The act of painting has become a silent meditation within the ways of long looking between brush strokes. My mantra “what if,” the few forms, developed by drawing, follow a process similar to the painting to be, the difference being the addition of color.

Where did they come from, these somewhat bland shapes? Truly from feeling a rightness of position, a position of the space (two dimensions) they now measure so that some inner sense of rightness could manifest. What are they? A discovery—unexpected, not sought but cherished when found.

And then the deeper meditation starts. The long intervals of looking for the way by which the possible discovery can become more realized without moving away from the mystery of- don’t know. At times it seems as though every instinct wants it to become familiar, to look like the previously known and named—but I resist.

It starts. What color? How can you give a particular color to what has never been before? The years of searching to discover within the infinite variety of nature’s light what can feel as most right and expressive of one’s true nature, is now called upon. All the emotions that color suggest must have been experienced, and all but those relating to the creation of that wonderful diffused luminous beach light rejected.

So the first separation by color is stated, and must by the very nature of this beginning be somewhat arbitrary. There will occur however a constant shifting of position on the canvas. I sit. The contemplative looking. The desire to be informed, the questioning. Can this be the start of rightness, what if I changed the color in subtle ways, what if I changed it dramatically, what if I changed the shape itself containing the color, what if I made the shape thinner?

To do so would call for adjustments throughout the surface as each so-called shape shares a common boundary with all that it seems to be next to. Whatever the shape was in line becomes drastically altered once color destroys the unity created by line alone.

As nothing is fixed at this point the tendency might be to leave it as it is, especially so that whatever color is added next will alter all that was previously felt. Usually, I do, but sometimes the color feels so wrong I have to change it.

For many of you reading this you may be feeling that starting a painting in the ways of a chess game is loony. Perhaps. I in the past have wanted all to happen with greater spontaneity, but to do so leads for me to results that seem to please nearly everyone but myself. The reason seems to be related to the unlikeliness of the kind of pure color I love emerging. Too much about such work is unclear— although I do not deny its appeal. I’m after something different. As the process being described goes forward, brings the possibility of penetrating more deeply into the richness of what it moves towards, the more definite act of discovery.

I have thought, how can one possibly give exacting reality to what has never been before? How to go beyond suggesting what it might become (most love this) to knowing. The form, in relation to all, informs you, but such secrets are given only to those who care enough. All along the way the usual temptations are offered, not exactly as dazzling sensuous maidens, but perhaps more as forms sensationally beguiling within themselves, but ruinous to the whole. Suggestions are constantly before one. “follow me“ is always accompanied by the previous known, and quickly causes one to become confused. It looks real enough at first but can, if not recognized as an imposter, ruin the possibility of clear innocent vision. Such vision comes from scanning the two- dimensional field of energy in such a way that one can see what is really there and not what the clever mind would have you believe. How awful to believe that you have done something real because the mind has told you so. Sometimes when one has long forgotten what prompted the creation of a certain aspect of the painting (or the whole painting), you see what really occurred and not what you thought did.

Always the not knowing, and finally discovery.

One further thought: I do not think a bland form having any particular meaning in itself, could ever become infused with the openness of color’s potentially complex energy, if it should exist alone. The inspiration or passion necessary to realize it as something that lived within the usual complex visual reality would be missing. It is only when its relationship to all other forms, or one other form, is clearly sought that the intense interaction starts.

My vision wishes for the constant interchange between form and space. First, looked at in one way, it is form that it exists within openness (space) but it is also openness existing within the form. Naturally, these are not rules rigidly carried out, but rather an attempt to explain how the richness of color comes into being as a sensitive response to such needs—and many more. It is never used in a decorative way. How simple it all would be if it were.

Finally, I want the end result to be warm and natural in its total unity— human, clear, and seemingly a quite simple expression.