Just now, about to start on the painting. The canvas seems bigger than it appears in the photos. For instance, I can’t reach the top of the window.
For this project I am at the absolute limit of my emotions, philosophy, and optics. I can’t imagine a more momentous project. No one will see it as a text book, but the painting will encompass everything I have learned about art in the last five decades of full-time painting.
A touchy subject is that to master a sublime subject matter, the artist has to solve, implement, and transcend countless emotional roadblocks, like: pettiness, depression, victimhood, pain, internal and external suffering. Taking all those weaknesses and working on them until they become automatized, natural, and powerful strengths. It is not like I can wish for a beautiful painting of love, the splendid feeling has got to be embedded. And then I have to have extraordinary skills to make the painting come alive. [So disappointing to see a figurative artwork, with lumps in the wrong places.]
There is some give and flexibility, over the weeks and months ahead there will be moments I don’t feel I match the spirit of the painting, but usually after 3 hours of solving technical problems, something magical happens, and wave upon wave of delightful emotions wash over me.
In art you become what you paint.
That is why art therapy, with getting patients to paint their horribly painful, unfocused, and debilitating psyche is a complete waste of time. The more they work trying to convey their horrible state, the more they become immersed in it, creating a nasty cycle. And the art therapists should be ashamed of themselves.
It is my hope that by sharing my intimate creative process, you will become more knowledgeable about the technology of the soul.
Michael, Idyllwild, June 27, 2022