This oil painting, titled Deep Ecology, is the first in a series of three paintings (Series Title: Encounters with the Cosmos) where my focus is on experimenting with channelling stardust through meditation during and between the making.
Title: The Ecology (Series: Encounters with the Cosmos)
Size: 61cm x 76cm
Medium: Oil Paints and 24 carat gold leaf on canvas board
Stardust Elements: Aluminium, Cadmium, Carbon, Cobalt, Copper, Gold, Hydrogen, Iron, Titanium, Zinc
Investigations: Channelling, then meditative Journeying, making with Stardust, then observing
The colour palette in this painting (in this series of 3 paintings) is as a direct result of a meditation session I have discussed in my document entitled Journal Entries of wisdom received during meditative practice, and have pasted further down in this journal post.
I’ve also had an urge to touch and work with copper. I love that when it oxidises, it turns this aquamarine blue-green, and I want to capture this colour in this painting.
My methodology for practiced based research investigation through this artwork is three-fold:
- Making with Stardust: I am still making with Elemental Materials. Elemental Materials is a term that I have created to denote those art materials that have pure elements from the periodic table contained in their ingredients. For example, in my oil paints, all the Ochre colours contain Iron; Cobalt Blue contains Cobalt and Aluminium; Pthalo Blue and Green contain Copper and Hydrogen. These elements were forged in the hearts of dying stars (Hawking, 1988), and as such, I am making with stardust.
- Making about Stardust: My initial mode of investigation was to see whether I could evoke feelings of interconnectedness by making artwork about the story of stardust. The subject matter of this artwork helps to tell that story, to hint at ideas around Posthumanism (Gee, 2013) – that we humans as a species are not special, and that as evolutionary theory and Natural History goes (Darwin, 1859), our earth and all the species and non-species on it could have turned out in myriad of other ways. Even though I am concurrently investigating additional methods such as mentioned in point 1 above and point 3 below, I would still consider this artwork as ‘making about stardust’.
- Meditative Journeying with or without stardust, then observing: my methods of meditative journeying are deepening over time, and I am documenting these experiences in a field journal of sorts. This journal is entitled Observations during practice-based research investigations. With the meditative journeying, I feel that I am connecting with universal wisdom. I am also documenting these pieces of wisdom in a separate journal entitled Journal Entries of wisdom received during meditative practice.
For this particular piece, it was the result of a meditative journeying session where I became inspired to create artworks in this colour palette.
Herewith the journal entries from Journal Entries of wisdom received during meditative practice.
June 2024
Arriving at blue: Some meditation sessions are less noisy than others. This one, there were no thoughts of space, no journeying beyond space and time. Just quiet and dark, and then occasional gentle swirls of an aqua-marine blue.
Swirls would gently pulse in and out, undulating away and near, slowly swirling, fractal-like, but never changing shade.
I left this meditation with a strong urge to make artwork in this joyful colour. Perhaps I am intuitively feeling the need to connect with cobalt and copper.
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After I had finished this piece, I once again took to a session of meditative journeying to immerse myself in the world that I had created in this painting.
August 2024
What is it like in the world that I painted?
Today’s meditation journey took me into the world that I have created in my painting entitled ‘Deep Ecology’, one of three paintings in a series entitled ‘Encounters with the Cosmos’.
I am a presence here, but not one where my feet leave footprints in the sand. Gravitational laws operate differently – allowing upward plinth-like outcrops of oceanic bodies of water.
I am small/tiny by comparison to these oceanic plinths. But unafraid, even of the foreign creatures. They sustain themselves through photosynthesis, hydrate themselves via osmosis, procreate via parthenogenesis – and all this means they don’t fight – no conflict, and very little need or reason to interact with one another aside from kinship.
Their relationships are therefore purely for the sake of company. None of them need each other for survival. They simply enjoy being in each other’s company. Since food and water for survival are not necessary, industry and capitalism have not developed. They are not even thought about.
On this planet, I feel weightless and timeless.
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Herewith the journal entries from Observations during practice-based research investigations:
Journal Notes: around and during the making:
I want to explore illusions with perspective in this painting and have therefore painted upright plinths of ocean. On a planet where the gravitational laws are different, it is not unreasonable to expect that oceans can exist vertically.
From a material perspective, I am trying to be more accurate with my colour-choices for the underpainting. I find that if the colours are not correct to what I had initially intended, then this throws me off even though I know I am going to paint over the underpainting.
I am really struggling to paint fabric. This is frustrating – my painting abilities don’t match my painting aspirations and sometimes it feels that my hand simply will not render what my brain is envisioning.
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In this painting, as with The Enchantment of the Anthropocene, I had not intended to put the cyborg creatures into the composition. However, I once again felt that the landscape felt too desolate without them. They add something whimsical.
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I am experiencing a lot of flow in painting these copper-blue-green-hues. I feel peaceful. I feel that I am where I should be. There is a sense of rightness and balance in the world this morning.
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I am still struggling to work with gold and finding it deeply frustrating at this stage. I need the gold lines to be perfectly straight, so once the oil layers were dry I put masking tape over them in order to get a straight line on the leafing size. Big mistake: when removing the tape, it took off some of the oil paint and I had to re-do the whole of the sky. Lesson learnt to be more discerning about what types of tape I use going forward.
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References:
Gee, Henry (2013) The Accidental Species – Misunderstandings of Human Evolution. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
Hawking, S. (1988). A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. London: Penguin Random House.
Debbie New 