Paintings from Class. These have been here a long time--just like this, next to the window ledge, on my brown masonite desk. Since 2009 or before--not sure they’re even dated, but I know I painted them on one of those Tuesday-Thursday afternoons in Room 491. (Once you learn to orient by these room numbers, they become indelible. Even when they don’t hold this meaning for anyone outside.)
Like the time a month or so back when Noor and Baylor were visiting, at the house--the three of us sitting together in the kitchen, evening. I’d cleared the painting table, spread out fresh newspaper--like some café in the south of Italy--waiting for mariscos… On the wall opposite, also paintings--not too unlike the ones you see here. Similar in feel… And also on the wall, low, next to a basket with apples, a drawing on an envelope--Noor and Kouros, side by side, their friendship. Also years back. When I mention this (how long the drawing’s been there), Baylor wonders why I keep it pinned up. “Why not? I haven’t felt any need to move it….” He seems to like this answer…
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To open the office door, though, and see these painting--catch sight of them, that is, for there’s much to look at--I return to a certain place. Not literal, in any sense--rather a place of feeling that was associated with when the painting was made. Today they’re a kind of bridge to that time. And it may not even have been an important moment. For starting to work (adjusting the lights, putting on music--getting the materials laid out--choosing where to go with the cardboard at hand--and then that moment when the paint begins to move, and all of a sudden (the feeling is gradual, however) everything is in flux--in a state of possibility. And your attentiveness to this possibility is what makes the painting possible. I wouldn’t call it improvisation--for all the gestures and movements seem guided. Not thinking about what next? More like following a path--a path that in some way is already there…
Many previous associations, too, of course. Maybe the main one here would be the figure of Rivka, in the Tanakh. None of her appurtenances, however--the water jug, the sheep--just a figure, her back turned towards us, standing there in a long dress--looking into another distance. Another time, of course, but again, it’s the feeling of time, which would be hard to pin down.
Read this morning about a book on Edvard Munch, by Karl Ove Knausgaard--he writes about how difficult it becomes to describe these painting feelings in words, even as they’re so evident to him in front of the work. A good posing of the question…
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Daniel Newman, a painter friend from New York, who visited the studio when I was in downtown Oakland. Must have been 1982-83, and some of the smaller oil “doubles” were there on the wall. Oil on one horizontal canvas, but painted in two halves.Two halves joined by the way the colors and tone and form worked across the vertical divide. Avraham, I think we were looking at. (On the cover of an early Tikkun, which I always liked.) Daniel looked for a long time, then offered a comment: “Like someone remembering someone…”
Meaningful to me, the way he said it, and maybe most of all because he cast the comment in terms of the figures…
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Above, in the photograph. A shell, a small stone, a bit of eucalyptus… I’ll be moving them soon, no doubt--but they’ll also be in place for ever...
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