The Artist as Cartographer

Like all permanent media, ink wash has its challenges and adventures. You have to be sure while you're making your mark and at the same time accept your lack of control. Whatever is will be. Ink wash is also a delicate material that shifts with the slightest suggestion, and resists revision through layering unlike sturdier materials like paint. 

For me, the process becomes a kind of meditation, where I pivot between the up-close topography of water and ink, to the larger image that takes form as converging continents. Each drop of ink is a decision, a distinct thought, that I watch transform and escape definition. I think about the calligraphy tradition of Eastern Asia -- how landscape became a metaphor for cognitive journey; how the negative spaces were just as important to the meditation as what was realized in words or pictures. 

As always, I'm making maps. The act of cartography is the exploration.

More and more of late I've been thinking of the artist as the explorer. We re-imagine things in order to understand them. Art can be a mirror to show what's really going on when we can't see clearly. The photographer who has to take pictures to understand what's going on. The outsider artist who responds to our society, showing a child-like, unhindered reflection. The way you listen to music to figure out what you feel. 

The exploration and re-imagining is very important to me. I'm definitely someone who sees the world through colored lenses, always shifting like a kaleidoscope. It doesn't take much to adjust the hue -- the people I'm around, the place I live, the time of day, it all has a huge impact. I feel the changes shifting constantly, and become frustrated at my lack of clarity, perspective, and objectivity.  But I know that I see things that other people don't. For myself, I need to make a map to find where the truth lies; for others, I need to show the map. It doesn't really matter where it leads, as long as it takes us somewhere. 

(From my website, which holds my art and writing and occasional blog posts like this.)