Mystic Passage

Mystic Passage 24 x 30 Mixed Media on Canvas

I have had some questions about Double Arch which is the basis for Dawn Banishing the Night below. Above is my first attempt at Double Arch before I started seeing figures in the rock. Or maybe I should say before I started acknowledging on canvas the figures I saw on the rock. This painting also shows the top of the forward arch and a bit of the sky below. I wanted the sense of a cave in the latest painting so cut the top of the arch off and centered the focus on the goddess figure on the second arch.

Mystic Passage was also a "landmark" painting for me in that it is one of the first where I began to extensively use pouring and metallic highlights and spiral stars. It has a prominent place behind my desk in my studio to always remind me to move forward. I wrote the poem below about the process of painting Dawn Banishing the Night but named it Mystic Passage because it is also true of this picture.

Mystic Passage

I was so into the paint today that I was gone
Every fiber of my being
Layered one color upon another
On a surface outside myself
Inside.

Sometimes it is just a painting I create
This craft I can do so mechanically
Today it was like giving birth
To a reality only I see
Given to you.

None of the words people speak or write
Seem to apply to what occurs
When I am unconscious of all
But the brush in my hand
The paint.

As if the paint pours from my soul
Down my veins to my fingertips
Appearing by magic
On once white canvas
A life.

Figures and shapes and visions emerge
Scenes I was not conscious I dreamt
I was so into the paint today
It was hard to pull out
Some of me
I left behind.

(c) J. Binford-Bell

Look here on Creative Journey tomorrow for another multi-blog poetry tour.

Dawn Banishes the Night

Dawn Banishing the Night 18 x 24 Mixed Media
Goddess Series

Okay, I think this is finished. I said in this morning's blog that I had an issue I was dealing with on this painting based on Arches National Park's Double Arch. The issue was depth or rather the lack of it. My solution was glazes using Chinese white in part. The sky I did with the white, a blue and an iridescent medium. The large tower in the back center left was glazed with white and yellow.

The large arch was poured to give it a huge feel. Brush strokes to me seem to make things seem smaller. Or maybe it is just the size of the brush which has its individual limitations while pouring has none. I generally pour skies because of that large feeling pouring gives you but as the double arch breaks the sky into two smaller pieces this sky is painted. Dawn forms the support of the smaller of the arches.

Last night when I went to bed this painting was unfinished and I thought maybe lost. I believe the glazes worked. I am living with it for a couple of days before signing and varnishing. As we know I do change my mind from time to time.

Finished the 14 x 14 church painting I was also doing and will post that next.