Sensation

Blasted Trunk K Howell Pastel on Paper 21 cm x 14 cm

There is nothing in the intellect, Aristotle says, that is not first in the senses.

Francis Bacon (the painter, not the philosopher and innovative chiller of chicken) claims that An illustrational form tells you through the intelligence immediately what the form is about, whereas a non-illustrational form works first upon sensation and then slowly leaks back into fact.
Bacon's work often juxtaposes visceral, bestial forms within a rigid architecture, a two-dimensional cage. Primal and urban at the same time. His images affect us as a sensory onslaught, and resonate as we recognise what we are seeing. That's skill.

With this study, I was clearly going for Organic Bacon, in flavour anyway. Strange behaviour for a vegetarian, but I can see more clearly where these studies are going as a Body. When they are developed. But as the analytical part of my brain is otherwise occupied, I have to work at Sensation level for now.

Branching Out

Landscape and the Body
I'm very interested in the ways we inhabit our bodies and relate to our environment.
I see painting as a way of interpreting the information of the landscape through the human experience of the senses, memory, mythic imagination and physical energy. Very much a living process and highly individual. I'd like my paintings to communicate an experience.
I find I work at three types of painting.  Meditations, Encounters and Discoveries. The Meditation paintings are calm and still, based on colour and form. They are simple, less narrative. Encounter paintings are more confrontational and animistic. The Discovery paintings are often based on anthropomorphic qualities of trees.

So, this post begins at the beginning.

People don't grow on trees. Or step out of trees. That is the stuff of myth. Right? Have a look at this placenta. Well. Tree of Life?

I've played with these ideas before (see below), because the placenta is so full of potential. But it needs developing.
Paintings to come...
Landscape and the Body is a huge topic, and has been explored in many ways already. I'm going to look at a few different approaches I admire later in the week.

So, while I rewrite a novel that stalks me with its faults I remind myself that everything is a process. I've grown a branching tree of words, thrown in LOTS of fertiliser with the decent material and now I have to bonsai the wretched thing into something interesting and to the point, rather than an organic meditation on Stuff.

Sometimes you have to branch out and sometimes trim the branches. My problem is my 'thing' for interesting branches. I have a hard time hacking them off, even if I know they spoil the shape of the tree... Pathetic really. Excuse me while I sharpen my axe.