The Kaleidoscope Of Raw Reality

Featured image: Kaleidoscope Of Raw Reality: We Are So Small – Northern Lights

The ever-changing kaleidoscope of raw reality, when I begin a painting, would be overwhelming except for my ability to take the kaleidoscopic abstractions of flowing paint and pick out the parts in this flowing paint and put things back together again. Abstraction is real in the kaleidoscope of life and creating ourselves from the jumble of perceptions and sensations we receive every day.  For me, the jumble of life and all of its parts are like creating myself as a work of art.  I take all the jumble of perceptions and sensations and sort them out then the“me” emerges. The same thing happens in a work of art 90% of the time.  But the work I just finished, “We Are So Small – Northern Lights”, I began the usual way that I begin my work with watercolor washes.  As the colors began to flow, and then they dried, I found I just didn’t want to do anything else with the work.  The vastness of the flowing colors was able to make a statement without me.  Sad as I was, and hard as it was for me as the artist to take the parts of this kaleidoscope and work with them, the creator in me said, “It is finished.”  With this painting the abstraction was enough.