Category: Inspiration

Packing Up the Red Branches

6/28/2013

Red Branches Silhouette Watercolor Painting

In packing up the studio yesterday for the upcoming move to the SW I ran across this lovely painting Ariana did a number of years ago during a trip to Bainbridge Island. It is a large watercolor portrait of the detritus around the studio we were using during our visit, and will now be part of the wistful record of Pacific Northwest flora we'll undoubtedly pine for when living in the desert.

This silhouette-based work has been part of a collaboration we've done in the past. As I've already created close to two dozen panels for a future iteration of this project it will be interesting to see if a new landscape inspires a similar approach.

Synchronicity Exists

11/30/2012

Amidst the sodden woods, and in the hours I'm left to my own thoughts, ley lines begin to unwind from the seemingly disparate list of experiences past and preoccupations present. I pick up a book to find it explains elements of the paintings I'm working on that I could not articulate. I dally over an article online only to have it lead me back to theosophical ideas that were the essence of my professional career for years. And I stumble upon the following distillation of esoteric thought by French scholar Antoine Faivre on the same morning that I literally see the silver behind reality; just as I so often imagine it in my studio work.

Correspondence: Everything in Nature is a sign. The signs of Nature can be read. The microcosm and macrocosm interplay. Synchronicity exists, and can be found as signs from Nature and may lead to the understanding of the divine.

Nature is Alive: It is not just correlations between pieces of matter. It is a living entity that will, and does, surge and evolve through its expanding self, replete with dynamic flows of energy and light.

Imagination and mediations: Imaginations as a power that provides access to worlds and levels of reality intermediary between the material world and the divine.

Experience of Transmutation: The Gnosis and illuminations of self and mind performing a transmutation of consciousness. The birth of an awareness, a second new life becomes born.

Practice of Concordance: Primordial Tradition. Studying traditions, religions etc. seeking the common one Root from which all esoteric knowledge grows.

Transmission: Master-Disciple, master-Initiate, initiation into the Occult.

It is the first three points that interest me most (although I've included the other three as well) as I develop, perhaps for the first time, a more prolonged experience of the natural world. To see the signs in nature may require an act of imagination, or an expression of faith (or some fine amalgam of both), but there is a very long heritage for this that stretches back to man's earliest time when there was no distinction of nature as other or man as more.
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"Theosophy." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 Nov 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy>

Danse Macabre

10/27/2012

Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut

An excellent article regarding the relationship of dance (and its employed Eros) and death appeared in the Guardian today. . . soldier through the first paragraph and you'll be rewarded with some excellent analysis of the danse macabre, including the supposition that the x-ray instantly became a new form of memento mori for the modern era, and some exploration of examples in literature where the masques and ballroom antics of the elite are especially fecund ground for Death's harvest.

Read the complete article here. . .

Reading List

10/1/2012

What books shall one take on a creative retreat? Growing up in a household with two librarians, it stands to reason that this might be the first item addressed when planning for some quiet time among the evergreens. Below is the list:

My Antonia | Willa Cather
The Spell of the Sensuous | David Abram
Holy Bible (NRSV)
American Visions | Robert Hughes
The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar WIlde
The Book of Common Prayer
The Gift | Lewis Hyde

Some are to reference and some to inspire. Some are there as a reward for waiting so long and some to make good on my claim of being the type of friend one might want to have.

No Poor Indifferent Place

9/13/2012

"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place."

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (Letter One)

Ólafur Arnalds Living Room Songs

10/9/2011

In 2009 contemporary Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds created a composition a day over the course of a week collectively called 'Found Songs.' This suite of compositions has accompanied me more in the studio than perhaps any other, and I can safely attest that these songs have become intrinsically linked with a sort of pensive luminosity that has taken hold in much of my recent imagery.

To my great excitement, this past week Ólafur released a collection of new songs for free download called 'The Living Room Songs.' They also contain moments of aching beauty and are available (for now) at:

http://livingroomsongs.olafurarnalds.com/

Pythia's Prospect

8/5/2011

Jeffrey Baker, Pythia's Prospect

Pythia's Prospect
acrylic, toner, conté crayon, and wax on panel
6.75" square, 2011 — $330

What began as a process experiment took on a peculiar gravity as I proceeded to obliterate, and then bring back, the wind strewn hiss of a geyser.

