Song (Breathe)

Song (Breathe), a small painting (oil on aluminium 25 x 25 cm) is concluded: Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume, […]

Cogitation continuing

As in, how to continue the Six Persimmons painting now at the stage shown below. I am thinking about how the internal dialectic of the painting might be explicated in terms of it being a sublation. What is happening here has correspondence with Hegel’s term, Aufheben. I see numerous correspondences between pictopoiesis and other fields of thought and […]

For every atom belonging to me

image: collage of the Six Persimmons at its current stage, four different orientations and below, animation across the picture plane rather than into it: The painting’s atoms-like look makes me think of Whitman’s opening line for Song of Myself: I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom […]

Exploring origins

Header image: Omphalos – finding new visual form for Nicholas Gulig’s poem ( links are shown in bold) Thinking about what Whitman means when he writes at the end of section 2 of Song of Myself, …you shall possess the origin of all poems…, I see we already possess it, that origin, it is still there, hidden in […]

Halo

Header image: Oil on Paper, J.Waring Rago, 2015 Extending my previous post further Halo, (a synonym for aura – see Walter Benjamin) etymology: https://www.etymonline.com/word/halo Years ago, I decided that in painting, I wanted to work towards a sense of depth implied by an inner, radiant light one unaffected by the superficial. At the very beginning, I had […]

Aura

Thinking aloud about this word aura, which has been mentioned by Jonathan in reference to Walter Benjamin’s writings concerning Art: Some etymology: https://www.etymonline.com/word/aura aura Synonyms Synonyms air, ambience (orambiance), aroma, atmosphere, climate, flavor, halo, karma, mood, nimbus, note, odor, patina, smell, temper, vibration (s) Related Words aureole (oraureola), mystique, romance; genius loci; feel, feeling, sensation, sense, spirit; attribute, character, characteristic, image, mark, notion, peculiarity, picture, property, trait; color, illusion, overtone, semblance, suggestion, tone and by alighting on some of the above words I can perhaps understand better and explicate more clearly my own work, enabling me to continuously re-evaluate it […]

Primary Field

The following post is a reflection on an earlier draft post I was unable to complete at the time. I would like to share it rather than forget it –   Returning to this primary field: First body completed by Blue Blue is a person? an organ of this body sky of its land   An instant, […]

Becoming itself

In the studio: The painting has progressed and been photographed at each phase. I now have a procession of images – and am currently processing them – I choose this word having still in mind Tuesday’s online Processing workshop (see page titled Processing in this blog) The animation below begins to unfold the picture’s narrative further […]

Animate

In the studio: Painting progressing, I wanted to capture each and every passage of paint so far – which I have done in terms of the animation above. Experience tells me that the painting is about a quarter of the way through but I can’t be certain. Lighting conditions vary greatly from day to day […]

Bound Together in a Digital Age

I constantly reflect on this: The beauty of being able to connect with anyone in the world through the digital (our Skypes chats) is surely one of the great poems of our times – we are all alive and telling each other so, each in our unique individual way – a scenario which has perhaps, the potential […]