Throughout my travels, I have often looked out at the landscape before me and thought "this is bigger than me". It is as though I understand that I cannot grasp it, so I do not attempt to. I take it with me to think about and try to intellectualize it at a later time. I have never been to a place where the entire landscape, stretching over the entire time I was there, has made me feel the same way. For me, Antarctica represented everything I have tried to understand about light, reflection, contemplation, and phenomenon.
Coming home is an important time for me. I am aware of the Familiar, a topic that is so important to my philosophy. There is about a two week period of time where I seem to be in two different worlds; the one I have just seen travelling, and the one that I have returned to. In the present I am experiencing my Home, my city streets, the return to the routine. In my memory, I am cycling a slide show of experiences I have just had out in the world.
This dichotomy yields inspiration.
I am working on the back of the sink. The pleasure of painting something that is white is that there is barely a time when it is purely white. I find myself thinking of the time and place the photograph was taken to give me a hint of the time of day, and the quality of light.
Jack Chambers is a Canadian painter who lived and worked in London, Ontario for the breadth of his career. Sunday Morning No. 2 is a typical suburban winter scene. As a fellow Ontario native, I cannot help but participate in the Familiar which makes me question whether my draw into the painting is fueled by this sensation and/or the other qualities it embodies. I am not sure that it matters. Understanding the power of Familiar is lesson enough!
Chambers was intrigued by light. You can see this curiosity was a prominent aspect in much of is work, whether graphite drawings, paintings or photographs. He said that spirituality is not found in the representation of light - in the fact that it exists, but in the feeling it gives you.
When I look at the left wall and the light shadow cast through the window, I feel that the moment is alive. I appreciate that feeling as a powerful thing.
