Who Am I
I’ve never quite asked myself this question out loud. It’s more of a state of being that has had me in its grip from time to time.
It appears beneath most other questions if I look long enough and engages the very core without words or language, just an expeditious flash inward, a yearning far more rhetorical as a circumstance of existence in itself.
It’s the realization of incompleteness, an estrangement from the comfort of an echoing reply, leading you through an ominous and unknown depth that looks right back through you, penetrating so far as to reverberate the very strands of your inner matrix .
The experience in and of itself is haunting enough to stay with you long after you’ve moved on to simpler, quantifiable trains of thought.
Existential Colloquy in Paint
This particular piece of artwork is sort of a long enamoring line of questions. A modern colloquy rooted in the existentialist’s aesthetic for various ways of being. Reaching far beyond any rational or unburdened perceptions of myself, in any form connected to where I was before.
Where am I now that I’m not in a fool’s paradise of what’s been wellspent and accomplished?
How do I break through and understand who or what I really am?
Is there any real meaning that was intended?
Is there anyone intending it, or am I only deepening the revelation of human absurdity?
I couldn’t say whether anything is or was actual or essential. I only knew that this painting was going to be explosive and honest. I knew that I needed to be vulnerable, to ask these questions without expecting anything.
Emberous Thorn of Torrid Heat
The discord was there for sure; an emberous thorn exposed and burning. I stayed with the sensation, focusing on the torrid heat until it became closely diagnostic. It was hollowed out and shining unfamiliar.
As I finished the background fluidly and the painting begin to lead me where it wanted to go, one thing after another began to show up. I saw the scene emerging from the paint.
While sketching out the main figure I began to think; How can I describe in paint what it would be like to have the whole world, human and natural peering through you? That you couldn’t hide anymore?
A sobering realization that you never could anyway takes that last moment of solace away and you calmly give into this profound insistence of surrender.
A Soul’s Mythology
I began envisioned the bones of a man with only a dim light beginning to shine in his rib cage and the whole story unraveled. It was quick and sudden and I painted as fast as I could to keep pace with the vision.
The skeleton needed to be expressive somehow which seemed impossible though I just continued painting with this maddening excitation.
Within moments I new he was reaching for the unattainable companion. A sort of soul mythology unveiled and unchained. At this point the relief was palpable.
Stepping back and absorbing, this sort of visible biography, I saw the haunted faces of his antiquity melting from his spine and these accompanying hands of golden fire.
While rendering the faces I took my time. It was the opposing balance, the prodigious symmetry of relief that was taking place and I wanted to enjoy it.
The Mythos Flickering Beyond Natural
This painting already had a life of continuous renewal. For me, it was a demystifying experience translated into paint. I knew where it was going only after I had arrived at the end of what I had known before.
The hands and the haunting residue of spectors were inevitably going back into the cauldron of the earth as a celebrative gala, represented by single moving lines, was taking place in the outer realm where the mythos was flickering and beyond natural.
As soon as I layed in the finishing lines around the edges I just knew it was done. It began to breathe on it own. There wasn’t anything left to do but watch the flames tell my story. Tell me who I was and where I was going.
I stayed up late that night staring into the creative fire of this painting as if it were my warmth and light in the darkness after a long storm of uncertainty.
L.c.Lamar