"Ectopics" watercolor series artist statement

I created the 24 6" x 9" watercolor series “Entopics” in Barcelona and later Mallorca between December 12, 2014 and January 9th  The work started with assertions about the inner eye, the optical phenomenon of gazing into the perceptual space between the optical cortex and the back of the eyelid.  While reading from Helmoltz and others inspired the work, there was not intent to naturalistically represent what is frankly too ephemeral to depict and also far from my interests.  I was and remain inspired by dynamic passages of colors, floaters, blushes of passing hues, etc. that are neither entirely “out there” or “in here" but rather in-between.  What I find fascinating is the organic geometry that emerges then fades into the background field.  In trying to focus with my eyes closed I realized any attempt to fix the image would be silly as it would be to assign a field a single identity (blue, red, orange, etc) even microsecond by microsecond as the shifts and passages are subject to eye pressure, light and shadow and no doubt bio-chemistry.  In any case, once again nature gives me more interesting imagery than I could ever invent conceptually.  So what do I mean by saying the work is "inspired" by gazing into the entropic field?  I suppose in part it is in noticing the layered complexity, the transient beauty...and trying to translate that into watercolor by characterization, abstraction per se, looking and working with the natural flow of the medium while checking once in a while, eyes closed, in order to see "better".   To see the entire portfolio click here.

Bracken Line series, summer 2014

Saturday, July 19, 2014

On the Bracken Line (third set) inspired by Siletz Bay, Oregon

LINK to collaborative music video with Ruben Mills: Non-Duality of Sight and Sound

There is a bracken line, the constantly moving boundary between ocean salt water and Siletz River fresh water, in front of our cabin on the bay.  It is often visible as it forms, slides along outside our window, then recedes and grows placid or turbulent, waves on ripples, currents going one way, wind waves the other; brackish waters.  

I am not illustrating, per se, and so in what sense is this natural ebb and flow inspirational?  On a formal level it is about layers and counterflow.  That is enough I suppose but I do think about all of this metaphorically, perhaps more specifically metaphysically: how states of consciousness and memory overlap and are sometimes transparent, often not; how they overlap and co-exist, how they shift and merge, separate and exist at times independent, other times inter-dependent of one another; how the mind coalesces and connects what it perceives to be forms from the soup of experience even as it dissolves.  Visual poetics that defy naming; flux and swell and illumination, obfuscation and elucidation, my brush tracing in process what appear as assertions ,more found than posited.

There are many more in the series (click on the link on the right for the entire portfolio).

It has been a while since I thought deeply about my work in fresh terms.  The old rhetoric is true enough but I am needing new handles to understand it in more accurate terms.  This work is, after all, not purely a projection of intention.  I intend the movements and set-up and then work free of intent into spontaneous sometimes chaotic and often restructured forms and gestures.  The work must surprise me on some level for it to remain valid and moreover motivational.  Do I fall into repetition?  Likely sometimes.  Does it still surprise me as I better understand my impulses, formal and visionary.  Yes.

Pinkie's Last Dance with Eternity, 2014, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 60"

  

October musings

A more formal artist statement is below.  I am about to leave for NYC to give a workshop on collaboration through what I call conversation drawings at the School of Visual Art.  I have given such workshops for psycho-therapists for Core Energetics groups in the past, and with drawings students, but not for academics, per se.  I have been musing about ways in which listening plays a part in collaboration, and the range of assertion-response-passivity that invariably accompanies collaboration.  Sometimes one leads, sometimes both assert (and no one "listens" at all), sometimes there is timidity and passivity and both just ornament each other's marks...that is what I want to explore.

My work is, in a very attenuated sense collaboration with a given ground on the surface of the canvas.  I create the chaos that I later sort out with color, forms and a sense of push or energy moving through.

Los Amarillos, 2013, 24" x 30, acrylic on canvas

Early Fall

In my work as a painter I continue to believe in the redemptive, even convulsive effects of beauty, broadly defined, on both the creator and the viewer.  Encounters that freeze the mind, even if momentarily, allow a glimpse of something larger and more inclusive than the mental chatter that normally occupies consciousness.  In this, I prefer to operate non-verbally in most of my work, allowing the mind to expand, configure and coalesce as it wishes with as little narrative, text and preconceptions as I can.  In this work I am not afraid of or apologetic about a certain organic beauty, chromatic luminosity, what is called in Latin America "magic", without a trace of irony or embarrassment.

