I had made a lot of watercolors in the 40 x 30 in. size in 1978 (click here for those), had a not too well received show of them then and became bored with the medium and the format.  Out of that boredom came the hundreds of Tarot image prints of 1979-80 (click here for those), ending in February 1981 with a boredom like that at the end of the watercolors in 1978.  How many paintings I have made and how often after a year or two of invention and excitement has come another dead end. 

Several times before when coming to the bored end of a period of work, I have gone back to the imagery stream of the late 1950's and tried to revive myself by recapping some of those old forms in a new medium.  This time, I thought, I will go back to oil, but not with my old simple way of mere linseed oil and turpentine for medium, but with something "professional," like the "Frederick Taubes Oil Painting Medium."

I used a sheet of 60 x 40 in. 140 lb. watercolor paper, made a pencil drawing streaming hundreds of images from the late 1950's collages, used a white shellac sealer and began to paint the drawing in with oils and the Taubes medium. After a day or two, that seemed to go nowhere except brownish and boring (click here to see that).

I turned it over and began "Untitled," February 25th, 1981. Within a few days, a new period of large watercolors began (see below). They would be (I told myself) my success at last in scaling the mountain heights of greatness.  "If at first you don't succeed," I thought, "try, try again."

During the first six months or so of work on these paintings, I kept extensive notes about their development and its meaning.  Later, I wrote a long introduction to the whole group.  I have included the notes with the paintings below.  For the introduction, click here.

The following notes to the 1981 Large Paintings were transcribed (with minor editing for intelligibility) from my Studio Notes written in the process of making the paintings.  I have added later a few comments and explanations in italics.

February 16, 1981 A dream in the night, and another dream in the morning:
In the night—I dreamed of a painting almost like a table with raised, dark edges, square, pointed toward me.  The surface was dirty white, reticulated in dirty black with a dark, blackish smear/lump hole near the center.
In the early morning—We were at the shore of the bay, shallow with sand bars, the water very, very blue in the morning light.  We were crossing from the west side toward the east and the morning sun.  We had to pay 35cents, but I only had a quarter.  I thought I could borrow the money from the young people back in the car (the car was not new…10, 20 years old).  As I put the money on the table, I noticed the table was round, bright in the dawn pink light, and the shadows were bright, too, with blue.  And the toll taker was counting the money, spread out on the round, rough wooden table… and when I awoke, I wondered if he were the ferryman.

And in 2002 looking at the painting dated February 25, 1981—it is the first of the 1981 large watercolors—I see in it the round rough wooden table of the toll taker/ferry man and the symbols scattered around on the surface are the coins I gave him for passage to the east and dawn.

March 2, 1981.  Start on the large watercolors. Why am I trying to make these big paintings?  Because I want to make things like my buddies, and the world expects it.  Is that a good enough reason?  Well, it all depends on how the paintings come out…

But, when I look at the blank paper, I can see four or five different paintings; and also I get tired just thinking about all the filler it takes to get from point A to point B.

March 3, 1981. And so this morning I made a meditation:

The role of spirit in my work is I don’t know; but earth is my mother, and these are its parts.

March 4, 1981. Make the Gate of All Life.

“You don’t need more than that to call the…” 

“More than that” means I don’t need more than the simple, direct, statement.  I don’t need the big, technically complex, time consuming painting, the large scale “Earth Sign.”

March 7, 1981.  After deciding not to work any more on March 4 large watercolor, I worked on it this morning. Found that it was the Red Square.  Now, at least while it is wet, it fulfills my needs for luminosity—and is now, truly, Earth Sign.

…Maybe the March 2-3-4 watercolor has now resolved, arrived… “come” at what it was always supposed to be.  Maybe it was the red circle that was causing the trouble., and the general entrapment in the composition and ideas of the fall 1979 color circles… and the large watercolors of fall-winter 1977.  Maybe the German Expressionist show with Nolde and the others showing the way to accept the straight simplicity of what one is, maybe that broke the barrier.

Title for now: Red Square: Earth Sign.

March 17, 1981.
The Green Man—old, that was it (the little object of yesterday’s dream)—“old, and permanent” was the phrase.

The post in the springtime, and also that painting made several years ago of the Green Gnome [now, 2002, in the Ren Ming collection].

The old Grandfather: The little idol that came down out of the Middle Ages—they had hid it in the basement, in crevices in the walls, in the backs of chests and closets, behind a loose brick in the fireplace for hundreds and hundreds of years… generation after generation as it came down into the Middle Ages from pagan times… the Earth Father, the harvest father, the sowing father of spring… consort of Earth Mother (how she has now been trivialized).

Question: “How did Grandfather change from being a little boy into an old man?”  He changed from a new moon to an old man because he became fire (was sacrificed to the flame of the house) year after year.

This picture is that post that I would be in extreme old age marking the place of the house by the sea.

March 18, 1981.
We must be able to open our thoughts…to the world long gone.  When we see an object, we must open our thoughts to the world from which it came.  Not a dead world.  Only, one that is not here anymore, like the twilight in the Sonoma fields, orchards and forests of my childhood.  And when we paint an object, we must make that place from which it came—and you know, that place is a woman; the world in which we work and build is a woman.

And the reason why this image I have painted of the Green Man is so ambi-sexual, so either/or male or female both in its major shape and shapes and details, is because it is pre-sexual… it is vegetable… not “vegetating” but growing like all plant life in spring.

And I suppose that one of the active, sensory associations in making the painting was that of the saxifrage leaves on the plants last Saturday, as I took them out of their uprooted pile, cleaned and replanted them—and since have watched their slow uncurling from the dark earth into the light.

 Links to all 1981-1982 Large Watercolors...  
 February-March, 1981   April-May, 1981   June, 1981
 July 1981   August 1981   September 1981
 October 1981   November 1981   December 1981
 January-March 1982   April-July 1982

Click here for Directory to all 1981-1991 paintings
Click here for directory to all paintings