What if I paint just like I think that some may say is scattergun a technique? I may think and rethink and rethink etc. and double-back by visual criteria and not necessarily just cognitive? Don't I migrate from one side of the canvas to another without a preconceived discipline? Just a series of issues that can be random or satirical or surreal? How many other images would I have painted if I had been more controlling? Or do I realise that my painting is frequently not just an imperfect method but an imperfect Painting on many levels but made to restore a Painting that can work without certain pieces of it?
So, is this Painting over done or underworked? Finished or incomplete? Surely as we enter a new era of instability isn't it accurate to claim that we live under the skies of a failed or incomplete dialectic, a post-ideological time of mutual suspicion but with the potential to trailblaze beyond our human limits and celebrate new technologies whilst keeping our feet on the very Newtonian ground? Isn't Painting therefore a valid medium to explore its status of being a 'post form' medium because of its unique human terrestrial position as feet literally grounded, centred, focussed extended through the arm to the hand to the brush and yet processed via the unique human eye and the uneven universe of the transaction that leaves the canvas with an image that is bonded together with human imperfection and human failure? Just like human capacity to remain incomplete, so are our painting's tarnished or blemished by our human design! That's the job! That's our evolution and our destiny; to be mortal and incomplete!
Whether this, our human paradox, is based upon accidental or mechanical happy or unhappy accidents, sustains the argument that you can't rigidly control a painting, but you can prep for it and yet be surprised by the image outcome - but just have faith in the process rather than deconstruct it by any method or psychological device or even by ideologies! A Painting is ultimately finished perhaps in spite of a need by the Painter's to add or reduce or delete part of a Painting! The Painting may be finished for the viewer, but often not by the Painter who is reluctant to part with it because the Painter may seek to review it and change it until he’s she's satisfied with it! Only if the Painter is satisfied by the work will he /she has created will he/she let it go!
I self-plagiarise by taking photos of each of my paintings and then link image upon image until I'm satisfied that I can make a new image that is completely different to the 2 or 3 originals- guess what, it has a life of its own too! Often expectations are dashed but it may be that veering off from an image may prove unique because it expands my own reach and hopefully the range of a new original image beyond my skill set! If I stare at an image long enough, I believe it offers you some luck by finding something of validity! Unfiltered or overdone, subconscious or rigorously methodical, restrained or intolerant of technique, counting up the years of work as an artist or counting down the years left before mortality hits is inevitable for all human society, but how can these factors not transform and nurture the Painter especially? Ironically it is the literary explanation of a Painter's oeuvre and not the absence of it that is the ultimate corruptor of originality in the viewer! Too many words about every detail, nuance, that led, not to the rejection of the Art Historian and TATT in general, but to the rejection of the Painting medium! Didn't TATT throw us under the bus or what??!! Perhaps even in a rather basic rubric we can change the way we access the whole Painting if for example, we should look at a Painting at close quarters, five yards away and from a distance, and that means a powerful excuse to relook at any Painting offering a series of totally different takes that make for different images and transformative variables but....most who visit a gallery don't have that opportunity because of the crowds! Is that a good enough reason to begin that experience? 'Begin the full picture' must be quite a challenge, but also quite an obvious resource! No?
Solving the puzzle on canvas where pieces may well be missing allows me to advocate an answer but not the solution! But because our era of Paradox and a failed ideological dialectic has led to betrayal of the Painting medium today and not just as a casualty of the end of the Cold War! , But I still place my allegiance to the medium of human imperfect Newtonian gravity based universe in which, once the Paint is dry it ironically defies gravity, and aged 60, hope that someone will invent a mechanism to extend life to pursue it further for me to defy by Paint and defy 'mortal gravity' too! How I wish to have another go at it all over again!! But gravity is real and life is finite, and my defiance against gravity and against an AI tech onslaught that will or attempt to replace humanity....air-brush all you like AI, but Painting is the ultimate in being human and vulnerable to failure and inspiring others to embrace our humanity of imperfection and rejoice in it!
We're made from the Earth, and we paint from the Earth's materials by using the Earth as visual, sensorial and spiritual inspiration that's part of a universe of light, gravity and time, which are deeply embedded in our colour spectrum from the Earth we stand upon. This is not Luditism or nostalgia because we are joining a loop of Visual Painting from Homo sapiens first days, our alpha to omega that makes the Earth and all that benefit from its sustenance because the Earth is our primal medium of Art in balance with our solar system. It is our genetic code of terra nostra that we inherit, and is our human timeless documentary, which pivots all our Art media. It's our self-affirmation and our birthplace and our starting point of departure to human resurrection (literally according to Christianity). Remember, the term Homo Sapiens is translated as 'Clever people, and we are nothing but adaptable! Isn't it self-evident that we are restorative as well as being able to work with our hands?!!
This is an Earth that sustains us and nourishes us, so why wouldn't we express it with it and on it and through it? Our need for exploration, discovery and migration is often explored in 'Painting', where we need to record or take risks with a multiverse of image making, just as when humanity leaves our Earth (perhaps because we may exhaust its natural resources), we will inevitably return once the Earth has replenished itself, leaving us to re-engage with its ample beauty and mystery! This will be humanity's future and perhaps our past? Our second bite at the cherry, our second arrival to complete our human progress via the map of our Painting before, tomorrow and beyond! Imagine, we may only be worthy of a second coming if we can restore our garden of Eden without technology, just stuff from the grounded medium that makes up our Earth as fecund and as diverse!?!!
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