Ancestors - India

To speak of Ancestors of to speak of the past in its human form.   

Dad leaving India

An Ancestor Cape I finished this week

All my life I’ve thought about India.  Before I was born my father left on a ship.  It set his life on a course that took him further and further away from his birthplace.  And all my life, even before I knew it, I have been drawing and painting, and crafting a path back.  

Miniature Painting: The Victory of Ali Quli Khan on the river Gomti-Akbarnama 

When I was a very small child I drew meticulous miniature drawings, with battle scenes and leafy trees, looking like something out of the Mughal Empire, without the skilled hand of a Court Painter.  It was like that all through my childhood, sometimes just a shape or a pattern of curves, or a color palette, would bring a little India back into my present day life.  When I began to recognize this it seemed a bit like magic, as if the voices of the past were whispering in my ear.  Very possibly the books about India that were scattered throughout the house, as well as a family trip right after my tenth birthday had more to do with these visual tendencies; either way my interest in Ancestors was sparked.  By the time I was a graduate student in the arts I focused a great deal of study on Indian history and art, even taking a Hindi summer course with UWMadison’s own Virendra Ji, where I flailed through the intensive study of a language that felt surprisingly foreign to me. 

I find it ironic now, reflecting on my personal quest in the nineties, when I was so focused on India Past.  Simultaneously millions of young Indians were pursuing new careers, moving to cities like Chennai and Mumbai, and looking towards a American ideal of the self made man as a new way of seeing themselves and their futures.  While they were casting away Old India I was catching it in my net and spreading it out on notebooks and canvases, creating a visual incantation of a past I had so little connection to, apart from the blood in my veins.  What we were all doing was putting holes in the walls that blocked out the light of our imaginations.  For me the light filtered bits of a past where I imagined I belonged, and for the millions of young Indians at the end of the 20th century,  a yet to be imagined future.  I wonder now if we had torn down the wall completely would we have found each other standing hesitantly on the other side?

My painting: Mughal's Climb 1996 

At the time, focused on All Things Indian, I was forging a path back through the terrain of weeds and heavy brush that had grown in my father’s footsteps.  He had left it all behind a generation earlier and my idealistic quest for cultural belonging both amused and annoyed him.  I was poking holes in the veneer of Being an American - something he had worked so hard and long to afford us.  But right under the surface of the veneer was a richer history that my restless fingers picked away at.  Of course the holes I created were small and only offered a tiny glimpse of the full picture.  They were almost harmless, like tiny moth holes in a wool sweater.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t unravel the mystery of my own past enough to understand my place in the present.  In Virendra’s Hindi class I realized I had less in common with the Indian kids than the Caucasians.  But the reality, that I belonged to neither gnawed at me enough to make me continue picking and poking, until my whole world looked like Swiss Cheese.

Layered Print, one of many I made in the 90's

With all those holes in my psyche it was time to start the process of REPAIR.  And so began a lifetime cycle of tear and repair , that has revealed to me who I am as much as it has made me.  

Layers, Labyrinths and Ancestors

Mughals Dream  1996

I've been so busy sewing cloth lately I can't find time to write, but I have thoughts floating through my mind that threaten to leave me if I don't give them my full attention.  Thoughts can be fickle and needy that way.  But perhaps they are just realistic, most anything ignored fails to thrive.  

I have a photo shoot scheduled and I want lots of new pieces of Ancestry Cloth.  The photos will be taken in the woods where my father's ashes were spread.  For me this is a gesture of respect and honor, was well as a beckoning for energy from Dad, who now exists in the Ancestor realm. 

  

Innocent and Kind  1994

                              

Ancestry Cloth 2016

As I sew I think about layers.  I have painted in layers for years.  These layers represent time and memory and the limits of both.  How we view things from the present changes the image of the past. It is impossible to see everything at once, so we pick and choose the details to focus on and those to cover with new experience.  Which brings me to patterns, because it is our patterns, of thought, of language, of noticing, that determine the final image.

While I'm sewing and cutting Ancestry Cloth I realize I am doing the very same thing, but (at the moment) in abstractions.  Because I am creating these patterns and layers of abstract shapes my mind is free to take them to places unrestricted by a storyline.  They are simply layers and patterns, the ancestors talking to me and me talking back.

