P285 Fossil Find

P285 Fossil Find
24x20" oil on canvas
private collection


Melanie posed for this figure at Christmas. The little curled-up "fossil" is baby Noah, born June 15. My idea was to show biological growth as the patterns on her robe, and the complexity of emerging life. I have been using more and more patterns in my work, working developmental elements into the designs.

March 6, 2002: P285, Fossil Find, the one of Mel, is deep reds, blues and oranges, with her robe in bright yellow and the little fossil in green. I will be able to use patterns extensively, I think, because of all the large plain areas. I am looking forward to experimenting with it.

...I positioned P285 on the easel and began to work up the hair with madder brown. Already I envision the patterns in this one, strongly surrounding, almost camouflaging, the foetus. In a way, the yellow central shape of my experimental abstract reflects the shape of the foetus in this painting. I imagine it as a node of some sort, a seed with venous outgrowths, or simply a burst of growth pattern. But of course to be a real abstract it must only be derived from the idea, not the image of these things, a mental pattern of only imagined workings.

March 26, 2002: By nine o'clock, after getting dressed and fetching another cup of coffee, I was painting in the studio, working first on P285, Fossil Find. I made the patterning in the hair, parallel lines of black, blue, white and red. Then I used black oil to draw two separate bands of pattern on the character's yellow robe; a band of spirals, striped with red and white and black, and a band of stylized lilies, filled with red. The painting is beginning to come alive, the patterns like codes or age rings on trees, or sedimentary layers, full of the patterns of a day.

March 27, 2002: Early morning is the best time, after my medication has taken effect and I am not so stiff and sore, after my reading. I stop here to write, or go straight upstairs to my office or the studio. But the studio is radiant in the morning, with its windows facing east over the lake, and nothing to see but water and sky and trees. The studio is spare and clean, with its various work areas, a writing table with old typewriter, a work table where P287 is laid out at the moment, to work on when I need to rest my arms, the big easel in the corner, with P285, the big tool chest on wheels full of painting gear, the bookshelf and comfortable camp chair, with my tapestry and books of poems for moments of rest, the antique postal desk with its slanted surface, for my sketchbooks and watercolours, and the stereo equipment for playing music old and new, book tapes on philosophy, and CD's of poetry readings. The sun slants across the studio in buttery streaks, warming everything.

I like the studio best when there are no paintings hanging on the walls, just white walls and the works in progress. Nothing distracting.

I set to work putting colour into the pattern I drew on P285, a loose design of fertilizing ovules, looking very much like flowers. I like the varying amoeba shapes, and I was very pleased with the fleshy orange outer petals'.

April 10, 2002: I woke up this morning to the sound of dozens of ravens calling to each other, then a large flock of song birds, their calls echoing and building in the trees. The sun was shining. Spring appears to be on the way. My fifty-second spring, in fact. The snow is still piled deep in the yard, but the deck is almost clear, and soon I will be able to sit out there with my books and coffee.

(In the studio) I cleaned off the palettes and put out fresh paint, and added some more layers to the pattern bands on P285, Fossil Find, which is really shaping up. I want to develop more complex patterns and layers in the series, especially patterns that represent what is going on in the picture, even patterns that tell a story, like hieroglyphics. For this I have been looking in my Anatomica and developmental biology, for growth sequences. The idea fits in well with the fossils, too.

April 19, 2002: I went straight to the studio and set to work on P285, which is nearing completion, so I like it again. As I was working on it, I thought of how the patterns could be used to tell their own story, or form a sequence, as these reproductive shapes do, but have the patterns evolving like cartoon strips, moebius animations. And more emphasis on layers and segmentation within the patterned areas. I want to retain some modelled areas, though, particularly faces and hands. Nothing new there, but something may come of it. The patterns feel right. Thinking of hieroglyphics and pictographs.

Doesn't this fit into the new society, the shorthand of our thinking processes, everything geared to the short attention span, thinking in cartoons, or thinking that everything fits into a category, a prefabricated box. All those advice books, how to think, how to act, how to fix your life, templates and guides for living. Patterns to follow. But what if the patterns take on a life of their own, begin to diversify? Evolution.

Paleozoic Series