Michael: My notion was to convey a notion of Henry, not William, James (I'm
reminded of Shelly Berman's comment that "James Joyce didn't write "Trees")
to your mind.
Re expressing: You're the artist not me. However, I didn't mean to imply
express a verbal or pictorial message but rather that an artist/writer might
wish to convey/make actual forms/perceptions/imagninings to others.
Geoff C
From: Michael Brady <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Envisioning
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:30:42 -0400
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]
