Thursday Thoughts: Circles

“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary picture is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay “Circles”

Circuit. Ink, acrylic, flashe, and mylar on watercolor paper. 24″x18″ © Jacob Rowan

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Saturday Studio Shot

Sumi ink and salt on watercolor paper

Thursday Thoughts: White and Red

“Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it is the fiercest note, it is the highest light, it is the place where the walls of this world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns through.

White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.”

~G.K. Chesterton

Choruses

 

Does anybody have any good quotes about black as a color?

Saturday Studio Shot

Gaffer’s tape, string, ink, and colored pencil on watercolor paper

Thursday Thoughts:

Art exists adjacent to the artist’s performed persona.

Thursday Thoughts: Interesting Object, Semantic Gesture, or Speculative Fiction

I want to make art that functions at three levels:

1. As an interesting object that invites consideration. Because an artwork is a thing and a sign rather than a language or code it can invoke a variety of images and feelings in a viewer that become closely connected to their personal experiences. At that level I’m not communicating through art so much as sending interesting (and hopefully beautiful) objects out into the world for others to enjoy.
2. As a semantic gesture. Rather than seeing art in terms of form and content I like to think of art as a gesture of communication that has its own internal logic and structure. My hope is that a patient viewer who saw several of my pieces and perhaps read my artist’s statement could construct their perceptions into something resembling the sense I had while creating the work. Of course it’s not an exact translation (that’s half the fun of art), but perhaps they can see a gesture of my idea.
3. As a speculative fiction. Every aspect of my process from the theorizing I do here to the practical decisions made in the studio construct a speculative fiction–a metaphorical microcosm within the fullness of reality and lived experience. To make art is to isolate and imaginatively engage with a facet of life. Just as a work of fiction like Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 presents a picture for how the world might be, I hope the entire scope of my practice presents a model for how the world might be seen or engaged with.

Ensō

© Jacob Rowan