beyond the visual by mary mckenney

                              

http://ccesf.org/beyond-the-visual/#comment-6

click on the above link to see the painting and read more of Mary's response to life through paint.


this is the piece of writing that opened the window this morning

Art is a visual medium. But it is mainly visual from the point of view of the observer. For the artist, the visual is only a means, a tool—a medium, yes,  but not just for the eyes. For the artist it’s about consciousness. The painting we observe is consciousness in a costume. The art is everything we cannot see. But the sensitive observer sees with the artist through the costume, the outer layer to the real creation.  So maybe art isn’t a visual medium as much as it is a vehicle, an opening, an exploration, an exposure. If the artist’s heart is open, the art will be timeless. And in timelessness is the opportunity for the observer to receive and respond to the work … because she is consciousness, too. In that way, art can be a mirror.

This painting definitely looks finished, doesn’t it? You might say it’s too finished, too “busy,” dense, impossible to see what’s going on, sort of interesting on the left where there’s some yellow, but too dark on the right. Someone named Arthur William Radford said, “Half of art is knowing when to stop.”  (I’d be curious to know what he thinks the other half is.) To know when to stop means that the artist must change from creator to speculator, make an aesthetic judgment, an active decision not to go past an arbitrary boundary, risking chaos. The initial brushstrokes may have burst forth with abandon, but what is crucial is stopping at … just … the right … place. That makes the artist half creator, half a judge of distance and control.

What does it mean to go too far, to ruin a lovely effect, to make something dark and hard to decipher? It means to lose control—not in a wild, destructive way, but to go beyond the limits of the mind. A true artist is not concerned with making a pleasing painting. A true artist does not care about the viewer orthe judgment. She cares about truth and readiness, the inner readiness that is consciousness. The painter who knows when to stop becomes a businessman, a seamstress with a tape measure, an authority, a jailer of the self and all its potential.

Mary McKenney

freeing the birds

30 x 68 inches

This painting began several months ago and had several pauses in its process. I kept taking it off the wall to make space for the process of others. As painters came to paint, I would begin a new painting as they began to enter their own process.  

But this painting deserved my full attention, which I couldn't give it until recently. 

It called me back into my process. 

Late last night the birds were freed from the inside of the inside, beyond my knowing mind. 

I feel graced to be part of my own painting process again. And today I am inspired, through the community of painters who go beyond the known and write about it, to let these birds take me further.

hands, holding and reaching out

There is a rhythm in process.


Not knowing what is happening sometimes looms larger into view when the inner current pulls the creative impulse deep below the surface, out of sight.

The last two paintings were like that, unfamiliar enough to open me to the doubting mind. Even when familiar imagery of embryonic spheres appeared, I did not feel connected as I have in the past. Something new is taking form and I can't see it yet.
I'm listening to the body's anxious responses to the unknown. Taking care not to abandon ship nor to retreat to the back of the boat.

And then the hands began to appear again. 
Red and blue, holding and reaching out. 
A lightening heralded some breathing room.

The process continues to unfold.

not needing to understand frees the paint brush

I've mentioned that I am painting alone with the process right now. It's like walking a very new path and all my senses are alert. I found this question today in Michelle Cassou's Book of Questions, it made the way feel wider and I moved with the flow it invited.

"What would I paint if I didn't have to understand what I was doing?"

a new beginning

I am beginning a new painting, meeting the brown man that appeared many paintings ago. Love is flowing, and curiousity. 

Dot after dot. 

Touching, touching, touching, touching. 

Breathing.

the fullness of giving way

giving way to the process

i pass through layer after layer 

of experience.

not knowing the outcome

allowing the not knowing

being the not knowing

i let go 

to the color and shape that has a will of its own

every moment.

this is the first painting i followed through with "on my own."

my classes with Barbara Kaufman are completed for the time being

and i lean into the wealth of gifts received in my time shared with her.

as i learned

in her company

 to listen to my own inner voice

feeling the questions

meeting the conflict that arises within

discovering its innate creative tension

as life itself,

 i give way to the fullness that always waits to be expressed.

with a full heart i continue to paint and live, 

supported without a doubt by this widely shared gift 

of meeting life through process painting.

jai ma!

emergence

life is good

and continues to emerge

beautifully