Wind Over Grass, 2009, 14"x10.5", 35.5cmx26.5cm, India ink (with a dip pen), and oils (paint and pastel) on a primed canvas sheet. I based a larger painting on this, which is included in the photo album, Midnight Sun: Wind Over Grass.

The figures in this drawing were originally from a drop-in life drawing session in 2005! After some years I transferred the sketch to a small primed canvas sheet. Then lines of bright oil paint, which I rubbed out to a pastel hue. That hung on a wall in the hall for a few years. Yesterday I grabbed it, deciding I couldn't stand seeing it anymore, and if I wrecked it, the garbage would be fine. Wetted water-soluble oil pastels, clumsier than brushes, but colour-bright, follow those lines of force, curves of bodies and landscape. Then my dip pen, old trusty pen, and a bottle of permanent India ink. No going back! No rubbing out! Don't spill the ink! I move it around my crowded desk, trying to keep an envelope under it, scratching lines in, over and over, a wind of lines flowing. I am in a trance almost, another state of consciousness, more primal, less 'thought'-ful, empty, an energy of muted frenzy emerging from the pen tip. I am not-me. I pass the point of no return. Then stop. I'm happier with the drawing, in the flush of finishing, but who knows?

Contact dance - the points of tension in the parts of your bodies that touch, and the flow of energy so that you know where the motion, the flow, your combined flow, is going. It is about the touch, and the space between you, and the flow of intuitive movement. Wind Over Grass is an exercise where one person stands as a blade of grass and the other runs to them as wind and gently touches them, anywhere on their body, touching lightly with any part of their body, the side of the palm, chin, back of the shoulder. The grass bends, sways, curves. Then stands upright as again the wind sweeps in again.

When we practice Wind Over Grass, our bodies become part of the landscape. Two years after I last worked on this drawing, it didn't hit the garbage, but is back on the wall in the hall. Hopefully, with lines of telluric energy finally moving.

All the previous drawings are here, as well as a painting that I began, but haven't finished, that's sitting on another wall (le sigh): Midnight Sun: Wind Over Grass.

From Midnight Sun: Wind Over Grass, 28" x 22", 71cm x 56cm, oil on canvas, 2010.

A painting depicting contact dance - which is... out of the dance studio, for sure, and into the dreamtime! And a solar eclipse, which reminds me of the black light, the midnight sun of the mystics.

When the river runs in bands, water ribbons her arm. Or she dances on rocks across. Those who support uphold everything in the underpainting. What is there to say of wheat fields or grass curling flames? Under the midnight sun strange dreams dance with intent.


This painting took 20 days to complete, from Jan 5th to 25th. Though I did initially work from an old sketch, I discarded it. The images developed, like in a dream, of their own volition organically. The figures and landscape are imaginal. It's finished, even if in 6 months when the oil paint is dry, I add a few details.

It's not that I'm absent. I'm always here. There's so much I cannot speak of. Before it was different, I was able to weave things into prosepoetry that obscured while clarifying, you know how that is.

I am doing things I want to be doing, though. Today I had my second hour editing a manuscript. I have to go to a coffee shop, be trapped with nothing else to do; it works. On this mms I give myself until the end of June, that should be amble time.

At night I spend a minimum of an hour painting. To do that has its odd requirements too, but I am able to settle myself enough to enter the paint.

There is duress. Energy, focus, not easy. Yet I am doing it - with a few tricks. Since I know myself so well I know what'll motivate and what won't.

We are our last mysteries, aren't we. Though after many years of living as who we are, we become accustomed to ourselves, and our idiosyncracies. We learn how to negotiate our devious psychic terrains, how to point ourselves in a direction, how to stay on track.

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Wind Over Grass, 28"x22", 71x56cm, 2010, blocking shape and  colour. Photographed at night with flash, two photos merged to make it appear as it is (so far - still far to go).

From Wind Over Grass, a painting

Wind Over Grass, 28"x22", 71x56cm, 2010, first wash of colour. Click for larger. Photographed in shadow on a sunny day. The texture of the brushstroke and colour is quite good. This painting is going to take awhile - still far to go.

From Wind Over Grass, a painting

Wind Over Grass, 28"x22", 71x56cm, 2010, underpainting, on canvas.

Underpainting- an acrylic base, a chalk drawing that instead of erasing I painted over in 'Bone Black.' Difficult to photograph! Click for larger size that's easier to see (you'll go to Picasa, to the album for this painting-to-be).

This is what awaited me this morning after the painting in the night that I put whitewash all over and then rubbed out. I can't say which I prefer, though I am tempted to go over to the art store and buy a canvas and paint a larger version of last night's colorful rendition while the energy is still hot.

This painting is part of my landscape as figure, or figure as landscape series, which I will upload to my life drawing page soon.

In my last painting I had returned to the style I developed in high school. Before the Fine Arts degree, before the style that developed through the Birth Paintings and that became my signature afterwards. I had gone back to re-find who I was, and to see if I returned to that point if my art might develop in another direction. I'm still working on the painting; I seem obsessed with either it, or the process it represents. Working on that small painting is like scraping memory and habit off to get to the back of the cave and seeing what the first marks were. Success is not important in this endeavour. It's all exploration.

So what happened tonight took me by surprise. I am posting the images up to the point where I painted everything white and then proceeded to rub the painting out. It would be an easy piece to re-do since it was from a sketch from a life drawing session which I still have and can reproduce on another canvas.

Who knows, I may re-paint these figures and leave the painting at the point I'm showing you here: unfinished, but still kind of raw, perhaps alive. There is an artist, an Expressionist perhaps, or Post-Expressionist, who this painting reminds me of and when I think of his name I'll pop it into this post (if you know please leave a comment).

It's two figures in contact dance. Actually it's one model in the life drawing session in two poses that I drew on the same page. We do what we can to get the poses we'd like. Because I sought the tensions of the connection point of contact dance, the flow and the seismic lines of energy, I used small lines, a loose construction.



The sketch was done quite awhile ago and the ink had set. Click on the images for larger size.



There was no plan for the painting of the sketch. Lines followed lines; colours suggested colours. I used a plastic egg carton and each colour had its own 'egg nest' and its own brush - 10 all together! This system kept the colors pure, but was akin to a stick game as the brushes often entangled and kept falling!



Click on image for a really large version. 'Contact Dance,' 2009, 14"x10.5", 35.5cmx26.5cm,  India ink and oils on a primed canvas sheet.

Perhaps I should have stopped here. Instead I continued painting, covering the bright colour with a white wash, and then throwing water all over it which got wiped off along with most of the colour. What's left of the painting (see next post) can probably be taken in another direction, and I can re-do what I did here, using this image as a study. Oh, the delights of art-making!