Do I really like line, paint, and want things to look nice? I put that in front of me to see how I felt about it.
This painting tests the question. Its single pink line is mixed from the base blue-grey and Cadmium Red. I was surprised at how the blue-grey felt to me, having weight which gave substance to the surface. It had a ‘heavy’ look. The pink line I wanted to be tonally close to the blue-grey. It would be about a centimetre wide, and placed where it felt right. But when I painted it initially narrow and looked at it, it stared back at me, defied me to do more; defiance in its straightness and intimidation in its colour. The effect of the pink on the blue-grey surprised me. I noted a visual change in the smaller portion of blue, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but did, the power of the pink line somehow disproportionate. I cannot touch it again. I like it? I have stretched some more canvases for a series to take the line further down the road. I feel that they should be wordless, like the pink line, something with which to be. There is no need to like it. It satisfies something.
Ambivalence is central to my relationship with this Art stuff. These things began with a burst of enthusiasm in the physical energy of stretching, priming, putting them together, and pleasure in anticipation of what they might become. In the doing, doing seems reason enough. Tension felt in the act of painting a line is a kind of heightening. Stop, step back, and it seems bizarre. I had imagined ambivalence as oscillatiion. Sitting in front of these things it has the nature of discontent for which the things provide no resolution, oscillation tightens, becomes a knot. They began as flat colours with a central dividing line some weeks ago. After a period away from painting I came back to them, rediscovered them having forgotten. Those tedious lines again. I scrubbed paint over them. I had thought of them as series. They do seem purposeful when seen together. Individually the sense of the temporal disappears. Line in an indeterminate colour space embodies ambivalence. Always something missing. This insistent sense of the missing is the motivating factor in doing this stuff, confirmation of what seems to be a need that always there must be evidence of the missing, and the hope that the space will be filled, that the next act might be one of resolution. I am sitting in my workshop. My fan heater blows with the flatness and tonality of my colours. The last track on a Lightnin’ Hopkins CD, counterpoint to the blower, ends.
Louis Armstrong replaces Lightnin’. ‘What a Wonderful World’, suggestive of other possibilities. I like stretching canvases. I like lines. I like paint. I want them to look nice.
