Sketch Idea

Here the romantic level, the leaves, play out. I'd like this deeper deep to play underneath in relation to the flatter figure, another leaf, or star or surface-- I'm fascinated as to how when ordering objects they start to pile up as metaphors until they all become the same and ONE thing.

A similar thing happens with the Sun, the Heros Head, the halo, the Sunflower, in Whitman he sees the spokes of the Sun turn around his head in the water beneath him in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.

"I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light around the shape of my head in the sun-lit water,"

Turtle Point drawings

Ideas for Paintings

I think I wanted to do these Stations as the project so well fit what I was just doing next.

I dont think I want to bend what I was doing too much as to make it all of a sudden "religious."

Here's one of my first conceptions.



Im posting these as I wanted to remember ideas I had along the "way".

Got them all stained today.

Today

Applied a stain of acrylic over one coat of gesso.

Sanded that and think I will just apply matte Acrylic as ground instead of Oil which I used to do, as it is destructive of canvas over time.

Im starting out with Rothko it seems.

I've visited the Rothko Chapel since 1979, maybe before. But also another thought-- I knew Newman's Ulysses since 1978 which I knew from Christophe de Menil's house in Amagansett . It was signed in that cray way at the bottom Barnett Newman 1952, my birthdate.



Ulysses is a painting of blue stained paint now in Houston.



I made Woman with Clothes Blowing in the Wind in 1986.

Next step

Here they are stretched, I just gessoed them.

So I'm not going to illustrate it,

that would be finally beneath the subject and demean the height of this religious icon.

Every one gets the god one deserves.

And there are all levels I suppose.

It can only be met by art.


I guess now this commentary is demeaning in a way .

I will let it stand though until the paintings presence precludes it.

So in my time...

Matisse made the Chapel and Newman made his Stations in the National Gallery.

Newman's were not commissioned and tell a lot about the rest of Newman's work. The interval in life and space and the relation of a artist to this relation in the Stations of Christ, an established form.

Newman focuses on an outcry--Why has thou forsaken us. After his first heart attack and remembrance of the holocaust still fresh in the mind of a Jew.

Rothkos passion remains un named. The Rothko chapel has maybe been the largest idea Ive embraced through the years visiting many times.






Though I have visited the Waterlilies likewise in reverence and feel similar to both or Pollock or Vir Heroicus Sublimis at the Museum of Modern Art, my church so to speak.

What I meant to say

was that these paintings of Christ are not "him" but really the reality of the art form.

I felt this in trying to make a portait.

Its not just the sitter, it's me as a painter and one excepts one's style.

Think of it.

There is the Mideval example:

early Rennaisance:

Rennaisance:

Spanish:

Goya's realism of the common people as

into Manet

and VanGogh and Gauguin




and Picasso and Matisse.

Narrative in relation to art

Just saw this image on the computer. It reminded me how the other night, getting up, I saw in my mind a flash of the Elgin Marbles. I then saw a Frank Stella shape, I think he got it from Hokasai and then I thought how it related to Picasso.

Now how does this all relate to Christ's Passion?

It is all translated into some pictorial means.

My father who I am taking as a measure for how a believer sees is that he only believes a certain image although I am sure it is a conglomerate and he couldn't pick any particular image or style.

For me it is a image of reality, I myself can believe in--(heres another post) all the images that seem to put together my experience as the little string of examples I just rattled off.

Reality is overlay after overlay, bricolage is a good word here.


So to depict the Stations in a traditional way for me is a lie. As it is a frozen truth (again the other post) these frozen truths are for people not questioning and to not question is not to live.

There is no truth and it constantly changes. There are images-- what one wants to settle on. But they at some point do not meet scrutiny, as the one and only reality.

I went to the Met to seek a Greek sculpture I felt held the ideal I pictured in myself-- first there is no greek sculpture there and second I ended my search realizing I didnt like any of it relative to my fantasy-- I hold in my mind.

So back to the stations.

I think my idea is to juxtapose my own living experience with being an artist to Christ's we learn in the story.

Well this seems foolish.

I'm an American living in the 20th century and first. I've never felt real discomfort or pain as in Crucifixion.

But then I examine my painting --what is it about?

The moment I found outside in Nature vanishing all the time, changing-- grasping and relating myself to it and gone again.

So I thought about this leaf I've painted through my artist's life.

A metaphor for a life, this star, a metaphor for my painting.

All these pile up and become the ultimate life of Christ or Buddah myself, ourselves, gods or God if you like.

But then the real idea that we die, like the leaves. each one of us not just Christ-- crying out-- the billions before us, the universe of death as Ive heard it described.

So the pain I felt at my Mother's passing as Stevens said the "reason for the poem"

Jenny in India

Chola Bronzes-- Shiva creating and destroying.

Whitman also had an interest and wrote of this.

Im listening to Chants as I paint, and did yoga to center myself to this project this morning.

Stretching first canvases

Formal tryout of sizes

Catherdal of St John the Divine

I went to a Tibet Fund concert with Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass also Bobby McFerrin at the Cathedral last spring.

Then to see the Dalai Lama and a sand painting the monks were making. I was sorry I missed them throwing it into the river when they were finished as their tradition dictates.

I made drawings and took pictures trying to get some idea of this project.