Pandemus Immanis

A Walk in the Woods 11x14

The whole of mankind is now facing the unknown together, and peril is increasing everywhere.  This comes across as hysteria to some, but you only have to look to other countries to see what is inevitable for us.  Many of us refuse to believe it, deny the changes coming, but more importantly, deny the changes we should be making right now.  This stubborn insistence on clinging to the familiar is going to force us to go through more pain and desperation than we really need to, but I suppose that as divided as Americans have become, we have no choice but to enter the shitstorm and then maybe we can reevaluate our prejudices and realize that we have to fight this war together.  Alternatively, we might end up fighting each other, and Putin wins after all.  At any rate, this is the scariest time we have seen in our lives, and our future will be quite different from what we have been used to, but it does not have to be worse than the past.  We can choose to make positive changes to the way we live and relate to each other.  We can choose to become We The People again.

Bryant Frosty Meadow 14x11

As difficult as it is to regain the calm and focus needed to paint, I know that I will return to the easel in the coming weeks, and it will become a harbor for sanity and health.  My scheduled exhibition (my first!) was cancelled.  Just when I had worked up enough confidence to believe in what I am producing....

Be safe out there, help your friends, and stick to those protocols.

A Quiet Place

Bryant Wood 16x12 oil

While the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, and there seems to be little one can do to stave off the negative and the alarming, I decide that the least I can do for myself is to make personal assessments and change my routines, refocus on mindfulness, read something from which to learn, and exercise the body to try to keep healthy and fit.  Painting needs to be a part of that process as well, and though it's hard to find the hour or two in the middle of a busy day, I try to find a quiet place in my mind where it is just me and the canvas, the multitude of decisions and small problems to solve, and a momentary joy.  

As a part of my new regimen, I watch series from The Great Courses (recordings of lectures by selected professors on a myriad of topics) available on cable now (for an extra $5/month).  Currently I am watching Mind-Body, a scientific study of Consciousness.  It captures my attention while the minutes slip by on the treadmill, the two-bird practice.  At any rate, a recent episode covered the visual cortex, and how we see.  It is fascinating to consider what happens to the image of the world as it comes through our eyeballs and bounces around the brain, how we see color (no color in our peripheral vision!) and why we have blindspots, how the brain fills in all those shortcomings in our vision.  I don't know how this will apply to painting, but it would seem to make sense that better understanding of how we see can help us paint in a way that conveys emotion more readily.