"Paying Homage To Both Sides Of The Cuticle"

I would like to explain the background of one of my works, "Paying Homage To Both Sides Of The Cuticle", image posted here. The black and the white panels were actually studies for larger works.  My goal was to get a sense of depth from essentially a monochromatic painting; white built forward from a golden ground, black built forward from blue ground, with shinny lines on top of a matt surface. I haven't done the larger works, I envisioned doing two 48" square canvases of each color scheme. When playing with the studies I liked the look of the two contrasting panels placed side by side, but the overall dimension was not so pleasing to me. On contemplation I suddenly envisioned a third panel, the lower red one, which came out almost exactly as I imagined it.

The compositional process I describe here, though seemingly formal, it is actually based on thematic material. This is what I really would like to explain. The title of the work, "Paying Homage To Both Sides Of The Cuticle", reflects this thematic material. The large pieces that have yet to be done of which the black and white pieces were studies, as I describe above, I have been planning on titling "I I  I II", which looks like code but actually means "self one, self two". I was also considering the title "Poles Of Passage". The theme here is one of internal and external identity and the flux between the two.

Now this idea has a personal history. I have done a much smaller work preceding this one with a very similar color scheme. I do not believe I was trying to replicate this work, or even had it in mind, but the theme of it was still working in my thinking. Here is this earlier work. This is entitled "B&B", two drawings placed side by side. What these drawings represent are two distinct presences I felt during the time I first started to do this art I do now, one that felt mostly internal and another that felt mostly external. 

The internal presence I would feel running around my body. It was like a very quiet but poignant voice, very whispery and impersonal. I would see it on occasion, if I could get a bead on it, as a kind of golden white vapor inside my body, flowing into different parts of it. 

The other presence I felt externally. This was a much more personal presence which felt quite feminine. I had so much intense stimulation during this time of my life it was quite emotionally challenging for me to sustain it. I would sometimes become very disturbed and distraught. This presence would come to me at these times and calm me down. Or maybe the presence would just be with me. Then I would feel a very strong but gentle and loving demeanor. The color I would see with this presence was a dark blue with black, and this is the presence I named "Blue", who comes rarely now but unmistakably succinct when she does. 

It was funny for me to realize that how I saw these two presences in my mind were of opposite colors, black with blue and and white with golden orange. This color polarity correlated to the polarity of the internal and external ways in which I felt them. On a personal level I equated the golden white presence with me and the blue black with a friend of mine, who at the time seemed to have an influence on the discoveries that were happening with me. This again brings another polarity, self and other. However all that was happening, what I was experiencing, was based within my being and my perception, from inside me. There was very little sense of objectivity. At times I had more of a sense of Blue inside. And on a few dramatically intense occasions the white would be swirling outside which I felt inside as well. This very extraordinary occurrence is something I would not be able to explain more deeply. But it made me think of experiencing the inside on the outside and the outside on the inside, a flux of boundary beyond usual experience. 

This explains  the "Both Sides Of The Cuticle" part in the title (cuticle meaning epidermis). The "Paying Homage" part has to do with the red panel below the two. This is related to the use of certain materials in human culture to mark a thing or place as significant. A golden guided frame around a western religious icon is a perfect example, the use of red ochre to mark sacred sites in prehistoric times (and perhaps in the present) is another. Monks golden robes would be too. What is interesting about this is that whatever it is that is used to create a mark itself denotes a boundary, often physically, between that which it is indicating as noteworthy and that which it is not. So there is a kind of paradox in devotionally indicating what is on both sides of that boundary. The honorific object or material has to be part of and yet still separate from that which it indicates.

The red panel is moved slightly away from the other two and in an inferior position It is also painted so the panel recedes compared to the other two. It is a frame which doesn't surround the subject, is removed from the subject, and is also part of the subject. The red color to me is like the red earth I mention above, or like fire used honorifically. However I painted this panel to look like there is a layer of skin on it, with a muted view of activity behind the skin layer and glossy gestural lines on top, echoing the glossy lines on top of the black and white panels. So the perimeter between the white and black is mirrored in the representation of a skin layer in the lower panel. 

Viewed from the front all of the three panels have a certain depth to them, if only pictorially, which metaphorically represents extension into each dimension away from the boundary line. This is another polarity from the viewer's point of perspective, one from their point of perception, to, into distance and depth. Geometrically then there are two axes of polarity represented, left to right and front to back. This brings in the complexity of polarity within a matrix of three dimensional physical space, which makes the boundary more difficult to discern, even though its existence is still perceived.