... the interaction of opposites can be engineered to create something new. The
trick, of course, is not to get involved in judgement or compromise, to
just let the opposites occur and proceed: they do the work, you just go
along for the ride. The opposites need to be harnessed in a way that
allows them to interact and create energy, the way opposite polarities
of electricity are harnessed to make light by the bulb. So, we need to
create a bulb of some kind in terms of our process. I like this
approach because it involves a simple set of questions – is it too real?
is it too artistic? – and an element of unpredictability, both in the
moment and cumulatively, over time. If I follow the map of observation
only, or the map of making art only, these both actually lead to pretty
predictable places...
When both maps are
operative at once, though, the journey that the painting takes is more
complex, moving from one map to the other and back, giving the results
the potential to be more interesting because they don't come from me,
but from what is over the border, beyond the membrane that defines
me-ness.
- Tad Spurgon, 13 januari 2013
