For some time now, in different guises my paintings have been about the juxtaposition of three painting surfaces.
1. A Utopian forward looking formal reality ( the blue square) that here is actually seen in it's negative phase, though it still comes forward to meet the 2nd surface which is--
2. A surface of present Reality which is constantly changing and affected by the Future (Utopian or Classical) and Past (Romantic) relationships.
3.The past or Romantic is the underneath or drawing, the distance, what is gone into-- to find, maybe a dream.
So these three surfaces interchange spaces and in fact I suppose are seen as One. One surface is constantly dying into another. Reality being in this scheme a constantly changing thing.
This above form is the content of the work which parallels many or most literary narratives from Romantic to Classic.
It is in fact the Western Romance Quest itself which goes back into to find. Finds and brings back an Idea and in painting connects this Idea to a Surface which is painting.
I found this validating reality, unselfconsciously in my painting of the 1980's. This spacial journey became a narrative in my work and returns to a more abstract reality once again.
I made a series of paintings in 1993 called Villa of the Sun, which used this scheme as, Fate, Freedom, and Power, a triad I discovered in Harold Bloom's description of American poetry through a schematic idea from Emerson's criticism.
Fate is the winter phase of reality. Freedom, the poet at height in the Sun. Power is the fall into Sunset and the position of the Sublime. The is a counterpoint with the seasonal motif which this journey shares.
This three part reduction made a kind of triad which reminded me of a Duccio painting I knew.
This cross configuration is interesting compared to the recent "Stations". Then it was about a horizonal "passing" juxtaposed to a vertical--stop! or here! A realization or resultant light from epiphany or sublime like experience.
