Hello,
How are each of you?
Discernment: the ability to judge well
Discernment: (Christian context) perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual guidance and understanding.
I completed the above painting during the month of May. In April, the gallery owner in Seattle requested the original painting, Discernment, for an exhibition she was planning at the beginning of June. Discernment is a painting I created in 2015. It currently is in storage in Colorado. During our April conversation, I was optimistic that I could retrieve this painting. However, as I investigated logistics, it became quickly clear that a flight home and a rental truck back to Washington was going to be cost and time prohibitive.
Sitting on the couch discussing the options, Patrick sparked the idea of a replica. The idea felt alive, as if it had landed in the room, waiting to be born. I could channel my best Clyfford Still, and re-create this painting.
Still's foundation for this practice of creating replicas from his paintings was based on his understanding that the original version of the painting first exists in one's mind. The physical creation is just an extension of this picture or idea in one's mind, and therefore can be created and re-fined multiple times. In 2015-16, The Clyfford Still Museum put on an exhibition Repeat ReCreate exploring this practice. I was blown away. It transformed everything I understood about the Abstract Expressionist movement. No longer was it just a movement centered around action painting, created in the moment as the artist stood in front of or over the canvas. Clyfford Still was working methodically, preparing and seeing the completion of his paintings before he even stood in front of his vast canvases. A replica, in the context of Still, is a painting with the same palette, structure and composition, that also holds slight variations, while remaining true to the original idea of the first painting.
I was up for the challenge. Choosing to invest time in the studio rather than time on the road felt like the more inspiring choice. I began to search for a large panel or canvas and get to work. Through a few phone calls, Seattle offered some promising options, but I was shocked to learn that the art store just minutes from our home, built custom stretcher bars. After multiple conversations with the young man who built them, I put my faith in this option. The time table was two-weeks, but there was a possibility it could be completed earlier. It seemed almost unbelievable that this option was in front of me, so I said yes, build it.
One week later I received a call that it was finished. I went to pick it up with mild trepidation. Could this really all have worked so well? I was elated at the results. Leaning against the table along the far wall stood a beautifully stretched canvas. I put it in the car and raced home to put the the painting in my mind's eye down on this incredible surface.
I got to work straight away, building the painting in a systematic way. As I worked, copies of the original hung alongside for reference. I measured, I planned, and I meditated. The challenge with a replica is to bring the life of the painting along with the form. As I worked, more clarity came. Studying the colors, shapes and forms so closely in the process of re-creating them brought up questions as to how abstraction worked. How is it that colors, forms and shapes can come together to unlock a feeling or emotion in the viewer? How did Still actually work in his studio? The process of creating this painting has lead to inspiration and has opened up a path of exploration that is exciting and fresh. It has given me so much more than what retrieving the original painting from Colorado ever could have.