I will make the assumption that the source material is from Yellowstone, but that is my default answer for any photo I own that contains geysers (and yes, I have found many more than one such image). Nevertheless, it was the thought of someone holding their head over such a noxious orifice to obtain insight into the fickly nature of gods that most captured my imagination.

Hence the (rather heavy-handed) title.

SCRAP

7/14/2011

I guess if you're inclined to believe the LA Times or the Travel Channel website, then the place to visit in Portland is Voodoo Doughnuts. You see travelers in the Portland airport carrying the tell-tale pink boxes in lieu of actual carry-on luggage. In fact, while sitting at JFK airport in New York two weeks ago I saw a box of Voodoo being lovingly nudged through a disgruntled throng of morning commuters. And while I think Voodoo might say something truthful about Portland culture, I suspect it doesn't actually say much that is essential about Portland.

If you want the essential Portland destination then I would refer you to SCRAP.

SCRAP sells recycled bits of detritus that its received as donations. While that may sound like countless other non-profit retail outlets you can think of, the big difference is that SCRAP sells its stuff (for lack of a better word) at ridiculously low prices. It's goal is to put art fodder in the hands of the masses, and it succeeds admirably. The clientele is actually eclectic, not just hipster-eccentric (although they find their way there too). I've watched people in SCRAP find objects that they immediately love— maybe they love them for their potential to be something else, or maybe they just love them for their living room. SCRAP appeals to the thrifty, the creative, and the curious: all of which are part of the spiritual core of Portland. When I buy things at SCRAP I linger over them and revisit them and treat them like the bits of treasure that they are, and I can do that without ever suffering from acid reflux on their behalf.

Yesterday, SCRAP had an entire bin of 11" x 14" fiber and RC prints (in black and white as well as color) that a photographer had relinquished from his archives. Undoubtedly he'd gone digital. While many of the prints were product shots or early-90's big-hair studio lighting stock photography there were a few quieter gems: a muzzy black cat pawing across a linoleum wasteland, and a flock of birds creating a cloud of punctuation in the sky. Each cost a dollar.

In a small tub next to them there was a small stack of images labeled MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY. I picked out half a dozen and then happily plunked down my two quarters. It intrigues me that in a digital world some of the finest and cheapest images I've encountered in months are printed on paper using very expensive imaging equipment. Obviously, that is a bit of circumstantial irony, which carries a lot more bite in Portland than fabricated irony.

The Clouds of Opulence

6/16/2011

Decadent Decline
acrylic, leafing, toner, and wax on panel10.5" square, 2011 — $450

Where does the allure of the chandelier originate from? Do we all fancy ourselves deserving of more elegance? Does sophistication come before, or after, the attainment of Venetian crystal?

While visiting Italy a few years ago I was struck by the sheer ubiquitousness of chandeliers— here are a few snapshots to support my claim:

Of course, I'm willing to believe that chandeliers are a personal preoccupation stemming from an aesthetic inclination towards contrast. It might also have something to do with the subconscious comfort that comes with light conquering dark. The chandelier performs this with an opulent splintering of light that asserts not just the presence of a chemical reaction, but the very genius of man's imagination and handwork.

The Act of Disappearing Completely

5/27/2011

The Act of Disappearing Completely
acrylic, toner, watercolor, powdered graphite, and wax on board
24" x 18", 2011 — $1,400

This seemed an appropriately titled image for the final weekend of my exhibit at the Oregon College of Art & Craft. I have heard from a number of folks that they've made it up into Portland's West Hills to take a look, and I want to thank you all for your support.

The Act of Disappearing Completely has stirred up more response than any other work I've completed these past months. In the show it is housed in an antique frame sprayed down with a thick coat of oily black lacquer. I believe that this finish contributes a tremendous amount of additional resonance to the work. It is one of those instances where the frame is designed to be a part of the piece, not simply offset the image.

Originally I had titled this work In and Under, because I was convinced that The Act of Disappearing Completely, which had been kicking around in my head for months, was the title of a Radiohead song. I finally dug through my albums only to discover that the song in question was actually called How to Disappear Completely. If you listen to it, I think it would be easy to draw a few parallels. . .