'Time of Recompense' by Ai!R

I am a fan of Ai!R, a Russian composer and musician, who I discovered on Jamendo. As I listened to his latest offering, while working on a piece for painting, in the deep night, I wrote images for each of the three tracks:

1)The Time of Recompense.
Like a massive, slow procession of cumulonimbus storm clouds moving slowly and ominously over the mountains, unstoppable, a dirge, funereal.

2)Lullaby for Shadows.
Slashes of sunlight tearing the clouds which gracefully part like curtains to reveal the stage, a grand stage of all life. The artist is playing the music of the grand story of the tableau of life with the tenderness of a lullaby.

3)Escape.
Strings, action. The inner workings of the organ in the silent night. An audience of souls. Ghosts dancing as the heart remembers love, joy, fullness.
Glory. Steady, majestic dance building tonal waterfalls, crests of waves of notes, golden shining through.
Increasing radiance.
Pure love in the final magnificent dance. Rich, timbre echoing to the steady heartbeat of chords until the last ray of sun sets.
The artist gives the gift of his music to celebrate the drama, the gift of life, a recompense. This love partakes.

                                                

Shaman

'Shaman: Reflective Face,' 2009, 13"x16"; 33cmx41cm;
India inks, oil pastels, acrylic, varnish and dried leaves on archival paper

No idea why I keep working on it - wasn't my original idea or even close (which was some colorful decorative masks) and I don't know where he came from, or why painting his face is so difficile. Because I took him to DOWH yesterday for the alter, and the women said, 'oh he's a shaman!' he now has a new title. Shaman, he is.

(In my original conception one aspect I wished for was cat eyes, not quite but almost-sort-of, eyes that can see in the dark - how else is a shaman to get about in the obscure spirit worlds?)

                                                

How It Comes About

Sometimes it emerges as a gift, but mostly not. More like hewing sculpture out of marble with your fingers as your only tools.

Perhaps there are artists who laugh the whole time they work and who are satisfied with everything they do. While I am mostly 'in the zone,' concentrated, focused, busy doing and undoing, wrecking and saving, there is always a moment when I cry. Anguish. It might be before I begin. Or after I've ended. But usually during schisms during.

I'm in the flight or fight syndrome when I paint. I want to run from the image I am fighting to create. I only stop what surely is a sort of madness, painting, by deciding something is finished when I 'can live with it.' And yet my images clearly don't reflect the pain they have caused me.

People who don't create art don't perhaps understand what you go through as you wait for the moment when your painting, or your sculpture, or your composition sings to you.

Until it sings to you, you have to keep going or give up.

Lately I'm simply making, without being serious. I'm doing pieces that are not part of any project. Mostly I am aghast at what's emerged. It's better to have a direction, to know what it is you want to do. To have a thesis.

Yes, even in paint. A thesis is not a direction exactly. Not in the way I am using it. But an overall 'reason for being' perhaps.

Just doing for the sake of doing doesn't do anything.

Unless you make the 'doing for the sake of doing' the raison d'etre, that is!

                                                

Sheets

Harsh sheets
fall softly.
Leaves once, crack in November.
Shellac the face with stones,
I saw this:
a model whose head
pasted with small grey stones,
like you find
on any rocky pebble beach.

Sheets perhaps of rain,
or the ones you wash because
you sleep in them,
or what we write or draw on.

Sheets fall

my walls

falling, falling
like tears.