So Cal

Posted on November 30, 2008 by pearce

I drove back to Thousand Oaks today, an eight hour journey that felt like fifteen. I arrived here at about nine pm, deciding like a lunatic to get into the studio and paint once I got to unload, which I will start on once I’ve posted this to the blog. Venus and Jupiter were bright in the sky most of the way down, hanging above the new moon and turning the three planets into a smiling face! Lovely!

Amelia as Temperance and the newly gilded panel have survived the trip in the back of my trusty Honda. Yesterday, still under the spell of the green forest, I added some colour to Temperance’s hair, then darkened the shadows under the fold of her jacket so that the leg is better shaped and there’s more definition to that separation. I’ll post a picture later this evening when I have everything unloaded.

A little green tea, some heat and I’ll be a new man.

Posted in Amelia Earhart, As the crow flies, Installation work, Life, Making work, The Cardinal Virtues | 1 Comment

Tao Te Ching

Posted on November 28, 2008 by pearce

Here in the forest I have no means of keeping the blog going unless I get into town and visit a cafe with wifi. While I sat here today, nursing a pot of good tea I met a young man, Brian, who is translating the Tao Te Ching. We started chatting about the Tao, about which I have read little, and he gave me this poem:

 

Learning is the practice of holding on

Understanding is the practice of letting go

 

Diminish attachments a little each day

Until nothing is worth doing

 

When nothing is worth doing

You can do anything

 

True attainment only without desire

 

As long as you hold on you’ll never see reality

Until you see reality you’ll never be a blessing to the world

 

Tao Te Ching, 48.

Translation by Brian Castillo

Posted in Life | 3 Comments

Amelia’s blues – gold in the forest

Posted on November 28, 2008 by pearce

Painting Amelia as Temperance continued, adding Prussian blue to the shadows of her pants, extending and correcting the shape of the left leg, and defining the shadows of the face and goggles. I worked at the hair on the left side of the face, and will need to bring some whites back into that area before I’m able to bring a layer of Raw Sienna into the hair. Some white highlights on the face completed the work for the day. She will need more flesh on her face and some commitment to her hands, which are very rough, having had no attention at all so far beyond the first layer.

This morning I continued to work on the panel for a private commission I have been asked to complete before Christmas. It’s a smaller version of the As the Crow Flies piece, with the birds coming from an acacia tree. The acacia is a tree that has become very meaningful to me, as the tree from whose wood the ark of the covenant was made, and as a symbol of regeneration and eternal life. The tree is so full of life that it has been known to begin to sprout even after it has been cut into planks and used to frame buildings. It may be a source for mannah, as the gum arabic that seeps from it is highly nutritious, and the tree is one of the only living things in the Sinai desert.

Working here in the forest is a completely different experience to my time in the studio. This morning my hands were so cold that I found it hard to separate the tissue paper from the gold leaf while putting it down onto the sticky surface. But a raven spent his time chatting with me while I worked and two deer jumped through the brush on the other side of the valley and I’m very happy to be here. Sounds travel a long way here – a barking dog half way down the canyon makes the entire place echo. A leaf falling can sound noisy. There are no cars, no internet, no phone service, little distractions from reading, writing and learning how to live. 

By the way, the raven’s chatter sounded uncannily like laughter, and I got into quite a dialogue with him. Despite his amusement, I kept working through the cold, and by the time I was finished he’d lost interest in my efforts.

Posted in Black birds, Installation work, Life, Making work | Leave a comment

Fire Puja

Posted on November 28, 2008 by pearce

I felt extraordinarily privileged to meet Lama Pema Tenzin, and Twewang Seetar Rinpoche when they came to visit friends here. They’re from Bhutan, o Druk Yul (the Land of the Dragon), the last Buddhist kingdom in the world.

At age 13, Lama Pema Tenzin began to study traditional Tibetan and Bhutanese arts with his teacher Bhuli Tulku Rinpoche, learning the complicated challenges of thangka paintings.  He is also master of meditation, ritual and chant, with great expertise in the Nyin Thig, Dudjom and Pegyal Lingpa lineages.  He has traveled extensively throughout America, where he conducts classes and retreats. 

Lama Tsewang Seetar Rinpoche is the head of the Sangye Teng Monastery. He was recognized as the successor of of Terton Padgyal Lingpa and the rebirth of Nubchen Sangye Yeshe, a heart disciple of Padmasambhava, by his Holiness Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and began his studies at the age of four.  He is a master of the Longchen Nying-tik and the Chod systems of Buddhist Tantric practice.

We participated a puja fire ceremony that was designed to allow us, after meditative chanting, to place branches onto a fire as symbols of the things we wished to put behind us, or to find karmic balance for both good and evil in our pasts. We circled the fire, branches crackled as they burned and the smoke rose into the clear sky, carrying with it the darkness of our past actions. The ritual was simple, but effective, using some basic symbolism to manifest our need for forgiveness and connection to a universal spirit.

The Lamas were here to visit a three-year-old boy who was recognized by Rinpoche as the reincarnation of his teacher’s teacher. When he was a little over one and a half the llamas showed him objects that had belonged to the teacher, including a picture frame and mala (prayer beads) that he recognized and placed over the head of Lama Pema, which was an action that the teacher had made his custom.

