The Dialectic of Art Making

Form, Color and Dimension

unglazed ikebana vase

Periodically I rewrite my artist statement, and when I do, I find myself trying to describe something essential that is happening in my art. Was it Picasso who said that painting is a diary?

I spent a few decades working in clay. During that period, I was frustrated with surface treatments. Maybe if I had fired with gas or wood, I would have been more satisfied. Instead, I struggled with oxidation firings. Raku, which uses a reduction enivornment (depriving the glaze of oxygen) was an improvement. But most raku is unstable over the long term, and the beautiful, fiery glazes will fade.

Each artistic process speaks of meanings implicit in representation. If a glaze fades, the beauty of the permanence of the object is compromised. Permanence is a meaning. Quite possibly there is no such thing as permanence, since everything, given enough time, changes. But permanence is a category for our mind. Stones have had great significance culturally as representations of permanence. They are one of the longer lasting materials that we can work with. Permanence references security. Remember the Prudential commercial; get a piece of the rock? It suggests that which transcends time. To have a glaze that fades, such as with raku, is a failure of meaning.

ikebana vase, unglazed clay with wood stains

With my oxidation glazes, developed in the convenient but disappointing electric kiln, I always had the feeling that the glaze was a surface membrane; not truly integral with the body of the piece. The glaze that forms on the clay is a thin layer of glass. Some glazes are richer than others. Celadon, developed to resemble jade, and fired with wood in ancient times, had richness that seemed to bely the truth that it was a mere layer. When you look at a piece of celadon pottery, you want to feel that you are seeing solid jade. That was the purpose of the celadon glaze.

The sense that a glaze is merely a surface treatment references dishonesty. If a thing is merely surface, and not what it is through and through, it always feels deceptive. I tried many ways to get around this artistically. I used wood stains and shoe polish with some success. Stains, and crevices and textures gave the feeling of depth to my surface treatments. Some clays had a healthy enough texture that they could stand alone, unglazed. In the end, though, I was frustrated enough that I moved to glass.

In glass, I found an entirely different set of meanings. I didn’t like opaque glass very much, unless I sandblasted it or developed a texture in some other way. But transparent glass was a revelation. Here was a medium that was itself through and through. Not only that, but even more crucially, light passes through it. There are many forms of light; the light that is reflected and bounces off the surface. There is internal light; light captured and bounced back and forth in the molecules of the glass medium itself. Depth, transparency, form-here was a medium that spoke mystical truths. We are light and we are form. We are something, and nothing through which everything passes. Like clay, glass could be shaped in the kiln to take on forms that I chose, feeling godlike, and simultaneously humbled and awed by the transformation I witnessed when I opened my kiln.

raku orchid pot with slumped glass base

And then my kiln broke. It was beyond repair. The pandemic had begun. I needed to do art. My mother wanted paintings for her new apartment. So I faced the blank canvas, hesitant, appalled, unconfident.

Paintings are two dimensional. But what might be considered a flat surface is also a story. When my friend explained that some paints are semi-transparent and some are considered transparent, I found a way to sculpt in paint. Now my surface has depth. More importantly, I find that I can paint space. These are the spaces of conversation, of personality, of emotion. Layers of light and color serve as portraits of moments of complexity. As I gain the confidence that at least some of my paintings will speak, I am finding that I am completing a dialectic of sorts. I have moved from shaping form to shaping surface. I have moved from the opacity of clay, through the transparency of glass, to painting with transparent colors and creating layers and textures on a two dimensional surface.

conversations, oil on panel 24” by 36”

In life, too, I have danced between forms and layers and surfaces and depths. Once, captured inside the story of my life; captured in the inside-of-it-ness of a project to be free, I can now read the story. In fact, I can shape it simultaneously with the living of it. I am the reader and the read, the teacher and the student, the painter and the painted. The dialectic of my artwork is indeed a diary. I have a sense of proficiency, but also of mystery. We are the mystery. We are the mystery discoverers.

I don’t know what the next chapter in this dialectic will be. I don’t know where I will be led by light and surface and form and depth. I am just glad I can still dance with the meanings.

What is your dialectic? Can you read it in the history of your interests and doings?

Namaste.