Transitional Spaces: 12.19.13: Part 3

It is now the second week in December and I have been painting on this piece for over two months.  I am in the glazing stages, a process of layering translucent color upon color to achieve the light that my paintings hold. It is a process that, if done incorrectly, ruins the painting completely. It is intense and exhausting emotionally but gives me such joy when I step back from a canvas and see that I maintained my faith and held true.

                           “In Silent Touch My Purchase Seen”

                                  84”x60” oil on canvas 2013

                            Disparate

                                    Though they be

                            Distant, unimaginable, yet

                                    Divine in silent touch

                            Upon each singular moment

                                    In this, the tenuous convention

                            Trust, found, deep within to be.

                                     November 20, 2013

This painting comes out of the idea of finding purchase within this chaotic life, of finding a quiet balance, a quiet space within. Again, from my journal:

There are many gates that open upon this hill, this mountain that we all ascend towards understanding, towards enlightenment. Journeys that take one far and wide, to search, to struggle to find purchase and gain hope. It is this, to find that singular moment, that fragment, that glimpse that becomes the key that unlocks the gate into the garden of impassioned understanding free from convention and traditional thinking.

Angelic warriors, ancestors, those who have gone before, line up to offer solace, a shimmering glance of hope; a piece of illuminating light. This is the gift offered and one received. This is the purchase found that gains us balance as we continue upon this ascended path.

It is in this act of transcending that common value, of stepping outside of the humaneness, rejecting the chaos that surrounds and consumes us, even for brief moments. In this we find a quiet strength and a glimmer of the truth that we hold inside.

December 6, 2013

The next step is to frame this piece so I can see it as it will be when finished. Then after long hours of contemplation finish the glazing even as I begin the next canvas.

JDW

Transitional Spaces: 12.1.13: Part 2

I have been painting now on the painting for over two weeks and here is the next photo:

From my journal:

She sits, stunned into deathly silence, hands between tightened thighs, kneeling upon shimmering floor strewn with hopes alive. Pensive, head cocked slightly towards a sound not heard, her eyes travel upwards and ponder what lies ahead.

Spirits fly upon the night and whisper keys to open locks…locks locked tight.

In the distance 3 figures silhouetted by fires back lit in arched grove of which wonders framed. One holding the other in comfort-like mother to child while the second reaches out in shocked silence.

The night dances with spirit shapes. Time no longer relevant or linear. Nothing makes sense and all is chaotic. Yet…the figure remains in prayerful pose, contemplating, almost there, almost cognizant of purpose known.

October 31, 2013

How to find purchase within these words and transform them into paint, that is the quest each day as I struggle to comprehend how these disparate shapes will unify into a whole. This is the greater struggle within my painting world. To trust that inner voice and where it will take me, confident in my hands need to lay paint stoke upon stroke until out of this dense language form is revealed. 

Transitional Spaces: 12.1.13: Part 1

Time seems to have just flown this year of transition, 2013. Here we are in the last month before the page turns and we usher in new hopes as symbolized by the turning of the calendar. Another year escapes our grasp.  As I look around I see how time has taken us prisoner, turning us away from quiet thoughts as we are now in constant contact, always in demand. A product of advances technologically, which we eagerly embrace, but at what cost if in the process we get swept away and lose our selves in the process?

The difference between my studio in Montana and Chicago is the relationship I have with this chaos of constant contact and the press of time.  Now that I am back in Chicago, going on two months, I find this constant need to isolate and find long, uninterrupted hours to be another battle to contend with. It is not enough to push and find purchase within the studio, within a given painting; I now have to fight against those outside demands in a way that is absent in Montana.

I know that this is a struggle we all face within our daily lives of work and family.

For an artist, especially as we get older and the body does not take as kindly to the abuse of stress and lack of sleep, I find that quiet and deep isolation become more and more important. To be able to tap into consciousness at a deeper level it is so important to look within, to not get caught up in chaos, to observe and witness.

I came back to a studio in Chicago devoid of prepared canvases and spent the first two weeks building, stretching and priming 12 new pieces ranging in size from 2’x3’ to 8’x6’ before I had to shift gears and prepare for the studio opening and unveiling of the book on October 19th.  After the opening I began two new large canvases:  

                                                      68"x80"

84"x60"

Beginning new work is intense in itself as once I begin applying the turpentine washes I don’t stop or take a break until they are full, rich and dripping in paint. It is a dance of movement and abandon. The layering of colors on top of colors without intellectual thought, a process that can last over 10 hours or more.

If I have prepared properly with an idea and drawing I can just be totally in the moment without regard to whether the painting that begins to emerge is like the drawing.  In a deeply satisfying way it is a transcendent movement, a waking meditation, an almost out of body experience.

It is within this mezmerizing process that the pure essence of creativity unfolds.

I now have been working on the oil on the right for a month and will begin to share a series of post as this painting progresses. 

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.

Looking Within: a series of Three: Part 2

Looking Within: a series of Three: Part 2

The 2^nd and 3^rd 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?

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.