#45 – Tuesday January 24th
I never make preliminary drawings for my paintings. An occasional week or two of quickly executed works on paper, and regardless of the media involved, I think of these “one a days” (as I affectionately call them) as mechanisms to loosen the joints, a brisk wind to clear away the cobwebs, rather than starting points for new paintings.
In my family, I was known as the destroyer of all things mechanized, expertly disassembling any properly functioning mechanical device and promptly turning it into a 
mass of random pieces, then assembling the remnants into who knows what. Less functional than originally intended for sure, but fashioned into objects I thought profoundly more interesting. And to this day I still take apart and put back together, and it’s these objects constructed from parts, scraps, and the detritus collected during my adventures, that beget the paintings, and within the paintings I strive to illuminate the shadows that surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses, and memories*.
Further on from the middle . . . Last week I posted a short video showing the development of one of the new canvasses. I’ve pushed it a bit onward, and the image on the left is the last frame from the video, the image on the right, where it is today. Plowing ahead, it’s giant steps, progressing toward small and quiet gestures, into moments of subtle refinements . . . and then . . . well . . . we’ll see how it all ends up.
Thanks for reading.
Charles
* My apologies to Elie Wiesel and his eloquently articulated truth about shadows. His words were instrumental in expressing these thoughts, words I shamelessly appropriated. A selection of his quotes can be found here.
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I wish I knew where it came from, the urge, the need, to put a particular color down or flowing line across but the longing is palatable. Even after relentlessly going forward and finding an exploration ill-fated, necessitating harsh measures (a hosing, scrubbing, then sun-dried and returned to the studio) the miracle is in the ability to withstand the assault. But this is a go-south requiem, and to knowingly follow paths toward unexpected endings is more than worth the effort. Refreshing even. Put things to right. Some things change, some stay the same. But not so simple as it sounds. So until the next time I make the trek out back, bucket, brush, and canvas in hand, I’ll follow this path, wherever it might lead.
