WATER TO LIVE

A selection from In the Name of the Earth

Water to Live brought together five paintings from In the Name of the Earth, an ongoing epic of large paintings that has grown alongside nearly a thousand drawings made over the last six years.

I have made those drawings wherever I happened to be: on the New York subway, on the roof of my house, in schools, hotels, casinos, bars, parks, airplanes, taxis, gardens, forests, mountains, beside rivers and along roads.

Over time, forms accumulated. Animals, people, plants, eyes, marks, invented writing, lines and things without names moved between drawings and paintings, disappearing and returning in different forms.

The paintings selected for Water to Live belong to an important period of change within the epic.

Earlier paintings had been largely driven by black, white and red. In Golden Night 1, gold suddenly enters with unusual force. In Golden Night 2, that opening expands into a new range of color.

The two paintings grew from the final movement of Jack London's The Call of the Wild, when the animal at the center of the novel enters the night forest beyond human command. I did not try to illustrate the scene. What remained with me was its release.

The blue dog/wolf in Golden Night 2 carries that opening into color. From this point, color begins to move differently through In the Name of the Earth.

The selection also records a change in how the paintings were made. Golden Night 1, YOVER, Truth Is Mistery and Plenitud belong to an earlier process of drawing acrylic with squeezable bottles and working it through gardening weed barrier fabric. Golden Night 2 moves into the process also used to make Rite of Spring.

The painted frame is an integral part of the work.

Water to Live was presented at The Art of Words Community School (TAWCS) in Brooklyn together with the eleven paintings of Rite of Spring.

For the exhibition, I also painted a large mural directly on the gallery wall. People, birds, insects, flowers, animals and other beings gather across its blue surface—a company of lives feeding the imagination from which the paintings come.

The words WATER TO LIVE were painted blue on blue, nearly disappearing into the wall.

The mural welcomed the paintings.

The paintings remained.