Ancestry Cloth, back view 2016

I have also been noticing my stitches spiraling into labyrinths.  So I think about labyrinths. There's the trap of the labyrinth in the story of the Minotaur.  But there's also those in the Buddhist Stupas, a spiral walk intended to center your mind.  These are the labyrinths that intrigue me most.  This stitching centers my mind in a way that makes me think at times I can almost articulate the emotion of this work.  

This emotion feels a lot like caring, and it is possible that it is love.

Adinkra  2014

"Love is the only Engine of Survival"  L. Cohen  (from "The Future")

Ancestor Dress 2016

A Brief Introduction to Ancestry Cloth

I made a promise to myself that I would start to write about art again when I felt like I had something to say, something worth putting out into the world.  That’s a heavy proposition.  Who has something relevant to say?  With all the voices on the internet, in the news and on the street I have been leaning towards silence lately… silently making clothing and art and not saying much.

Now, after much silence I feel that I have a few things to say.  I don’t think it will change the world or anyone’s vote in the next election.  Nonetheless I have had some revelations in the studio and at the sewing machine and in the shop.  Now that the days are getting shorter, the leaves are just starting to fall, the reflection sets in. So, here I go.

Ancestors.

We all have them.  Mine are often a mystery to me but at the same time I am very aware of them.  They are always with me.  Without embarking upon any religious or magical worldview, I can say with all certainty that I know my ancestors walk with me AND I do not know exactly what that means.  Could it be that being in a family that has crossed oceans away from the PLACE of their ancestors makes it more difficult to know?  Or could it make it more poignant and pressing, a connection fused from a stronger longing than any native could know?  I don't resist the areas of “not knowing” because I love the mystery; in fact I love it so much more than the certainty.  While certainty provides some comfort, the mystery is alive, ongoing and always changing.  Without an acceptance of unknowing, all becomes stagnant and dead.   So everything I create must in fact express that belief more than any other.  If I have any religious belief at all it is that 

change is the only constant, and mystery is the only certainty.  

 

And I have a mysterious certainty that my ancestors walk through this life with me, changing me as I change them.  

Out of this belief of mine a fabric took form, and I call it Ancestry Cloth.  This cloth is formed from days of destruction and rebuilding.  I accidentally discovered the process, which makes it even more special to me, because I don’t really believe in accidents.  Sometimes “accidents” happen because we are not present, and missing the signs we misstep.  But sometimes “accidents happen because we are very present, acting on intuition and listening to the silence and seeing the unseen. 

Many of us call this serendipity.

  

One sunny day this summer I “accidentally” distressed  (it was actually falling apart!) some very expensive fabric in the process of drawing with bleach.  The creative and somewhat desperate solutions I came up with to bring it back led to some telling discoveries, about fabric and clothing as well as about myself.  

Because I make the Ancestor Cloth it is specifically a story of my ancestors, and I hope to be able to articulately tell that story in words and pictures in the coming months.  But it is often in the most personal stories that the most universal truths are told, so I can only hope that my paths of destruction and repair are metaphors that many can understand, whether or not they have walked the immigrants path.  After all, we are a country of immigrants, with the exception of the the original Americans, the native tribes of this land.  (And perhaps Native Americans have had to repair the most destruction of all, as it is still happening.)

The final stage in the Ancestry Cloth is the “wearing” and that is, I believe, when the magic occurs.  

The Journey

It's one of many overused phrases in our culture, that, once full of possibility, have become slogans that sell everything. (especially cars)  But... nevertheless... I have to start this post with these words:

It is not the destination.

It IS the Journey.

Here I am.  50 years old.  Still figuring out what painting means to me.  Well, not in every sense.  Not in the deep down in my gut way, the way it has pulled me deep down into my interior... in that sense I've always known.  But understanding the relationship between me and painting and the world, that's another story.

I finished another painting this morning.  I thought it was finished a few days ago, but I was wrong.  That happens a lot. 

Here's what it looked like two days ago:

Not too different, but not quite right.  Quite right is a very understated emotional moment when I have pulled out everything the painting is able to give me.  I just know it, if I'm paying attention.  Paying attention to what?  Paying attention to the painting, while equally paying attention to my gut. By that I mean a feeling deep inside.  A deep feeling that is truthful, not "nice" not "pretty" not what I necessarily "want" to hear.  

