Almost a month since my last post.

The last time I posted, I was in a production slump (as is often the case) but the one painting that was worthwhile was interesting.

Not only has that painting survived the cut, but it has made me consider what I am trying to communicate when I paint. I can't remember if I've mentioned my original artist's statement in previous posts, but this painting brought me full circle back to it.

I stopped working on it at this point because I saw it was finished, although I couldn't have told you then why I thought that. 

My original thinking was that it was the sun bursting through from behind the clouds. But rapidly I added interpretations: it is the reality underlying the material universe, it is a tear in the celluloid of an old-fashioned film, it is enlightenment breaking through the confusion of everyday.

Since this painting, I have begun to consider something new. In the past years, my painting has been strictly visual - based on representation, and finished when I judged it to be a satisfactory visual product.

The concept of an underlying reality, however, is very seductive. 

I find myself planning to incorporate that concept into a line of paintings: the quantum series (?). 

These paintings will have layers purposely constructed (unlike my previous paintings that were entirely fortuitous) that represent various layers of reality. With matter as we know it, it is scale of observation that determines what we see as a surface. In other words, underlying the real world we see is the vast open space that sings between electrons and neutrons and protons and photons (in layman's terms entirely!).

So, more to come, I hope.