Join us at Studio 2846

Please join us the evening of Saturday, April 6 from 5-10 p.m. for a showing of Wallace's latest work at his Chicago studio, across from historic Humboldt Park.

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Unspoken Language

Unspoken Language, 2013

The piece, completed. To discover the artist’s process in the creation of this work, look back over previous blog entries, tagged with Unspoken Language.

A way of reading the painting, from left to right:

Time left behind. The mask discarded. Direction gained. The book of truth, words arise into consciousness, empowering or destroying - deepening in thoughts lingered upon. A rush, arising into the light that illuminates all. Within, the shadowed observer, ever present.

Impetus

This garden of blue seduction, shimmering in opulent light; cool to the touch in emotions rush. A winged memory, a thread, a note of embrace that has long gone unnoticed.

Words bubble in noise unfiltered, pi unfolds the universe in infinity’s grasp. Unspoken, yet so powerful in silent thought as to be deadly.

We have forgotten the simplest of facts: that our thoughts have a life beyond our greed in their thinking. They rush upon wings of energy to stir forces not seen, changing the very nature of the fabric of time and memory, altering, in subtle touch, the course of destiny.

As they weld ever into infinity’s brilliant light, energies co-mingled and take flight triggering new thoughts, bumping up against muddled minds, enlarging and changing consciousness one letter at a time.

We need to step outside our caged lives and look within towards the Truth that awaits us in silent roar. Each of us has a purpose to be met. Few stumble upon the simplest of light that could ignite the path towards enlightened understanding.

This is the duality that we all abide by. Fractured, yearning for completeness, yet trapped in the ego driven need; without ever questioning the hollowness of our lives trapped within the steady drone of non questioning noise.

Everything known is within. The book of truth that holds multiple understandings of pathways towards understanding is only good for triggering this acknowledgement, of looking within to find the self, the soulness that is the mirrored opposite of the ego, which is the outward appearance of who we are.

This painting is that split, that duality and the liberation of words that have power to take flight upon the wings of soul fire; embracing with those who have gone before to light the way into the white light of the Source of all things.

--J.D.W.

In progress

Seeds

Words,

like winged birds

fly out

upon darkest of moments,

released,

Into this void unknown

flowering,

into greatest of needs, now met.

--J.D.W. 

The poem and journal entry which led to the creation of one of Wallace's most recent works. 

Return later this week to see how these jotted thoughts evolved and unfolded throughout the artist's process. 

Creation

“In high school, my first girlfriend was a writer,” remembers Wallace. “She gave me a hand-sewn leather journal, embossed with my initials, that I could refill with blank books. I still have it. I started writing – silly stuff, high school stuff, about love and heartache.”

Daily, Wallace would note down his thoughts and reflections. At around the same time, he began reading poetry. “I was reading people like Kahlil Gibran and William Carlos Williams – and every time I would read a poem, I would see a painting. I would write and find myself compelled to create.”

Decades later, Wallace continues to write daily, and his writings often inspire his paintings. “I keep a couple of journals – a day to day one, and one which I fill with sketches and notes – thoughts and fragments that seed an idea. Words that trigger a memory, which triggers an idea, which triggers an image that just compels me to paint. I jot down a few things and quickly it fleshes out into something much bigger. I’ve got about 30 years of journals filled with seeds from which my paintings grew.

By the time Wallace comes to put brush to a fresh canvas, he has a composition in his mind, and pages of notes and sketches that he’s formed around a central thought. “But when I’m in the process of painting, it’s like a meditation. The peripheral stuff disappears, the planning, and it’s just me and the paint – I’m totally locked into what I’m doing, and then it’s there– that thought, distilled, in the painting. The actualization of a thought or feeling. Everything I do is about the creative process of understanding.”

In the next few posts, we’ll continue to explore the artist’s process, and will reveal some of the writings and images that have led toward his recent work.