The painting started off with a visual of the six persimmons, round things. I have brought the painting to its current state and been cogitating on it at length and now see how I can bring it to its inevitable conclusion. The painting itself becomes the subject matter such that its conclusion was impossible to predict at the outset before it had its emergence. This might seem like stating the obvious but it is crucial that now I have this uppermost in my mind as the concluding phase requires a different consciousness to that of the building up phases. In short, I have to reduce its possibility of continual formation physically to zero, whilst intimating that that zero state is one wherein lies the latent potential for continuation – I have to find a way to resolve this at all levels material and otherwise, keeping the idea and technique inseparable. This is obviously not an easy thing to do but I have to do it as well as I can and then let the painting speak for itself out of its characteristic silence. Though no easy pleasure, painting is infinitely more rewarding than easier pleasures are.
The 28 stages of the painting so far are:
About the ancient Chinese Six Persimmons painting – the video below also appeared in a post I wrote just before I began the yet-to-be-concluded painting shown above about 7 months ago.
Additional notes/refs:
The beautiful violin playing of Joseph Szigeti at the beginning of the James Cahill video.
The series of videos with James Cahill visualising early Chinese painting: