The Gallery U- Visions of Half Sleep: Sept 17, 2015

Visons of Half-Sleep

Chinese ink and pigment on colored rice paper

2015

“There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.”

(Thomas Jefferson)

This last spring, I had the incredible opportunity to learn from a great master of Chinese Painting. I took these traditional methods and applied them to my own personal paintings. Normally, when I work, there are hundreds of hours poured into a painting, but I completed this painting in less than fifteen minutes. It was the culmination of my countless thoughts being brought into life in a single moment while meditating on the last closing of the eyes at night before sleep. This crucial moment has been elusive yet crucial in my work for a long time now, but it wasn’t until I let go of my preconceived notions that reality came to me. The red colored rice paper became a darkened sky with the aurora borealis coming in, ready to take over. Within a few strokes of the brush, it was over and the natural mixing of the water and ink completed my vision. It was a perfect moment of harmony of intent and painting that I doubt will ever happen to me again. For more time consuming paintings, the intent is lost in the hours fussing over the details and needs to be rediscovered, but for this painting, the intent and production were so close that it was encapsulated and preserved. Sometimes doing something great doesn’t have to take a long time, it just has to have a good mixture of intentions and actions.

Tags: brush, intent, painting, scad, thomas, time

www.thomasflynnii.com