This painting evolved from a section of a larger painting. This habit of “finding” imagery in a pattern or abstract image has been very useful for me. One has to start from something I think. Coming up with ideas out of thin air is tricky.
Here a tree-like figure gestures to something unseen or off the page. The branching arm also feels a part of the landscape horizon line at the right. The shadowed side, or left side, of the tree-figure, has hair at the top, or lines of motion, which were in fact splinters from the tree being cut. Those few marks convey a lot of meaning; the magic of art is its ability to be so layered.
The comical cowboy-hat -cloud adds subtle humor to it. The sky at right has a curious black, craggy line that acts like a window; or maybe rain coming from a cloud. The grouping at the bottom of similar forms is very much a landscape, but the figurative aspect makes one search for other life-forms in it. I really love things that exist in the middle-ground; I mean that exist between figuration and abstract. Marks that are made while in an unconscious state can end up being something profound.
