We are running short on canvas and titanium. To get by we have decided to control our sizes and only working to a size that will allow two stretched canvases from the width of our roll. The resulting best size at present is 42x58. This actually is something we had resolved to do in any case as part of out new bid to learn colour. It is a bid we draw from Van Gogh's Paris period of experimentation where he allowed himself study after study, rarely attempting more ambitious pictures. We wont be using flowers however and today's work is not really an example in that direction, more of a straight forward naturalistic rendering of the scene from the veranda which I took between lunch and mellis. If there was a purpose here it was to get comfortable attacking the little size and seeing the process through quick as a whip with none too much analysis vis a vis the patient sensations.
You know doing this reminded us of the period in DS2 where we formulated an idea of painting so fast that it became a fight. A knowing thoughtlessness, or rather a deliberate loss on control brought about by a forced pace in the hope that a deeper 'you', the 'you' under pressure and fighting, comes to the fore.1 We were reminded and we felt that we must go back to that but such bravado cannot be a part of our colour experiments as we need to think for that. Once we have a better grip on colour and the paint and canvas are in plentiful supply then sure, we'll take up the machete once more, but look here, old Atlas2 does go on and on but when he arrives at his points there is indeed some truth to be gleaned, some truth in his initially eye rolling assertion that life is a fight and that there are things one can learn from the episodes played out within the squared circle. One of these helpful truths is that a fight only begins when there is the need to overcome something, and the second is that in the process of trying to overcome one acts in unexpected ways, ways that are only called on in the pressure of the fight. Now by painting in a deliberately break neck pace, as Van Gogh did, one is creating the need to overcome and therefore also the possibility of growing through the fight. Can any of that old talk apply to the patient approach of the Aix master? I think not but if we create the need to overcome through fast pace what is it then we are overcoming? The the blank canvas? The motif? If I remember rightly we talked in in the past of getting lost in the process, of rushing into the jungle until we don't know where we are and in that way what we are overcoming is being lost.3 We overcome being lost by fighting/painting our way through. Where is through? 'Through' is realisation of the subject achieved with vigor and furthermore by getting 'through' we secure and orient ourselves to the world a little more. So saying we would do well to ask if this 'through' also helps us mentally, perhaps we could see our DS time in its entirety in this way? Can we even see this in terms of being lost and needing to get 'through' in the post truth era? The latter is certainly something to overcome and we can certainly say that a fight with the post truth era is indeed a fight with the self but this sort of big idea is not called for really. The general idea of working fast and loose again is good for us as long as it is in the context of improvement and with an eye on the colours and that is enough to be getting along with.
More crypto slogans attached, my compliments to your assistants.
Yours
John
PS It's boxing day today.
1. See Dignity Scholarship Season 1, Work 27.
2. Unknown but potentially refers to the boxing trainer Teddy Atlas who has a podcast in which parallels are actually drawn between life and fighting.
3. See Work 27.