While painting and watching the development of a form of currents, I am wondering about the relevance of a still image. It’s been a temptation to create a moving form, as I am interested in the idea of currents passing through bodies, heartbeats, the DNA codes that drive us along for their own benefit (is there something they want? Or are they simply a blind force of reproduction?), sheer electricity in our neurons and flesh, waters. We are not so much a form as a synthesis of interactions between elements. Yet I felt that a still image, made from gestures and adapted, integrated, and synthesized over time was not so different. It is not completely randomly or internally driven, but a map of interactions. This is not improvisation in my mind, as much as simple responsiveness. When it comes to the body, we have to deal with concrete concerns; gravity, mortality, breakage, and disintegration. Attending to these bodily concerns creates a bartering or adapting to the forces around us, but nothing purely random.
It is possible perhaps to imagine a breaking or a resistance to these elemental interactions. But it seems that as humans have attempted to separate themselves from the fear of their mortal bodies, they have relied both on an idea of a spirit/mind that is separate while continuously intensifying their defenses of the body with stone, metal, and fire to a delusional degree. To the point of suicide.
Would we dare leave the body untended within the laws of nature? Would we dare become her? Though this does not have to be the case if we can be at home with a physical form in transit, in response. Could we call this spirit? This connectivity? Even light, water, and sound respond to laws of physics, why should we be humbled by this? In this way our form in transit, in dispersion, in ecstasy, or loss is a shared expression with all other beings and forces. This is different than the breakage caused by violence against another, which is a denial of one’s right to existence.
Current, 2022, oil on canvas, 60" x 60"
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