Experiments on the Easel

Three Paintings-In-Progress

“No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”   

– Heraclitus

I was not painting.

I was waiting to receive some important source material for a big project I’ve been working on—more about that another day. But because of the delayed source material, I found myself going down a rabbit hole of reading, questioning, and experimenting with my paintings.

I’ve had a laser-like focus on a single project for the past two months, but then I had to hit the pause button. It’s a dangerous thing to suddenly become untethered like this—especially if you’re a reader like I am.

I found myself curled up with a pile of books in the corner of my studio—supposedly planning my next painting. And while I ruminated about water, its many faces, and the role it has played since the very beginnings of life on earth, my mind wandered to John Locke’s quest to understand the “primary qualities of an object.”  What? You don’t do that too?

So now you see how dangerous a pile of books can be. Before I knew it, I was digging through old dusty volumes of Rene Descartes’ work, and thinking about Cartesian Dualism and all kinds of philosophical questions that seemed very important to answer. Poor Doug had to listen to me ramble on about these things over dinner, when I tried to explain why all this reading and contemplation was actually me preparing for a new series of paintings.  

And today, well into the month of July, this strange side-track is actually leading me to a new series of water paintings.

I knew I wanted to capture the very essence of water. Not to illustrate or describe its visual characteristics as a camera might—but to use light, color, form, shape, line, to suggest the sensory experience of water.  

Locke divided our human perception of objects into “primary” and “secondary” qualities. Primary qualities, he argued, are those inherent to the thing itself.  Secondary qualities are what object produces in our senses, such as color, taste, smell, sound. Descartes observed that the “nature of matter does not consist in those things that affect our senses, such as color, or smell, or taste’.”

How then, does this impact my exploration of water? Something clear and colorless, with a shape entirely formed by external forces? Should I consider the philosophical approach? The romantic approach? The scientific approach? And what of the changing nature of water itself?

I decided that the way we humans sense the essence of water was my version of finding its “primary qualities” (despite this being at odds with Locke). Because art, or at least my art, is about how humans see, sense, feel, and respond to color, light and form. I would focus on the human response to visual language. I would experiment and explore visual language to try to engender a sense of water.  I would not present the specific pictorial “scenic” qualities of water. I would use imagination to find my own version of the “essence” of water.

So, there you have it. The three paintings at the top of this blog post are three new ways of perceiving water. It took some courage to put them there. They are on the easel in my studio, and some parts still a bit raw, not quite finished, but they are getting there.

Two more experiments sit on the floor—in earlier stages. And I’m really getting into the mindset!

But uh-oh. The reference material I was waiting for has arrived. Now what?