On Oct 23, 2008, at 11:56 PM, GEOFF CREALOCK wrote:
Michael: I have been struck with the frequency with which writers
(of novels) refer to their writings coming from their
"subconscious". Characters take over the story in ways the novelist
hadn't planned. Some novelists are suprised at how their stories
turn out. Which leads me to believe that relaxing and finding if
there is something in you that wants to be expressed, in words/paint/
whatever. I do believe that there is room for judgment about the
academic side (good punctuation, appropriate grammar) being applied
to the telling of the story. How that might translate to painting
I'll avoid.
My experience is this:
The painting "takes over" only because as I paint, I make decisions,
which then foreclose some options and open others. The "direction" of
the painting comes from choices I make. It doesn't come from my
subconscious--but sometimes it comes from the part of my waking mind
that I'm not attending to at the moment. My conscious mind works in
very associative ways; focusing concentrates the associations in a way
that leads to decision, limit, and closure, which are a good thing
when openness is merely indecision or the postponing of choice. And
relaxing, which you mention, sometimes allows my mind's reconnaissance
patrols to stumble across a remote connection or small node and bring
it back into my main focus.
With painting, I long ago learned the lesson that planning and
predicting and plotting out things according to rules and canons, as
useful as that could be, never matched what appeared on the canvas. As
soldiers say, the best plans fall apart the moment the fighting starts.
I rarely think of anything I do as coming from a need to "be
expressed." I paint and draw because I really like to do that, it
pleases me, it engages a lot of interests I have and it satisfies me.
I have never felt the need to tell anything in a painting--and I have
rarely painted a "message" painting (I can think of only two in the
last twenty years, and another two that I "retrofitted' a message
onto). But I have always felt the desire to show things, namely, what
I painted. "Here, look at this." Basically. More like, "Here, look at
this. I really like it and I hope you do, too."
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
