From The Library of Jane

—Contributing Editor Bettie. Ritchie Kielty

ENTRY 21, March 24, 1976

(11:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.)

The painter must seep himself in nature, for the mobility of shadows and winds and the ever-versatile alterations of light provide an emotional extension that lifts man's moods out of himself, and allows him to identify with the greater emotional tones of the earth that everywhere sweep across the landscape. A man's moods are reflected in his facial expressions and posture; in the most minute wrinkles of the skin or tremors of hand or thigh. The moods of the earth are expressed in a more grand fashion, with the entire planet as the field of expression; but the smallest motion of a half-hidden leaf is as much a statement of the earth's mood as a half smile, gone in a moment, in a woman's face.

More than this, man for centuries unknown had his habitat out in the open, intimately in contact with the earth's changing seasons, that provided a worthy panorama in which his own natural emotional experience could be reflected and expressed. The wind's "anger" was his own and roused within him a healthy agitation that whirled as constructively within his soul as the storms raged across the land. So he and the earth were refreshed together. In the same way, the calm of night breezes conjured up man's gentleness, so that man and the weather together had a bond that is now largely forgotten.

So the painter should immerse himself in nature, take long walks in solitude, learn to listen to the earth's many nuances, learn its language of flickering images and see the signals it flashes—in terms of colors whose vibrations change in every instant. Observing in this way, the painter can also learn to discern those inner shapes that pervade all matter; those sensed forms from which matter rises. Yet these must be only hinted at, for sometimes one large sensed form may seem to give rise to many smaller ones while it gently towers above them. In other instances, small shapes may seem to anticipate larger ones that never actually appear at all.

Sometimes I think that the earth retains ghost images of all the natural shapes that it has known, so that a given field may also contain pseudo-shapes—the forms of mountains or seas that once covered it in other times. Unknowingly, a painter may give a field a wavelike cast, so that the grasses suggest seas, and never know why he has done so. Perhaps there are indeed sights to paint that we do not see, hidden within the forms that are apparent; pictures within pictures. Often I study nature with this in mind.

Outside of such considerations, though, the landscape should be the painter's main studio; a living studio. For the objects in fields and woods constantly move, suggestive of creativity, while the objects in a room are stationary. In his home, man tries to stabilize the seasons, stop their motion, and so his emotions become cramped. In his home, man dilutes his emotions and hopes to escape his nature. A painter must do much of his work in his studio, and there he arranges objects of nature to suit his purposes. He arranges his own emotions to suit his purposes, also. But he must never forget the greater design of nature or of emotions, nor lose sight of his identification with the land's mobility.

The painter's emotions represent his motive action. They sweep through his inner being, as the winds sweep across the earth. The earth uses the storm winds, and a man must learn to use his emotions, even the wildest of them, in the same way. This can be achieved to some degree if the artist learns from nature itself, and observes how nature utilizes its own forces. While hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes ravish the land at different times and with varying intensities, the world overall maintains its dependable stance and all the stability we require.

The storm's seeming disorder is regulated in a certain overall fashion that escapes us. Storms are expressed, often violently, yet that very expression because of its cathartic quality limits the nature of the storm, while releasing its force at the same time. The force dissipates, and the violence itself is part of a larger order and calm. So, through such violent action, the earth stabilizes its own elements and redistributes its parts. Its violence is not only contained, but through expression it is always kept in bounds.

Even such storms have shape and form and follow certain laws: Floods behave in one manner, droughts in another. Snowstorms do not come in summertime, and dust storms do not blow through forests. So the natural forces—the emotions—in a painter must be understood in the same manner.

They must be expressed, but through form. There is a certain violence in creativity that no sweet words can hide; but it is an innocent violence in which man's emotions as natural forces form landscapes, still lifes, or portraits instead of wind, rain, lightning, or summer storms. So he must know when to strike with his emotions, when to hold them suspended, and how to sense the inner shape of his feelings so that his strokes and colors can erupt from him as naturally and yet expertly as rain from a cloud.

Nor can he escape nature, even in his studio, for his feelings will be affected by the weather even though the drapes be closed, and those emotions and connections will seep into his decisions about his work, even if he never goes outside. Artists with a constant eye out for the academies or for sales have a tendency to ignore their own feelings and knowledge by trying to appeal to superimposed values of a social nature. They force their emotions into stereotyped images, conforming more to the restricting conventions of drawing rooms, where even language itself is stiff as stone.

Any conventions—religious, social, or political—can ruin an artist's work if they are slavishly followed. Nor should the artist try to point out one message through his paintings, for each one is its own statement, and if an overall statement is made, then it must happen naturally—as a field at any given time is a certain kind of field even though it contains many varieties of flowers, weeds, and rocks. The shape of a painter's work in that respect is ever coming from the inside and cannot be applied from without, or made to conform to his intellectual idea of what it should be.

(12:20-12:30 p.m.)

Paintings, then, are natural formations, rising up or emerging from a man's psyche as surely as mountains thrust up from the ground. A man himself has "natural features" so that his emotions, intellect, dreams and accomplishments can be compared to the different objective features of the land. Actually, the painter merges the inner landscape of the mind with the exterior one. Literally his dreams take shape.

Each brushstroke follows the motion of the painter's feelings, while the overall power of a particular work comes from the painter's predominating emotion at the time; with all his colors and brushstrokes following in a complementary manner, so that the interweaving actions form an intricate emotional lacing, "bodied over" with pigment. Underpaintings or underlayers represent emotional archeology: the originating emotional patterns upon which the later painting forms. So the final layers must be the expert rendering of all those earlier layers; the resolution of their incompleteness. I always muttered, "Ah, ah, ah," whenever at the last I resolved each final stroke in a painting with which I was pleased.