Friday 22 November 2013

Looking Within: a series of Three: Part 3


Looking Within: a series of Three: Part 3

            As my time was winding down in Montana I turned to the last prepared rag paper piece that I had mounted early this summer. The book was off to the printer to print the hardcopy proof that I could sit and hold and edit, so I was free to attack this last image with abandon. I had three weeks before I had to shut down the studio and fly back to Chicago.
             
            This piece comes from thinking about the divide that separates awakening knowledge-that act of divine awareness that transcends all bonds, all limits.

“Divided, Within Oneself”  43”x62” 2013  oil and oil pastel on rag paper




           Within this dream state we are shaken in our concept of reality, our concept of time. The winged messenger transcends through the window of perspective shattering the myth of time, of linear understanding, of how we become truly awake. It is through the veil darkly, that transcendent state, where the conduit is discovered and tapped into.


To realize the significance of our Being transcends time and space, freeing us to become one with all things.

Friday 15 November 2013

Looking Within: a series of Three: Part 2


Looking Within: a series of Three: Part 2

The 2nd and 3rd oil pastels began late in the summer as the book edits intensified. I was pushed to want to be creative as a balance to the hours of reading text and moving around images on the computer as I edited the book. I needed to get lost in that mystifying process of touching a blank surface and revealing an image that conveys a truth about what I was thinking about.

The second piece was also a vertical, entitled:

           “Empathy’s Grace”  62”x43” 2013 oil and oil pastel on rag paper


                                                           
Chaos
                                                            Spins in vortex held
Quickens a breath
                                                            Within slender thread,
Spun, then pulled
                                                            Revealing that terrors pause,
The still points edge deep within.


How do we find that still point within, especially when all around us it 
seems our world is in chaos?



Friday 8 November 2013

Looking Within, a series of Three: Part 1


While still in Montana, deep within the studio, working on the book and finishing the glazes on the large oil painting, “Reflections Glimmer in Wavering Need”, I primed three rag paper pieces. These were mounted on rigid foam board that is very light and easy to move around. Especially easy and inexpensive to crate and ship back to my Chicago studio in the fall.


The first oil pastel was a vertical created around the idea of gifts. Gifts that are given and gifts that are received. Gifts received that come from an unending source, a source deep within our consciousness.  Gifts that are given through the cleansing of pain and suffering, that process of looking deep within to understand and embrace, then let go.

These gifts are found in beauty and truth and from gratitude in the unfolding.

     “In Grace Unfolding”  62”x43” 2013 oil and oil pastel on rag paper



Friday 1 November 2013

The journey towards a book: Part 3


The journey towards a book: Part 3

To add pressure to all of this, as if this project wasn’t enough pressure, I decided in late spring after my April opening that I would finish the layout, the selection of paintings and other artwork and the writing, while I was isolated in my studio in Montana so that I could unveil the finished book at my October 19th opening back in Chicago.

After building stretchers and beginning the painting that was in the last blog series posted by Rebecca, I began my intense studio days. Painting all day, then working on the rewriting of the narrative for the book at night. Soon, I was weaving in the painting and the writing so that it just all blurred.

By mid summer I had a very tight, focused flow of the book. I used the 3 big themes: historical changes in my work, the building of the three spaces and the philosophical dialogue that drives my thinking in both the journal entries and the poems I write while painting. These three elements are the woven fabric, the language that flows between the works of art and the images of space, landscape and structure.

Now all I had to do was learn a new software program, Adobe InDesign, and lay it all out in time to have blurb.com print a proof I could hold and read and then correct.

Needless to say, this was monumental.

As I need to be painting everyday, I continued in the studio finishing the large canvas and then starting three smaller pieces along with three oil pastels; which I will write about in the next blog series.

I must have read and re-read my narrative 300 hundred times honing the language, yet keeping my voice. Once I had the layout the way I wanted it I was up to 221 pages. But it was right and I felt really good about this.

It, for me, was a piece of art.

As with all pieces of art, the color of the paintings needed to be as near to perfect so I turned to my long time designer of my website and invitations, Les Sandelman, to painstakingly go over each and every image, over 200 in all, and make sure they were correct and would upload properly to the book printer.

The hard copy proof came back the second week of September and I poured through it for the final corrections then sent it off to be printed. It was cutting it close, but the finished books arrived a week before the October 19th opening.

I had done it.


If you are interested you can find the link to the book here: jonathanwallacestudio.com