Figure with Paws 2014

I'm finding that I need to make a shift.  I wrote recently about my "rules" while teaching at Anderson Ranch, which included not being able to use my normal means of collecting information. I've also discovered that I want to use paint in a different way--that I want to spend as little time applying paint as I can.  No laborious building of a surface, no coming back and adding or correcting what I have, instead, a kind of wham bam thank you mam and if that doesn't work, then I put drywall mud over the paint and start again.  The excitement, for me, is in the instantaneous happening of something that is right, something that happens quickly and effortlessly.

In working this way I have to let go of most control, and I also have to accept that much of the success of this process is being in the right place at the right time.  From having painted for over forty years, it's extremely difficult to paint without knowing what the paint will do.  I know washes a little, but haven't worked with them much, since I've always liked to go back into the paint and work it until it becomes what I want.  With washes, once you put the paint down, you have to leave it alone because the more you mess with it, the less chance you have of it working it's magic--and it's this magic and trusting in the universe that seem to be what I'm looking for.

Man with Dog and Angel 2005

Man with Dog and Angel was recently purchased by Bernalillo County here in New Mexico for their public art collection.  An exhibition was held for the work purchased, and most of us whose work had been purchased, along with our friends and proud families, showed up to take a look.  I stood examining this piece for quite some time, remembering that because of the bearded figure and his possible terrorist reference, I had worried about not being able to ever sell the painting.

However, now, with the painting sold, what I saw was a complicated, triangulated relationship between the dog, the angel, and the bearded figure.  Both the dog and the man are constructed from photographs of the Reverend Dennis, an African American folk artist/minister from Mississippi, in his late 80's when I  met and photographed him.  His world was a tangled overlay of religion, militarism, and paranoia(his antiquated hearing aid probably didn't help matters much). *  The angel's body is made up of tumbleweeds and wire, as are her wings, and while she is looking benevolently at the bearded man, it's not completely clear what the dog is up to.  His tail is up, and he is alert,  not sure if he's barking a warning to the angel, or if he's ready to take a chunk out of the man.  The man looks concerned, but not alarmed, and we are left not quite knowing what is about to unfold.

* http://www.godsarchitects.com/GaRevDennisPage.html