Musical Transformation
As an artist you are most often taught to draw and paint what is physically there whether it be a coffee mug or an action figure or a piece of fruit. Inevitably you are tossed a standard project which calls for you to draw or paint every thing that isn’t the focus of your piece. The object is reveled by rendering everything it isn’t. It seems logical that if you define everything that something isn’t, you in fact define what it is.
CTHULHU?
I value the exercise in what it does to illustrate the importance of spatial relationships but could this concept not be carried deeper? Could it not be expanded to reveal more?
Yesterday seemed to be a day for me to dwell on what my current artistic endeavors were not. Not good enough, not pretty, not what I intended. In front of me was a solid wall of dissatisfaction. Solid so I believed. It was foolish of me to forget the spiral cycle that everything is.
I learned long ago that everything comes back around. “Full Circle” is what they call it, although it isn’t exactly correct since you arrive where you started, but one level up from where you were before, like a spiral staircase. The whole key is that single step up.
Magician
Last night, as I was flipping through a book on drawing I noticed the negative space exercise. I laughed to myself thinking that I was in a negative space. Zap! It occurred to me that if I was in a negative space, I should be able to see everything that the positive space is not, and through this, to see the positive space again. This wasn’t only a simple exercise in art; it was an exercise in life.
So thinking about my recent works I could see how in one piece I may not have had the best brush control, but I got the color to look exactly as vibrant as I intended. In another piece, the color may have been bland, but it was exactly the texture I was hoping for. Soon the steps I was traveling became clear again. You might say I could once again see the positive space for having dwelled in the negative.
Dare I carry the concept further? The ultimate truth was this: Although I was having an artistic struggle at the moment, I was having one because I was actually practicing art again. The negative space of struggle, revealed the positive space clear as day. No struggle, no art. In that instant the positive was the negative space, and the negative positive and you could say that I found Art once again.
Oak Spiral