“You pass from point to point, led by its formal lines; you apprehend it as balanced part against part within its limits; you feel the rhythm of its structure. In other words, the synthesis of immediate perception is followed by the analysis of apprehension. Having first felt that it is ONE thing you feel now that it is a THING. You apprehend it as complex, multiple, divisible, separable, made up of its parts, the result of its parts and their sum, harmonious. That is CONSONANTIA.”

~James Joyce

Consonantia
Interference acrylic on masonite
48″ x 96″
2014

The positive, generative effects of movement constitute life. Even in something as fundamental as perception, a thing over there becomes clear because you moved over here. In these flowing minerals, their eddies and currents, the ecstatic bumpings and tumblings are the prime forces painting these pictures into life. It is important to see action and agency as necessary for growth, how clearly our efforts and even our accidents lead to new life.

It is with these understandings that I began painting in this new style in 1999. Spending a week in the dark, I learned how motion could lead to pain but also great success. This experience led to an essay and a new studio with a credit card. This writing became my method, and later the forward for Danny Clinch’s book of photography, Discovery Inn.

When I know where I am, my movements become routine. My familiarity slows me and from this position I feel my moves are planned, creating motion only to move in the same place, not to travel. I have learned the importance of taking chances with my movements. I accept that the majority meet with humiliating err, but a golden few are precise, and surprise even me with their accuracy.

The places these movements take me are sacred. I cherish the pain in my shins and toes as it places me in my travel, giving me an unexpected opportunity to acknowledge my life and these sacred places toward which I blindly stride.