I believe Truth is something you feel.  It's a heavy and quiet feeling that slows down my breathing and centers me.  I know it and I trust it.  The more I practice this the more I have no need to react to anyone else's "truth" and, therefore, I find it easier to be in the world without being swallowed up by the world.

This is why I paint.

I looked back at the photos I took of this painting in it's many stages of development.  As it evolved it had many looks, and some are probably more appealing visually that the final product.  Luckily for me I have no longer set my sights on painting for profit.  I'm not worried about what other people want, what would be prettier, more pleasing and more trendy.  What I'm worried about is pulling something out of a painting. Something that is inside of me, something that is in the air around me. Something in between me and all the forces outside of this body and mind I reside in.

One

This is how it started.  A grid and a wall and couple of cats and a man.  He's reaching for a tree.  And that tree, reaching out of the ground, reaching, like the man.  And walls, rooms, spaces... keeping everything separate and trapped and safe.  And a ceiling that has stopped the tree from reaching any further.  It might look pretty, but it's got to be resolved, because I know there's a problem that needs to be solved, a question to answer.

Two

How I get to that answer is to just keep going.  In the beginning I just let myself act on intuition.  To look, respond, look again and respond again.  And on and on again.  I'm in this state of consciousness that is everything but literal, linear and verbal.  I can look back on it and tell you what I did (in this case I defined what I was seeing with black lines)  but at the time I probably couldn't explain it.  Just doing.  With paint

Three

By day three I realize there's something bigger than all the little parts.  I try to pull that out, with shadows.  At this point I thought it might be figure, just the head and shoulders.  A larger version of the little man, keeping everything else contained within itself.  The grid has become an animate living thing, which still has elements of the grid inside of itself.

Four

And then that being, be it a man, a woman, god, mind... whatever that was it has been swallowed up by the parts again, but this time the grid has become an organic web.  This was a really pretty part of the journey.  I wish I had taken a better photo.  I think in the future I will set up a good camera with a tripod and be ready to capture these stages in a good high res file... just in case I want to print it up really large and enjoy this part.  It is a beautiful place.  I liked being there.

Five

Day five, the image takes a radical turn.  No longer moving through the larger plane of the world, a path has been chosen.  The original character, the "subject" of this painting, has entered a new and protected space.  The space, inside of himself, is isolated but bright.  He's no longer swallowed up by the structure of the grid, nor the constant movement of the web.  He has a focus and stillness that was lost.  He is ready for transformation from within.

Six

In day six he begins to see the web that he is.  His own little cocoon begins to form a body and he is no longer a small little man but a little piece of something else that is just being born.  His body becomes part of a pattern, of something larger, something that is not yet itself.  I lost focus for a little while here and indulged in all the other busy things happening in the painting.  All the other busy things are just similar stories unfolding, all at once.  Every living thing that is born on this planet starts out like the first single cell organism to divide and, within itself, discover the endless nature of life.  I felt like I may have taken a giant step backwards, getting all caught up in simple forms when I thought I was already past that.  This part of the painting was a struggle.

Seven

The struggle is not to be avoided.  I seem to have to learn this over and over.  I want to curl up under a blanket and turn on Netflix and think about fake little worlds and dramas that are easy and entertaining. Metaphorically I have done this many times.  And literally.  But this painting keeps telling me this, "Come back,  attend.  The movement and the stillness and the looking and the thinking keep it going, keep it evolving and this is why you paint." 

That little red man wants to stop, he wants to hide and he wants to sleep, but he keeps reaching and he becomes a pattern on the wing of a butterfly.  The butterfly needs him to let go, in order to break out of its chrysalis.  It doesn't need him to hold on and be "strong."  It needs him to change with the other changes that are happening all around him.  Not to be frozen in time, not to be afraid, not to be lazy, stubborn or proud.  Not to follow and not to lead, just to evolve.

Eight

He doesn't let go, he is unable to.

Nine

And I realize that this story has been told, it has been pulled out of me.  The butterfly is frozen because the man could not let go and this is not a happy ending.  But it is not really an ending.  It a painting and it is one of many, I hope.  It is a lesson and I like lessons.  

And that is why I paint.

And our foolish man blows his trumpet triumphantly,
thinking he has won when he has actually killed the forming butterfly.
The butterfly is now a ghostly shell in which he is trapped. 

