Landscape

Landscape

Of course, there is really no such thing as turning off your mind if you have a marker in your hand. I do remember seeing a number of Buddhist monks doing a healing sand painting mandala in the North Carolina Museum of Art a couple of days after 9/11. They seemed able to separate mind and hand - or maybe it was unifying mind and hand. Anyhow, either way the ability was the result of years of training and meditation. I think that train has left for me. Point is that as I was doing my "relax follow the marker cloud" images I naturally began to wonder what might result if I tried to intentionally guide that type of image. I have watched videos of Pollock painting and was unable to discern planning - I have done an attempt to create a Pollock which I may send along if I can find it.

What I am sending here is my attempt to use the clouds process to intentionally create a Landscape. At best I tried to keep the idea of a landscape, hills, rivers, etc., in mind as I moved the initial marker over the page. Same with the color selection. In "Clouds" I used a sort of "dowsing" process. Dowsing for water is a process where you take a forked stick that forms a Y, hold the two ends and walk around the land, when the leading edge dips you have found water. When dowsing for color you sort of defocus your gaze and let your eyes wander over all our markers, when your focus stops you have chosen the next color for the image, you then take the marker and let it wander above the outline image. When it dips you color that portion of the image.

Intentional image is different. You keep you eye on the paper, both in the creation of the outline and the selection of color. I realize that doesn't make much sense. But this is a first attempt. So, ta da, Landscape: