Opening the Gates

I ran across a wonderful description by Mark Twain (Life On The Mississippi) of his apprenticeship in learning to pilot a steamer down the river.  It involved months of learning to read 1200 miles of the banks of the Mississippi and the water itself.  It was an amazing accomplishment of experiencing land and water in every conceivable weather condition and time of day and time of year, remembering it in a kind of three-dimensional package.  Rough shallow water at one point after heavy rains could produce turbulence at a docking point two hours down stream.  High water levels on a black night at a particular cove could change the perceived contours of the protruding land.  
Twain resisted learning the detail until he started falling in love with the river, and gradually he was able to achieve a “knowing/sensing” of all situations in that great 3D-cause-and-effect of every moment.
It seemed to me a superhuman feat until I started to realize how much of that sort of information is part of our daily experience.  Or can be.  I may need this sort of knowing/ sensing for my painting.

For sure, much of our visual experience is often quite different.  I go out to the car, quickly scan that all things outside are as I remember them to be, check that I have the keys, get into the car and go.  Or I could happen to notice on the way out that the daylilies are starting to bloom or in winter that ice has formed on the path and needs attention.  Or, I could step outside to notice a smell that seems familiar, wood smoke for sure, but other things more spicy and earthy and moist.  Is my newly delivered wood chip pile starting to heat up and decompose?  Did last night’s rain bring earthworms to the soil surface?  Are the pine needles in the lower woods thrilling me?  Are these other kingdoms, busy doing their jobs, combined in a fragrance?

Incoming stimulation throughout the day can get neurologically “gated” just like varying light gets gated by the pupils in our eyes. And clearly, the more we’re interested in our experience, the more the “stimulus gating” opens to let in more information, like with the  fragrance that stopped me from editing out my surroundings.  Mark Twain started to sense the scenarios on the Mississippi as holistic patterns as he was able to open himself to the river.  He increasingly experienced it as a complex living organism, as his awareness expanded.

I’ve been asked how exactly I start my paintings with a random mark, and then another in response, until their accumulated, complex patterns spark recognition of something I’ve experienced.  How does that process work?  I think Mark Twain’s apprenticeship speaks to this.
The other day I was painting swishing marks, broken into short swishes at some points, and stretched into long swishes at other points. I’ll show you, even though it’s not quite finished.

I noticed as my brush passed over the trunk of a long swish, it felt as if a bird took on a pulse there, and I was taken up by several memories.  One was of the starling flight pattern that I mentioned in another newsletter, where they swoop in unison, black, and then flip and swoop another way, platinum, and then black again.  Takes my heart every time.  And the other memory was of a bird that had flown into a house window and was lying motionless in the grass.  When I picked it up to avoid the cat, it was clear to me by its “feel” in my hand that it was still alive.
So the painting became bird flight, and my job became an attempt, to the best of my ability, to portray that fabulous multi-dimensional sensation of “bird pulse/flight/air swish/light/takes my heart every time”.  And the stimulus gates need to stay open to this complex scenario in order to do it.  
Granted, many paintings don’t produce such a clear scenario, and I have to stay open to a more vague hook or pulse, and explore it as far as it will take me until it produces a smile on my part.

You can probably see that each person will generate a very personal experience with a paint brush.  And that there is no right way to do it. And there really aren’t any mistakes. Just an exploration, opening the gates as much as possible, in search of…….yourself and all that you’re interested in, in that life of yours.  You and me and Mark Twain.

Thank you for joining me.

My very best to you all,
And please feel free to share this with friends,