threads of the spiderwoman: "Seeing in the Dark"..........an Exploration of new Paintings

"Persephone" 2023

"Deeply I go down into myself.
My God is Dark, and like a webbing
made of a hundred roots that drink in Silence."
........... Rainier Maria Rilke

I found the above quote by Rilke while navigating through my files, and it has become a poem that inhabits my imagination these days. Roots, the generative Dark, the Webbing to all that lies under the appearances of things, below surfaces, the pentimentoes of life, the unseen union that we must learn to see "In the Dark"...........

I am trying to return to my first love, Painting. With AI, I guess I and my colleagues are truly obsolete - who could compete with what that Monster leering at us on the horizon can do? (I guess that shows that I am very concerned about what has so thoughtlessly and blithely been unleased on humanity).

Regardless, I have always found painting the most difficult of arts, and the most extraordinary dance of form, light and shadow, and the joy of color. To see those colors emerge from a tube, become alive on a canvas............ It's not easy for me to paint, I guess I always feel intimidated until I begin, and then I just become emersed in the making.

Strangely, although it is just past the Solstice and High Summer now, I seem to have an interest in the dark, in noir, in buried and invisible Roots. I guess I can thank Rilke for that, and before me sit a collection of intimidating, blank, very black canvases on which to create worlds. The painting above is the first so far.

But I see that this theme has haunted me before..............