These were never shown in a gallery and were pretty much ignored by me also I skipped ahead fast .
I like to see that even then the positive negative magic was important.
I like to see that even then the positive negative magic was important.
They make sense in how I got from the paper paintings to a starker tragic, idea and then onto a idea that comes into being as my first real discovery.
I recently visited some Petroglyphs in NM and remembered how I liked the similar reversals of space. I imagine the Indians pecking the rocks seeing the negative and positive spaces changing places. I think they would have seen it as magic like I do myself.
The reversal also creates a oneness of opposites. It creates a feeling of being apart of everything, especially out there under that big sky, day or night.
We talked about how artists hold their paintings on their arms as an identity.
I remember how J Campbell described a young brave in a hut dreaming his name. Being given a shield or name.
I had draw the figure for years and within the Greenbergian era this was suppressed and keeps coming out in my work which becomes it's meaning in a big way that repressed desire to draw.
The strokes of my arm across the canvas made drawing which I saw images in and as a kind of automatism which leads to another phase of the painting in 1981.
