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#4 May 2010

Acrylic on paper with collage, 40 x 27 inches.

Scroll down for the painting and notes,
Click the thumbnail for a larger view.


 

 

From my studio notes about making this painting....


Source images for #4 May


"White Stag," the source image for #4 May.
Watercolor and pencil on paper,
9 x 12 inches.

 

The origin of #4 May comes from the bottom left watercolor--"White Stag"-- in the set of eleven from the 1958 "From one ear of good corn" group on the studio wall.  (The color is so different because the images were made 10 years apart in different places with different lights and cameras .)

The text on the "White Stag" watercolor is…
"
White Stag is cock: a beating heart whence two green branches grow. I give her white doves, she gives me white stag: cock tempered and true, a beating heart crowned with horns: the growing green branches.

 And just below, the sign for the Fountain of the Waters of Life.

                                                   *

From my Studio Notes about #4 May 2010...
May 24, 2010.
Lac Ouareau, night.
Make #4 May 2010 from the White Stag image.


#4 May 2010.
Acrylic on paper.
40 x 27 inches.
 

May 25, 2010.
Lac Ouareau, late afternoon.
Well, the painting’s here, but it’s not. Get rid of those nothing gray/black blots above the White Stag image by adding a black rectangle (the death sign) with red dot (the life sign) in its center. Life continues, and I am still a White Stag.

I always wanted a base for the heart. In most of this group of 1958 watercolors, the need was obscured by text. #4 May has no text and so now it needs a base At the base of the White Stag/Heart add a dark red disk with white dot—the conception. Now the painting shows my whole life cycle, conception to death, centered on one of the sign-sigil-talismans I found to live by half a century ago.

May 25, 2010.
Lac Ouareau, night.
Look at #4 May. It is as solid as a rock. Nothing to take away, nothing to add. But maybe tomorrow, to make another work now from the stuff of then.

And whatever, these are not made for the art world, only the life world. Not for art critics building reputations for first to find the new (new what?), but for people seeking how to live—not to live my way but learning from my example (among a million others) that we must each find our own way.
 

 


Click the thumbnails below to see and read about the other April-May paintings.
 

 

#1 April 2010

#2 April 2010

#1 May 2010

#2 May 2010. (detail)

 
#3, May 2010.

#4 May 2010

#5 May 2010
 

 


 

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