A Colourful Landscape of the Jerusalem Hills
This new painting depicting the Jerusalem hills emerged quite quickly and spontaneously. I think the energy comes across in the brushwork. I really enjoyed doing this painting because of just that flowing feeling. It’s far less technical than a lot of my work recently, and that’s definitely liberating. It’s been a return to the immersive and expansive, semi-meditative experience of intuitive painting which I used to lose myself in, and where the process itself is what’s important, rather than the result. I love the decorative aspect of the repeated patterns; dots, curls and stripes.
A Meditative Process
While the process of creating them is very repetitive, it’s also meditative. This quality is what I’ve always loved the most about making art: When you are totally immersed in the experience of making, you are present in the moment of creation. There is no thought about what the picture might have become, nor what the finished picture will be like. Carl Jung’s words take on new meaning:
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense — he is “collective man” — one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind. – The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, C.G. Jung
There is a paradox to this, however. The final result is actually really important to me. Art isn’t just about the process. In most of my work, especially the commissioned pieces, I’m focused almost solely on the result. It’s a fine balance in which I’m feeling my way between a defined path with a clear destination, and an unmarked non-path which takes me wherever the spirit leads. And that is where art is like life itself: In the end it’s the structure and the freedom which give meaning to each other.
The original painting is available for purchase here.
Prints at three different sizes will be available soon.