To be continued...

I'm back... writing about art

I finished this painting today, stopping at a point that I would have not been able to leave alone in the past.

I've been thinking about getting back into the habit of writing about art lately.  I've probably been thinking about it for more than two months, but it took me that long to turn that impulse into action and those thought into words.

When I paint I have a pretty constant flow of thoughts, many that transform themselves into images, colors, textures and patterns on the canvas.  The rest are left dangling in my head, and I often feel like the process is not complete until I clarify it.  It doesn't really need to be verbalized to the world, but why not?  If anyone wants to read it, that's great.  If no one wants to read it, it's basically my own personal art journal on the internet.  

So.  I'm back.

This new painting is my way of processing the recent (and not so recent) events of the world.  The constant conflict, the divisions based on ideology and political affiliation, the wars, the inequality, the lack of understanding, the lack of dialogue, the anger, hate, fear....

The dualistic thinking that has led humans to cannibalize their own selves.

And the compassion, the way some still stay connected, the love that remains, the bridges, the palms held open and the hearts that strive to stay there too.  

I've been wondering if the human family is like a viscous dog, filled with fear, attacking and devouring it's own tail.

I think, but I'm not 100% sure, this painting will be titled "Cannibal"

I like that it's not obvious.  It is vague and a little confusing and ambiguous in content.   

It's how I feel.

I sincerely believe we are all connected.  What to do about it is a mystery to me.  I'm just trying hard to open my heart and keep it open.  At the moment that's hard enough.  Maybe it is enough.  Maybe not.  

The jury seems to be deliberating.

What does this all have to do with painting?  I paint to figure this out, to articulate my innermost feelings and ideas to myself.  I don't think my thoughts are going to be clear to the viewer.  I think it's ok for every viewer to look and come up with their own meaning.   I like to think some vital force in the image, in the colors and the compostion and the feelings that arise from them will communicate something, something close to what I'm experiencing when I'm painting it.  I'm more and more comfortable with that.  Is it possible to misinterpret art?  I am trying to accept this is something I don't have to feel responsible for.  Letting it go is a part of the process.

After painting on canvas today I sat down and continued a few ideas on paper in a simpler and more lyrical way.
Working on illustrations alongside larger more complex and evolved work comes naturally to me.  

All I know for sure is I have to keep painting, and I think writing about it a bit helps me to make a little sense out of it all.  Just enought to keep focused and stay with the ideas that arise out of the work I do on canvas.

And if you read this far... well... welcome back to my art blog :)

Sentience

Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or experience subjectively.   Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as "quailia"). In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that requires respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights, because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, and thus is held to confer certain rights.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

Our lives at this time in history may introduce another "definition" or area to consider in the investigation of Sentience.  This is the area of "Sentient Potential" a field of study dedicated to the very important questions we may be facing in the not too distant future regarding future techonologies in brain-machine interface. 

I just happened upon the Sentient Potential Website while browsing the internet in my quest for understanding my recent obsession with the concept of Sentience.  In the website the term "Sentient Potential" is defined as:  "the potential evolution, development, and expansion of all intelligence and awareness, a concept that goes beyond “human potential” to encompass the entirety of living and aware beings." 

This new discovery on the internet has me thinking about this vision that has sprung from my subconscious in the past 6 months to become the focus of my work at this time.  The connection between nature and technology has once again entered into the concepts I am working out in images.  (see "The Magical Mystery Stones: June 2013 archives: Magical Mystery Stones )

Mind, nature and technology... the Sentient Worlds that will unfold in the ongoing stories of The Sentient Beings.  Stay tuned.....

Sentient Speech

Today it occurs to me that the language of the Sentient Beings has to be poetry

Work in Progress:  "Chances of Drowning"

But I argue, "I'm not a poet."  

Well, I'm not a good one.

I don't know what to do.

"A Pigeon Post."

Just sit back

and listen

In progress: "A Hurricane Steed."

So I try it.

And I think, "Yes!  That's how they come to me!"

All I have to do is let the words come to me, just like the pictures.

"Secret Substitute Smell"

You're Still Talking

"City Jackal"

So I sit back.

Two words, that's all.

Just two words.

Over and over.

In Progress: "Fare Well"

Thank You

Thank You

Thank You