploration. It is part of my vocation as an artist. I am always asking how does this inform what I paint? How I paint?

From WORDS IN BLOOD,LIKE FLOWERS:
"What the artist realizes in art -this is the erotic valence-is the external in (herself), "the eternal joy of becoming."
"...-one realizes what Nietzsche calls the "joy encompassing joy in destruction"-a joy with nothing to do with violence, a cruelty that is also a rueful name for sadness. Such a tragic joy is the affirmation of life because no affirmation, and no love, can choose any part, such as life and not also death, or ecstasy and not also longing, disappointment, and consumate sadness, or joy and not also suffering, or being and not much rather and also becoming."
"...It is the 'heroic' spirits who say Yes to themselves in tragic cruelty; they are hard enough to experience suffering as a 'joy'."
"Thus for Nietzsche, Those imposing artists who let a 'harmony' sound forth from every conflict are those who bestow upon things their own power and self-redemption: they express their innermost experience in the symbolism of every work of art they produce-their creativity is gratitude for their existence."

Creativity as gratitude for existence.

Painting as a state of thought.

The "genius of of the heart who makes everything loud and self- satisfied fall silent and teaches it to listen..."

Sappho's Memory

In the fast approaching evening light of November, Sappho's memory graces studio walls.

#92

Do you remember

How a golden
broom grows on
the sea beaches

Sappho
(c.a. 610-580 BCE)

Early November Silence

Returning to my studio brings insight, challenge and deepening commitment. Autumn days have run their course in the high mountains of my Colorado home. This morning I met a large bear on the forest path. Her luxuriant brown fur glistening in dawn light. She was in a hurry, interestingly, I was not. The light changes seamlessly at this time of year in the studio and I think of Charlotte Bronte's poem as I engage with completed work, hanging on quiet walls.

#168

The Autumn day its course has run - the Autumn evening falls
Already risen the Autumn moon gleams quiet on these walls
And Twilight to my lonely house a silent guest is come
In mask of gloom through every room she passes dusk and dumb
Her veil is spread, her shadow shed o'er stair and chamber void
And now I feel her presence steal even to my lone fireside
Sit silent Nun - sit there and be
Comrade and Confidant to me.

Plein-aire concinnity

I have not done any plein-aire painting for three or four years. Yesterday I returned to some places along Bolinas Lagoon and Tomales Bay where I have painted in the past. I found myself greeting trees as the incoming tide lapped at gnarled roots. One tree in particular that I painted several times in the spring of 2005 was greeted like a dear old friend. Bowing to the egrets and basking seals in the lagoon, I realized the intimacy of place, space, sound that has been created in my psyche and soul.

There is concinnity-a seeing with one's ears. Babette E. Babich discusses this in her rich, delectable book WORDS IN BLOOD,LIKE FLOWERS which I am slowly savoring. I am thinking about this in terms of plein-aire painting and found myself painting small watercolors on gesso covered rice paper with awareness, passion and sensitivity. This goes far beyond "landscape-painting". The Latin word, concinnitas carries the meaning of "rhythmically attuned diction." There is a rich scholarly tapestry of the word's meaning. It invites reflection for me as a painter to think about my painting and how I speak about my paintings.

I wonder about the rhythmic attunment to the place I am painting. That "place" dissolves the interior/exterior division. Painting is rhythmic attunment. Taking this further, I think of one's heart-soul-psyche, a "corda-concinnity." Listening with heart-soul-psyche, seeing with my ears. Painting.

Ocean Song

I am much like a migratory bird returning to this part of the ocean every fall. Drawn by the sound of the surf pounding, the smell of eucalyptus and sea breeze. I am also on pilgrimage to a place that resonates with wonder and unpredictability. I came to realize this as I slipped over the peak of Mt. Tamalpais and saw the ocean before me. This part of the California Coast holds every tear I have cried, every prayer I have uttered and every question I have carried for the past three decades of my life.
I take my questions for a walk along the dancing surf and elusive horizon. They accompany me, imprinting upon my soul like my footsteps in the sand. If asked, 'What is it you DO as an artist? I would answer, "I take my questions for a walk on the ocean every morning as the sky is turning light. Then I paint."

I am thinking alot these days about Nietzsche's call for a musicality (as embodied in the Greek term musike) in reading and thought of philosophy and his works. How does this thread into my work as an artist, as a painter? Art and truth formed an indissoluble unit for the ancient Greeks.

Babette Babich, in her book, WORDS IN BLOOD, LIKE FLOWERS states that this sense of musicality "corresponds to the entire cultural scope..." and the "modern tendency to reduce music to the 'organized' art of sound obscures the equiprimordial sense in which MUSIKE could be regarded, as Nietzsche saw it, as the enabling element of intellectual or spiritual as well as aesthetic and physical education and in which MUSIKE figures as the determining force of both individual and societal character -ethos-."

What is the enabling element of intellectual and spiritual and aesthetic and physical integration for me as a painter. What is the ethos of my work?

Shakespeare in the now barren Aspen Grove

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self that seals up all the rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, 

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed, whereon it must expire

Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Silent listening, authentic questioning.

Silence offers an invitation to wonder and astonishment that continues to deepen within me. How do I attentively bring this to my painting in the studio?   Heidegger wrote that this astonishment, this wonder is kept alive only in "authentic questioning" a questioning "that opens up its own source."  I am wondering if the authentic questioning he refers to is the dialogue that opens when I sit with a painting?  Sometimes there is wonder, occasionally  astonishment.  I need to listen to my paintings.

Rilke, Rumi and metaphor in the Aspen Grove

The Aspen are shimmering in passionate delight today.  Rumi wrote that leaf sounds are poets talking together/making fresh metaphors.  I wonder what metaphors the Aspen are offering as Heidegger and I walk on our mountain path.   What is the role of metaphor in painting?  Am I even conscious of using metaphor?  Nietzsche believed that we can have no genuine knowing without metaphor.  I am sitting with all this as I read Words in Blood, Like Flowers (Philosphy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Holderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger (Babich, Babette E.  Albany, SUNY Press 2006). In the rush of the wind and leaves I am thinking of this morning's newsclip from NPR:  "1/4 of the  planets mammals are currently threatened with extinction."  A quote from Rilke that hangs in my studio floods my mind as brilliantly as the Aspen grove.  ...our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its being may rise again, 'invisibly' in us.