For these broader reasons, procedurally I prefer to attend to close-focus articulations across a prepared, reticulated, often textured surface, allowing the brush to register small marks, shapes and contours that define and spread across the canvas.  Even when in later stages of the ultimate images involve figures, per se, (such as in my recent murals) I always start with the granular layer, the marks that constitute a rich field of possibilities the eye might group this way or that. In the case of figures, per se, I use this layer to stimulate what is known as pareidolia, the capacity and penchant of the mind to see things according to its own unconscious impulses in near-random stimuli (much like seeing images in the clouds).  I simply choose and define cells that the eye links to others among millions of possible configurations.  In this, my visionary process is not so much projecting or finding as it is choosing and vivifying.  In this sense I look sideways at the work, waiting for forms to suggest themselves.  Color is usually monochromatic or analogous by scheme with occasional complementary accents here and there.  Like Delacroix and later Seraut, even Chuck Close, color spots inside dissimilar color spots are common as part of an interest in simultaneous contrast, an optical phenomenon that sets up visual vibrations.   

Larger compositional issues come secondary to the granular level of the surface reticulations, per se, but are of course critical as the work advances and develops.   Often, composition is composed of a visual force that appears to blow through the picture, simple geometric  forms: arches, rectangles, ovals, horizontal or vertical axis. Other times, figures appear or conform partly to the granular layer. And so, much of what emerges is an intensification and elaboration of granular surface/textural features that I simply choose between, unify or "cellularize" and vivify.     

The mechanism actual mental/emotional/visionary criteria of this choosing and calligraphy on my part is mysterious and is almost automatic to me at this point in my development but comprises, I find, the particular plastic optic that most interests and engages my eye and wrist as I work.  Intentionality is therefor not direct and premeditated, per se, but rather I allow the image to emerge through many small decisions that accumulate on the surface.

See the Studio Blog link in the side bar for more imagery









MURAL DECLARATION FROM JULY:

Origins, an allegory of creative transformation

For the School of the Integrated Arts I have chosen to paint a philosophical mural cycle concerning creative life, psychological and spiritual growth, passages and moments of aesthetic reflection and joy. I have sought to evoke an abstract sense of music through luminous color passages, patterns of rhythm and a transparent flow of veiled and emergent forms. I have also sought to celebrate the body in drama and motion, including conscious and unconscious ways in which we alternately mask and reveal ourselves as social beings.

Structurally, I have thought in terms of various theaters, stages of consciousness in the realization of the individual and, by extension, communities. In addition, the verticality of the architectural panels has facilitated an interpretation of cosmological ideas indigenous to ancient Central Americans, that of the inframundo below, from which life springs (primarily represented in warm reds and oranges) through the middle strata of daily life in transition (ochers) to the upper reaches of consciousness (blue- green), all illuminated in vertical ascension. A fifth panel in the Dance Studio overlooking the murals is similarly concerned with spiritual aspects of dance.

Through this mural I embrace the challenge that EMAI presents to the community, to become fully realized, expressive and generous human beings, at home with a sense of beauty and expressivity. One need only walk the corridors of this school to sense the will to live in playful joyousness, full of the energy and intelligence that permeates the hearts and minds of young and old alike. Here one senses verve and an abundance of spirit.
This mural is hereby given to the Escuela Municipal de Artes Integradas de Santa Ana. It is dedicated to artist-musician and scholar, my friend and colleague of many years, EMAI’s Founder and Director, Dr. Jorge Luis Acevedo Vargas.

May these murals incite discussion and provide a venue for contemplation for many years.

Ronald DeWitt Mills de Pinyas
Painter and Muralist
Professor of Art and Visual Culture
Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon USA
July 3, 2013 

See the Studio Blog link in the side bar for more imagery

_________________

FROM AN EXHIBIT IN COSTA RICA OF STUDIO WORK DONE MOSTLY IN SPAIN:

Masía amb xiprers a la nit, 2012, acrílico sobre tela, 26” x 36”

LA TRAMONTANA TEMPORAL

Meditaciones Visuales en Cataluña

Galería EMAI
Escuela Municipal de las Artes Integradas

Santa Ana, Costa Rica Junio, 2013

This body of work is largely inspired by a sustained residency in Catalonia, Spain.  In it, I sought to work with forms that convey something of the refined and constructed landscape as well as the beautiful natural environment in the context of the depth and drama of the tumultuous and enduring cultural and political history in that part of the world.  More specifically, I was inspired by a particularly massive 10th Century masía stone rural farmhouse in which my wife and I lived and worked, once the home of a famous Almogaver mercenary leader and feudal lord of the region.  I was also inspired by the architecturally varied forms of the finestra (window) as well as the bridges (pont), both intact and in ruin, some from Roman times, others from the Spanish Civil War, some as a result of military attempts to isolate mountain populations, some simply the residue of time. I was also inspired by gracious Catalán rural customs, such as the planting of cypress trees to signify hospitality, and finally the Tramontana winds blowing across northern Catalonia, downward from the Pyrenees to the Costa Brava of the Mediterranean, all metaphors to me of natural and transcultural changes, passageways, transitional spaces alluding to the stubbornness of life and yet its never ending delicacy and wonder. 

See the Studio Blog link in the side bar for more imagery.