Connect the Dots

Connect the Dots no.1

 detail...

 closer detail...

and another detail...

I have lately found myself very much drawn to connecting the dots through drawing on paper, the larger metaphors for such activity only slowly revealing themselves.  For me, this is the best part of the artmaking practice....relaxing enough to follow my instincts, because they almost always have something to say to me....some dawning awareness about what it means to be alive.  

The last piece I showed you Firmament of the Ancestors from The Pink Pages, had that arching pattern of connected dots in the sky above the boat...each work I engage with seems to want to carry the notion further in some way....so I'm going with it...I want to know where it will take me and what will be revealed.  This is what I mean when I say that I think through my hands and that work itself reveals to me my own thoughts the most clearly.

I'm slowly building the surfaces, scumbling and layering whisper thin very dry acrylic paint and drawing, only lightly covering the underneath layer to reveal the earlier pattern of connected dots. Always there is an overlapping, like the layering between civilizations and histories....always a trace left behind. As time goes on and we look back over events, we often make different connections, see different patterns emerge and yet, there are times when the connections between points are there for life and we draw the same conclusions we'd drawn earlier.  Seeing the layers of drawing is also a way to talk about the fact that, given any group of random dots, the different ways they can be connected is truly amazing and each change in the way two ideas are connected, two events, two individuals....well, it can change the pattern slightly or almost entirely. This life is a dance....each moment could be otherwise.

I've heard creativity described as the abililty to make connections between seemingly disparate ideas or things and I've always found that idea intruiging....finding the connection, forging the connection, seeing life anew through the endless possibilities.

Our weather is quite chilly and dreary this weekend...I doubt there will be too many Memorial Day picnics in this area....but I hope you enjoy the long weekend!  See you at the beginning of the week!