Perspectives
In the middle of the night when eating a bowl of cold cereal with non-fat milk doesn’t do the trick, and when reading some more of “True Life,” twenty-five years of conversations with David Hockney still doesn’t do the trick, then maybe it’s time to get out of bed and start to record some of what’s been going through your mind instead of tossing and turning and looking at the clock.
So what I’ve been thinking about with my own painting is some kind of confabulation of Gary Snyder, Chinese Landscape Painting and David Hockney. Gary Snyder because I’ve chosen to have as my primary focus of subject matter, that which is close at hand, that where I live and that what I know, and for the most part that subject matter has been the land, water and environs of Marin County, CA. For the past two years I’ve found myself fascinated with all things water, specifically reflections and layering of levels of land, rocks, bramble and branches. So that’s my Gary Snyder connection.
I’ve been interested in Chinese Landscape painting ever since I read long ago that some of the earliest Chinese landscape painters would go out to the location that they might later paint and just sit, just be with the landscape before they put a mark on the paper. So that’s my Chinese landscape connection.
And now I learn from David Hockney that one of the things that distinguished Chinese and then Japanese and Korean landscape painting from Western Landscape painting is that in Chinese landscape painting scrolls were painted from more than one perspective to form a painting as opposed to one point perspective that is traditionally used in Western Landscape painting. It’s Hockney’s thesis that the Cubists were painting the way they painted as a means to
paint from several points of view, partially in reaction to photography. Hockney has spent much of his life painting so that his paintings make you feel that you are not viewing the view, but that you are part of the view because you and whatever you are painting aren’t separate from one another. And this is what the Chinese landscape painters were doing. So that’s my David Hockney connection.
I see this is as I see it a very Buddhist point of view, the concept of no separation. I think that seeing something objectively (outside of yourself, like a view) and subjectively (bringing who you are and what your experiences are to a situation) is something that we all do all day long everywhere we go so as an artist the view that you are giving the viewer is a culmination of the external/internal with the eye focusing on this or that as we go through life, not on just one point frozen in time but closer to the way a dream designs itself, taking a little of this and a little of that and coming up with some kind of viewpoint or perspective. And that’s my connection.
April 4th, 2010 at 4:39 am
I find your insight into perspective and your collaboration with Hockney, Chinese Landscape and Gary Snyder, most interesting. But what appeals to me even more is your earnest desire to explain your connection. The fact that a connection exists is extremely important, the nature of that connection most interesting and your vantage point most essential. Your art speaks of perspective as well, or perhaps better. It is this integral connection of your vantage point, or point of origin, with your art that gives it full body. It pulls you into the view and makes you part of it. I am learning that this aspect of perspective applies equally to the art of photography.
Each view, or capture, is imbued with the imprint of the photographer, and it is the examination of, or search for, this signature that compels the artist to continue.