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‘Seen,Unseen’
Christopher P Wood
My painting is an exploration of the interior world of the imagination,
that same archetypal imagination which has accompanied humanity since
the beginning, providing us with the means to express our deepest most
precious realities. This is William Blake’s ‘sacred imagination’
or ‘Jesus the imagination’ – that force of lyric truth
which seems to exist independently, accompanying humanity through its
evolutionary journey and enables us to sense the ‘whole’ and
to express it seriously and reverently through the imagination. I conform
more or less to the ancient blue print for humanity – a blue print
which places mystery at the core of existence and at the core of mystery
the sacred - the key ingredient that we all seem to need for a complete
sense of ‘being’.
For me, imagination and intuition play the
most important roles. These two forces provide the not only the impetus
but also the subject and reason to work. My imagination has something
to express that will not be denied so much so at times one feels this
impersonal almost independent force pushing itself forward. In opposition,
the observed outer forms of the material world fall inward towards the
imaginative subconscious where they mix with sacred archetypes before
returning in more potent from giving our art intensity not achievable
by intellect alone. Thus I have come to understand my imagination is a
conduit through which the material world – the solid form of reality
is translated into an imaginative reality which offers me a more complete
understanding of the force which is life. It’s an understanding
which confirms existence as a multi – dimensional experience with
imagination as its key to realization.
In consideration of the above when I start a painting the preparation is focused on the material aspects
of the process and not in anticipation of what the image might be. The
canvas is carefully prepared so that it offers a smooth non absorbent
surface – this will ensure that the oil paint which is diluted or
thinned with linseed or safflower oil will dry outwardly preserving the
eggshell sheen and flexibility of the oil as well as the translucent vitality
of the pigment. Brushes are clean and sharp. Although I am often described
as a ‘landscape’ painter it is only because my scenes are
set in nature, micro and macro cosmically. I have never to my ‘knowledge’
painted a location.
I usually work in series so I have a rough idea of the motifs which I might be using at any given time. I start a painting
with as open a mind as possible willing to follow the promptings of my
imagination whenever they lead. Those promptings are inspired by the previous
painting and by the paint itself, so the first thing I do is to apply
paint. Starting at the top of the canvas (the back ground) and working
forward. The image is then made painting wet in to wet, adding and removing
paint working with the broad compositional forms first using big brushes
and finishing with the detailed small brushwork last. It is a technique
which lends great flexibility, allowing me to ‘find’ the image
rather than consciously paint it. I have learned through many failures
it is best to serve intuition without reservation, to be prepared to change
or destroy a picture in a second if prompted to do so by my imagination.
It is impossible to ‘know’ a painting in advance of its making.
So as a result of this trust and out of this apparently chaotic, almost
preposterous process of work come images of such structure and clarity
that it seems impossible to believe every detail of their execution was
not some how mysteriously, magically planned in advance. Painting is a
partnership, a symbiotic relationship between the craft, vision and the
sensibility of the artist and the core poetic which is developed during
the painting process and is derived from the consistent forms which inhabit
our inner world.
I try to portray these two worlds existing together -
the inner world of the imagination together with the corporeal. To express
this in paint I create a believable naturalistic ‘scene’ and
then I add the ‘other’ worldly elements - ‘the unseen’
that our imagination adds to heighten our sense of life. To illustrate
this to friend I described a walk in the woods close to my home when occasionally
out of the corner of my eye I might see a snake which on closer inspection
turned out (rather disappointedly) be a tree root. Rather than paint the
tree root I paint the snake. It is the way I have found to express the
magic, the wonderful mystery at the heart of existence that I have always
felt acutely and seek to share through by making paintings.
As a young man I tried to imagine what it was like hundreds of thousands of years
ago on the day the first image was made. If I could travel back in time
and visit any event that is where I would choose to go. It must have been
a pure moment, an intuitive contact with the ‘whole’ at a
time when the reception was clear and the imagination unhindered. That
pure moment is something which I seek whenever I attempt to paint. It
is moment which can not be achieved through knowledge but only through
contact with the unknowable.
Recently, precious little attention seems
to have been paid to what Yeats described as ‘imaginative insight’
and yet we live in a time when inspired thought was never more valued
and culture devours images, literature and music which interpret this
unquantifiable aspect of life and human need for confirmation of the mysterious
other world – its a world accessed through the imagination leading
to an experience which perhaps our ancestors understood more completely.
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