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Northern California

Posted on November 25, 2008 by pearce

I’ve been staying in the forest North of San Francisco with little to no internet connection to work with. I have been painting and have some very worthwhile experiences to share. The conditions for painting aren’t ideal, with little space to work with and the climate slowing drying times down radically, but the peace of dwelling in the forest makes up for it all completely.

 

There’s a depth of quiet here that I have felt in the deserts at Death Valley and Joshua tree, both places where I believe one can be closer to feeling the presence of God, but here the austerity of the wilderness is replaced by the chaos and softness of the intermingled trees and undergrowth, with the slow rain of falling leaves and the rustling of animals gathering their food. The energy of the forest is more vibrantly alive and more human than that of the desert, where we can find simplicity and clarity, but perhaps at the price of sensuality. Hermits have always sought both forests and deserts, doubtless because they felt closer to God in either place: in the forest because of closeness to the divine fecundity of life; in the desert because of minimalism of distractions from the focus of the mind in meditation. In contrast to tales of the desert fathers as silent initiates in isolated caves austerely contemplating their relationship to God, stories of hermits in the forest more usually focus upon madness, animal spirits, and magic. The archetypal Merlin is a forest figure, sometimes resembling a wild madman more than a sage.

In alchemy we hope to purify the elements in order to recombine the four into the quintessence, recreating the prima material from which the universe came into being. In our lives we can hope to find the pure essences of material, body, mind and soul, reduce them and combine them into a personal quintessence that most closely resembles the original Adam.

For many years I’ve studied the movement of the sun and its influence upon prehistoric art and architecture in Britain. I think it’s time to move into a period that is more focused upon the moon. The tarot moon shows an image of evaporation, part of the alchemical process of purification in the reflux tower, pulling the essence of the material into the solvent in preparation for distilling the essential oil from it. In this process the material is left behind, while the spiritual becomes more important. The crayfish comes to the surface of the water in the pool, suggesting that during the process the deepest, most obscured essences of the material are revealed in the solvent. 

Posted in Making work | 2 Comments

Defining Amelia

Posted on November 25, 2008 by pearce

I’ve been thinking and writing about the role of feminine characters in my paintings as I prepare a paper for the Alchemy Journal. Amelia is the most dominant of the women at present, having appeared in an earlier incarnation in Fama, the Aviator’s Dream and now Amelia beheads the King. To me she represents the embodied female alchemical archetype, the sacred feminine, the grail.

Painting here in Northern California is very different to working in Thousand Oaks. It’s cooler and damper, so it’s tough to get more than a couple of layers of gesso down in a day, which is nuts compared to the way I can work in Southern California, where a layer will dry almost completely within half an hour or so.

I worked on the Justice painting, with a poor effort to get her face done, resulting in ill-thought work that I quickly erased after a couple of hours, ready to begin again tomorrow. I’m more satisfied with my first definition of her hands, which are contrast to much at present, but will work well for further layers to fix errors and soften the quality of the skin. I want to look closely at Botticelli’s hands, which are simplified and graceful, and learn from them. I think I have a lot to learn from Rubens too, so perhaps I’ll visit some galleries here in San Francisco to seek out their works.

I’m very pleased with the progress I’ve made with Temperance, who is shaping up very nicely. I did a lot of work on her face and particularly her hair, which now cascades about her head, framing her face. The jacket has had still another layer, this time a glaze of black to bring out the deep shadows and darken the coat’s colour to rich dark leather.

 

 

 

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Head

Posted on November 19, 2008 by pearce

I added a pool of blood to the ground around the head. Right now it’s too bright, and will need to get a layer to moderate the intensity of colour.

Posted in Alchemical work, Amelia Earhart, Making work | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The essence of a canyon

Posted on November 19, 2008 by pearce

I took stone from the canyon and ground it to powder. The sage is broken to small pieces and placed into my blender, reduced to fragments. Tomorrow I will macerate the two in a solvent and set up a reflux tower to pull the essence from them.

Posted in Alchemical work, Life, Making work | 2 Comments

Headless

Posted on November 18, 2008 by pearce

The sword is coming along, based on a fabulous samurai sword loaned to me by our lovely costume designer, Lolita Ball, who is simply delightful. The alchemical Queen Amelia looks dramatic and intentional now, having acted to behead the king, now she has to transform herself in order to join the alchemical king in the process of conjunctio, when the two become one alloy. the beheaded element transforms into the pure essence, which I will soon add to the painting as a pure white flame, placed at 1:1.62 on the canvas.

I rendered the head (a self portrait) en grisaille, ready for development when this first layer has dried. Fast and thick, this work will look good as I build the layers of colour over it. 

Posted in Alchemical work, Amelia Earhart, Installation work, Making work | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Distillation

Posted on November 18, 2008 by pearce

I visited Dr. John Tannaci in his laboratory at the University because he asked me if I’d like to learn more about distillation. His class has been using distillation to extract the essential oils of nutmeg for a class project so this presented a perfect opportunity to see the techniques of alchemy in action. The cooling system was used first to extract the essence of the nutmeg in a solvent with a low boiling point, about fifty five degrees, then set up for distillation. The low boiling point of the solvent meant that it all came over to the collection flask first, leaving behind the extraction, which boils at a higher temperature, so it simply doesn’t change as the solvent bubbles away.

A nice insight into the alchemical nature of the tarot card “the Tower” came when a bung failed during the distillation process, completely ruining the experiment and meaning that the unfortunate victims of the failure had to completely re-do the work from scratch.

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