What is the title of his painting I ask myself. I look at it and think–What have I created here in this work? What is going on with all the shapes and layers and marks that form this composition. Where was I when I started it, and where did the process take me? I ask these questions to help me name the painting. The act of painting is so physical and gestural that I don’t really know what I am thinking when I paint. When I look at what I have made, it’s a whole different thing.
This one is like a cosmic dance for me. It’s something about the vast complexities of the universe. It’s something about layers of reality that we are not aware of as we move through our little lives. So much is going on invisible and unknown in the world, beyond our everyday human understanding of things. Even colour for example- something we love but take for granted, is an incredible miracle of a thing. We see colour because of the way light acts on surfaces of objects, and how objects respond to the light-causing the happy little electrons in the object to scramble and rearrange themselves, to absorb certain rays, and reject others.
The rejected colours are the colours we see. This is all happening as we move through the world, concerned only about ourselves, This is all happening when we perceive the green of the leaves, the red car, the yellow rain hat. I realize as I write this that sometimes I am kind of paralyzed by awe and wonder of things. So the painting? What is it called? Maybe Happy Little Electrons. Or Cosmic Dance.
Do you struggle with naming your paintings? What I do is sit down and journal about the painting, exploring the experience and this leads me to the title. In this one I think I am calling it Worlds Invisible and Unknown.
