Escape
Winter 2020
Upon reflecting on the state of the world, I have a visceral reaction, as though we have been hiding under cover from a natural disaster since mid-March. I have so much respect and appreciation for the front-line workers who have stepped up during this time. When really big things are happening on a World-scale, it is easy to find yourself feeling helpless and small. The fast-paced news stories are a dramatic contrast to the slow, isolated life I find myself in. With the headlines spinning around me, there was a point where I realized that this slow, isolated life was all I could control.
I began focusing on my mundane chores. My profession allows me the unique privilege of being able to work in isolation. It is in my work that I found escape through the activity of imagination and creation. I poured myself into my studio and tasked myself with creating a new series of paintings as a way to distract me from bigger issues. I gave my thoughts and feelings my full attention and eventually they’d get louder and louder.
In time, the big, gut-wrenching world news would disintegrate to the peripheral. An introspective microcosm would grow in its place. My individual world swelled and became all consuming.
The act of creating can be a form of meditation, often producing a positive effect on the mind and body. Defined on Wikipedia, when flow state is reached, an artist becomes “fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.” It is during these circumstances, that I produce my purest work. For me, it is best achieved when I allow myself to experiment and paint without guidelines or restrictions. Without planning or knowing what is next. Just feeling and experiencing and allowing the art to run through me.
The flow state is the goal, but it doesn’t last forever. For an abstract, action painter, the mind and body is their most important tool for creation. Alone in this world of creation, I quickly learned that subtle variations in mind and spirit can alter the consequence of the work. Essentially it felt comparable to the way an artist might alter the angle of a brush, or play with mark-making devices, my own disposition could also effect the outcome of the work.
In chasing the idea of flow, I set off with unlimited parameters. This meant throwing paint, drawing thoughtlessly, and ripping canvas. A lot of paintings were made and ruined in the making of these final nine paintings. While making my last series “Story of a Girl”, I implemented cutting and sewing as a method of collage to transform the composition. Now comfortable with this technique, I often pulled it to my repertoire, and used cutting and sewing in this series. But instead of focusing on the compositional elements, I used it as a way to destroy and rework parts of a painting that weren’t working.
At times it became clear that I was my own worst enemy — destroying work just to try to make it better, playing with lows just to feel the highs. Occasionally I did not recognize myself. With limited interactions with others, my petty problem solving dominated my headspace. Ironically, the escapism I turned to in painting, eventually pushed me to look for other methods of escape.
Through the lens of demon-avoidance, I practiced escapism. Typically I would run to the forest for a break, however trying to obey travel restrictions, I limited the amount of physical travel I’ve done this year. Instead I tried to focus on my memories of place. I wanted to paint the experience of a forest trek. In time the palette narrowed in to take cues from our BC forests, rocky coastal shores, vivid sunsets over the mountains, and Vancouver’s pale teal glass cityscape as inspiration. If I wasn’t physically exploring, I would paint my memories and re-experience of a forest trek. One of the small ways I tried to find escapism while painting was through music. It was a welcomed respite to hear the voices and ideas of other people in my closed-off world. It was beautiful to find transcendence in musicians’ work, and I hoped that other’s might find that in the paintings I created while listening to it.