I know. I haven't quite kept up the weekly pace of things. With life and work taking over so much time I've been a bit negligent. That being said. This week's weekly inspiration comes from by way of the stellar "Saint of Inner Light", by Paul Klee.
Paul Klee's sense of inked crisp lines in abstraction to form figures has crept slowly into the latter half of The Gold Series as I continue to explore manifestations of the spirit motif which had its start in The Wanderer and develop my signature abstract figurative style. I've not yet shared any of these Klee inspired works yet but expect these delicate lines combined to suggest form inter playing with my textured washes and gradients.
I'm drawn to Klee for much the same reason. This piece illustrates Klee's explorations of flattened perspective and use of hue and form to block out suggestions. Thematically, this depiction derived from the Hindu God Narasimha resonates with my 10 years as a Buddhist and love of religious undertones or themes.
Klee is known by many for his axiomatic statement, "I am abstract with memories", a driving point in my own art-philosophic journey as it relates to the exploration of trans formative elements of un or underspoken narratives. I am forced now to dive into his own words by way of his journals where he writes in 1915,
"One deserts the realm of the here and now to transfer one's activity into a realm of the yonder were total affirmation is possible.
Abstraction.
The cool Romanticism of this style without pathos is unheard of.
The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art,
whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.
Today is a transition from yesterday. In the great pit of forms lie broken fragments to some of which we still cling. They provide abstraction with its material, A junkyard of unauthentic elements for the creation of impure crystals.
That is how it is today."
This journal entry was something I first read in a 2014 exploration of his notebooks and allowed to percolate for a while before recollection at the easel. It is perhaps the most definitive source of my foray into the palimpsest figurative style I am continually perfecting and augmenting.
As far as The Gold Series narrative is concerned I felt this philosophy best mirrored the experience of the HIV positive individual re-constructing a new sense of self post-diagnosis. The act of re-fashioning reality to accommodate the new reality and weight of stigma.