Walking In The Natural World.......

 Yesterday was a day out in nature. My biologist friend invited me to a place about 2 1/2 hours from Queretaro, Mexico, out in the boonies called El Peral, located at the end of the road behind Zamorano mountain between the  states of Queretaro and Guanajuato. We went to the back, or north side, from where we live, thanks to Google earth, where one can look up  and find these remote areas.  We go and  observe, study, take readings, collect, and set traps, mostly for insects, since Robert is an Entomologist, a bicho man. Bicho is the slang word for Bug in español, his specialty is weavels.

Lately we've been having a lot of rain in the area, so a local person as our guide tooks us to see a beautiful water fall, about 80 meters, in a beautiful setting with huge boulders and beautiful wild flowers around, one in particular that struck me ,was in a shade of a cobalt blue- with a dab of violet, an  incredible color .  The person who took us on this magical excursion told us and showed photos  of the different animals in the region from jaguars, moutain lions, deer, fox, and others. Also neat birds,especially a little one that posed and pranced around for us, red breasted with black and the tips of the tail and wings white, None of us had seen a specimen like him, and I've seen lots of birds, as they are one of my favorite animals. We walked thru oaks, manzanitas, pines, lots of wild plants and a runing stream ,on a sunny day,filled with rain clouds in the sky.

 For me these experiences in the natural world, create unforgetable feelings and memories  that shape my emotions and images from the variety of sources, where shapes, colors, lines, textures in rocks, trees, plants, insects, flowers plus a lot more that is there, aconnection with  the Great Spirit- Source is very valuable to me for
it nurtures, heals  and empowers my being, Reminding me we are part of Mother Nature and she is our Source.

I don’t know how you do this; transport me into a different kind of world when I read your words…

I read your mail just before going to bed. I’ve been feeling ill for the last several days and I went to lie in the dark hoping it would wear off enough for me to get up again and answer you. I sat staring at the tree line outside the bedroom window, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, imagining your life and your world. You draw me into such a different place than my own: in a way you take me to a past life I once lived and find I yearn for in some ways…one in which I lived so much more artistically than I do now. I don’t know how you come to speak to my soul so directly when so few others even know it’s there.  I am grateful, whatever your gift is in doing so, for it feels like a rare treasure. I wanted to write to you in the dark.. I suppose in some way I did, at least in my mind. I can’t remember when last someone captivated me quite as much, with such rich simplicity. It has me wishing we had crossed lives decades ago. Yet somehow too there is a natural realization things happen in their own time.

I’d like to show you something.. and would have you respond in the same way you have asked me to speak to you of your work. It touches your point about improvisation being only achievable and attainable through craft. I believe this too.. acts of self-expression do not an artist make… irrespective of discipline or medium.  The works you will read here are all improvisation.. I think it is difficult for many who visit the site to fully grasp the nature of what this means and people are left unsure how to respond for the most part.

http://theshawbackredemptions.wordpress.com.   An explanation of the project is there.. and hopefully simply explained. It should give you some insight into my own artistry.  Someone, an art critic told me I think like an artist not a writer… you speak to me as if I am one, rather than a poet. The distinction I know is a fine line… a distinction none the less.. J  I am intrigued by this.  I feel the pull toward making art increasingly compelling and I’ve no idea why.

When I talk of painting, writing being an act of war… I mean it not in the literal sense of violence  or ugliness for its own sake… but in the sense Picasso meant it when he said… painting is not meant to be decorative, but an act of war. It is the truth to which he speaks that is my meaning.. that art, real art, in it making visible the invisible essence of a thing whatever that thing maybe… is always an act of war on the plethora of transgressions committed in the name of art. Being true to material, form, being honest, meaning having its integrity intact.. not selling out… in many ways he too was misunderstood.

Three weeks ago I stood in front of work of Salvador Dali and it took my breath away…  Of all the works I had seen between the basel art fair and dokumenta 13… there he was… spellbinding, powerful in his own subversive act of war. Paint for me at the moment, even still now, never had more meaning.  He stood out among the lot with more relevance and more to say than any bland canvas of dots or a skinned calf head in formaldehyde by Hirst could even manage, whatever the price some moron might be prepared to pay for such meaninglessness.

Gaugin was wise. So are you. The more I see, the more I understand how necessary an artistic act of war has become… Meaning more than ever needs its currency back. Paint holds more virtue than ever, regardless of technology and code. Pigment is still the soil in which visual language is born: whether it is pencil, ink or paint. I think there is a functionality to digital coding and the kind of aesthetic it is generating… but it nothing more than an added discipline, a different kind of tool. It is neither a surrogate or a replacement.

Less is always more.