Speaking visually

This month, I retired from my university position, receiving the title Professor Emeritus.  My goal now is to become a person, rather than an occupation, living rather than preparing for a next step.

There is so much and yet, so little to say about our manifold crises.  A friend called me recently, overwrought with emotion, and said “the most important things cannot be said, but must be shown.”  A philosopher, he cited the final proposition in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:  “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”  But the Tractatus was concerned with the limits of logic expressed through verbal language, and specifically omitted other forms of expression.  I’m glad I’ve now moved my focus from words to visual expression, for I have no words for the longstanding conditions that manifest themselves in our current crises.

 I spent the spring indoors, refashioning my classes for remote instruction, grading, painting, working on university issues, and grading some more.  My painting focused on interior scenes – walls, ceilings, and floors.  Here’s a photo of some of those Divoc paintings, all on 12”x 12” wood panels. 

Here’s another set of Divoc panels, which replace rectilinear forms and perspective for two curves.  An insider note for newsletter readers:  all four of these compositions are based on the same two curves in the same relationship with each other.

Finally, another panel, this one depicting a surreal landscape I call Red Giant.  I take some solace from the fact that despite pestilence, genocide, and ecological destruction, the earth itself will remain for another 4 billion years, until our sun expands to become a red giant, likely engulfing the three innermost planets, including our own. 

Red Giant, acrylic on hardwood panel, 12” x 12” x 1.5”

I’ll end this message with hopes that you find ways to use the current crises to grow and to help us all thrive.

and then our world changed

Note that I didn’t title this “and then the world changed.”  Most elements of our physical world have not changed – the buildings and mountains still stand, birds and insects move about and reproduce, and we certainly still have weather.  Continuity abounds.

John and I are fine and grateful.  I do most of my academic work and my painting at home anyway, and I have always cooked most of our meals.  I’ve reformatted my courses to be accessed entirely through a “learning management system,” but the fine-tuning and grading continues apace.   

I’ve started a series of paintings in my current favorite format – smooth 12”x 12” hardwood panels, cradled atop a 1½“ frame, so they present well without any further framing.  The series is Dovic, and generally entails straight-sided figures in muted colors, with the shape and shade of the figures implying spatial relationships. The minimalist approach seems in keeping with these fluid, shape-changing times.