Week two with Tracy in the studio.
On the way to the studio, I drop A. off at school.
In the car, she asks me, “How do you die?”
Your body stops working.
She says, when does it happen?
Usually when you are very old.
Do kids die?
Not usually.
Where are you when it happens.
You can be anywhere. In your bed. Walking down the street.
A bicycle goes by.
Riding your bicycle?
Yes.
In the studio, before we start, T. mentions something that happened during her hospice work this week: a daughter present for her mother’s death. T. washed the mother’s body and then, with T. in the room, the daughter climbed into bed with the corpse.
Is the search for meaning (pattern, narrative) an obstacle to presence?
What tools do I use to make a mark with my body?
I desire a wider range of movement.
Perhaps this would happen if I could play with the movement I already have.
The difference between painting with many brushes and finding all the options available in just one brush.
weights of paint, thicknesses of line
Small brush, big brush, delicate line, pool of ink.
rub, push, pour, roll
the interrupted action
haiku: 5 marks from one brush
Practices
play
repetition
stillness
flux with fixed vocabulary
flux with no limits
Task and vocabulary
Tasks are actions that anyone can do (pedestrian).
Vocabulary is complex expression within your field of expertise.
T and I have identified five stages of our practice thus far:
Scrolling, Painting, Sculpture, Ripping, The Remains
Task and vocabulary within each stage have intersected to the point where they now bleed. This is my score for the Sculpture stage:
Move the paper off the floor.
Paper becomes sculpture.
The surface for mark-making can now be anywhere in space.
Sculpture is where the body and painting intersect.
Respond to the energetic resonance that the sculptural encounter has left on the body.