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May 24, 2005
Extraordinary Bubbles
The painting [the action of applying the paint] is an event. An all moving, all singing, all dancing event [without the singing, mostly]. A shoes off, moving through space, listen to the music, feeling the feelings, performance.
Not a sitdownwithathinpenanddothreepicturesbylunchtime job. It’s an intangible, fleeting, moment of time and feeling being forced into a container that’s too small and almost, but not quite, entirely unsuitable for it.
It’s the forcing that’s the key, I think; that and the container being too small. Trying to fit something into somewhere it doesn’t want to go.
It’s not a job partly because there’s no job description; and partly because it’s impossible. Impossible to put a three dimensional object into two dimensional space. And impossible to get out what I’m feeling at any given time. When I’m painting I feel extraordinary in an ordinary world.
We all of us, mostly, live in the ordinary world – and so we should, eating and drinking and shitting and pissing, sleeping and lying in the bath looking down remembering the appearance of that fist pubic hair that heralded the onset of heartache. In this everyday world it’s often hard to get to the painting.
I create a bubble in the ordinary where I can be extraordinary. The bubbles are hard to generate and take some maintaining. Too often the bubble bursts before I can get in and make a difference. I find it a frighteningly fragile thing, the moment the muse settles. Also an arrogant indulgence and waste of time, whydon’tyougetyourselfaproperjob?, conceit that I should even consider feeling extraordinary.
So many reasons not to paint.
Posted by john at May 24, 2005 12:02 PM
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