Messes And Masterpieces - Flow Knows No Bounds
Original fluidism paintings appearing in these pictures are each 9 x 9 inches, art acrylics on archival paperboard, created in 2004, currently not mounted and not framed.
Nature's Way
Toss a cup of paint against a wall. Watch it splatter and run. Is it a mess or a masterpiece?
For the universe, it is neither. It is a fluid dynamic event – a form in substance, a substance in flow, and the inescapable way of all cosmic creation. At what place in this cosmic way we judge something as a masterpiece is a peculiarly human vantage point.
Mortality Is The Measure
We assess masterpieces within the boundaries of human perception, in relation to human anatomy and mortality. The limits of our anatomy impose limits on our ability to resonate with fluid rhythms that are ubiquitous. Only in specific contexts, therefore, do we feel peak sensations. If we can preserve some reminder of these peak sensations and hang it on a wall with no further disturbance to its supporting substance, then we have made a memorable artifact to sustain this label, “masterpiece”.
But again, the universe knows no masterpieces. It has no mortality. It goes on forever. Its every action is potentially creative and destructive at the same time.
All Is Art Ultimately
On the grandest scale, all events are artful and significant. The canvas of reality is infinite, so trickles that might seem ugly in the finite flicker of a human lifetime become veins of beauty unseen long-term. A mess in one moment might amount to a monument in a far distant time, because when the mess dissipates, it extends ethereal tendrils over the longer time, and these tendrils become root causes of some future beauty.
I have seen this truth unfold on a miniscule scale, in the making of my fluidism paintings. When I first pour fluids, a beginning ugliness offers little hope that marvelous things are to come. The first phase of my painting is, in human terms, “a mess”. Then something unexpected happens – out of this original ugliness, beauty is born.
If I wait too long or manipulate too much, then the beauty disappears – it recedes back into the greater flow that is no longer in accord with our peculiar aesthetic senses.
Pour, Shake, Create
Beauty does not always happen when I try to make it. Sometimes, however, motion stops perfectly, substance dries just right, and here I find a little masterpiece of nature with which I am a collaborator. Sometimes I darken or highlight sparse impressions too faint for eyes to realize at first glance. Sometimes I add completely new forms, because a composition asks me to. In these instances, I am not an artist alone, but a partner with the cosmos.
I paint as a greater entity painted me – call it “God” or simply “Being”. He/she/it is always moving, always growing and dying in cyclic continuity – a boundless possibility, never started, never ending, flowing eternally.
