Hello bloggers!

Continuing on to Phase 3 of my new exploration in Ireland...

You recall the rainy weather affected my process, in terms of how I painted and dried and stored my canvases...  So when I started to look at the lines in the paintings and wonder whether I was becoming a dictator or a true partner, I then decided I would outline the strong lines, the strong figures in the painting, which were to me very apparent.  So I then put them up—I was working on 4 foot by 4 foot canvases, so these figures had quite some substance.

Then I thought:  If these characters were characters in a play or movie, would they present themselves to the world in this form, or would they go out and play their role?  I decided I would clothe them and paint their faces and hair, to make them more effective instead of subliminal.  These figures were quite big and strong.  I then observed them over a period of days.

During this time, I thought to myself:  I’m looking at these as you would look at a regular painting, constructing them by looking at them, walking back, coming up closer again, in the traditional way artists interact with their canvases.  But the canvases that were waiting, I felt I had to really push further.  So I looked around my studio, found some old paint, took out what I could find, then augmented it with new Windsor Newton tubes of paint, mixed in with my own paint:  azure red, ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, black, and white, and a wonderful green.  I put it up close to the canvas along with two or three brushes, and I didn’t clean my brushes between colors.  I have a pot of white paint that I purify them in before I go to the next color, so things get mutated as they move on.

I looked at the sublminal and defined lines, I started to introduce color within these different spheres, and I continued until I reworked the whole 4x4 canvas.  If I had to leave the composition to find something or to rest, I purposefully would not look at it.  When I felt it was all over and I was through, I stepped back and explored what had happened.  It was a revelation; I was shocked.  Some people had become animals.  Some profiles had become full face.  I had a small figure that turned into an angel riding a horse.

Sometimes things really aren’t as we think they are; change is possible.  The human animal, possibly, can go from a lying, cheating little son-of-a-bitch to a wonderful, caring person.  Or vice versa.  Change is possible even within what we’re given.  Can an ugly ducking become a raving beauty?  Can a skinny, 98-pound weakling become a powerful Charles Atlas?  We can be anything we want to be as we leave ourselves.  The great unexplored space is always within and not “out there.”

So the paintings had started teaching me that we absolutely can reshape ourselves—and if we can do that, then the possibility of reshaping our environment is strong, which leads into our world peace program.  If everybody can go from a warmonger to a peacemaker, then we can achieve world peace.  And so as I said in my post about trust, hope, and integrity, the painting is trying to tell me the answer:  Yes, it is possible.  It was another jolting revelation:  The spirits are not only talking, they’re screaming, singing, telling us, “Don’t give up!”

Matt