Ride the Wave

In another of those surprise moves that the creative process comes up with - and it does so more and more often now it seems - the canvas on which I'd planned to begin "Strange Pilot" got hijacked by an entirely different subject.

Part of it was that I've spent so much time finding my way through the last two paintings that I found the idea of a fast simple piece rather appealing, but perhaps more to the point is that this image caught my eye and was so immediately striking that I just had to go deeper into it.

Here's what happened. I was at a party with a mix of old hippies and young surfers where the video projection at the back of the stage was surf footage. I've dabbled in surfing over the years but it's hardly top of my mind, so when I hauled out my camera it was to take shots of the play of light around the silhouetted dancers. Scanning through the shots later I saw some interesting stuff but the background video in this particular shot for some reason jumped out, strongly.

So I culled it out, pushed pulled and so on and here's the result as a digital layout.

The extreme simplicity of it is somehow very appealing, but the suggestion of movement in the crashing wave devoid of detail also suits the big strong brushstrokes I've been exploring, so that was part of the attraction. It's interesting too that "Strange Pilot" was going to be an exercise in light emerging from dark, and that's happening here too.

But behind these more obvious motivations I suspect activity from that other mind that seems to have the final say in so much of what I do these days. A big wave, crashing hugely, a human form in the thick of it, riding that storm of natural energy? Why should this jump out and say "paint me"?

As a working hypothesis I'd say it's because that's the way my life seems to be at the moment, and along with mine the lives of many of those around me. Now I'm not gonna stick my head out too far here because humans have encountered challenging times repeatedly over our history, but it does rather seem that something pretty damn big is rolling in.

So. Note to myself. Priority one: Keep your balance. And if in doubt, paint it.

Anyway, here's the first paint as it landed on the canvas. As happened last time it's tempting to leave it like this as there's a freshness about it that's rather appealing, but I'm gonna press on with the plan and go high contrast. A bit too Turner-esque as it stands. There'll be plenty of opportunity later to land strong fresh strokes over dark background.

Meanwhile back on the back plate,the much agonised-over "Earthen Moon" and I seem to have made peace. The she-being has been given the dark mysterious core that seems to be her nature, and in doing so I've come to realise that what we have here is not an image of a woman but in fact a woman-shaped cutout looking onto something like galactic space.

This is in fact an unconscious realisation of what I'd thought to do when painting "3 Dreams", but at the time I didn't know how to do that without getting lost in the obvious and the corny. I'm not entirely convinced I'm in the clear as far as that goes, but I think - I hope - I'm out of the danger zone.

Still. Dreams, it seems, will have their way. Dreams of she-beings. Dreams of waves.

In dealing with each - keep that balance.