Anand Tandav
Friday, May 20, 2011
Anand Tandav
The painting is based on an often reproduced painting by an Indian artist, I will post an image of it if I can find it. If you want a print e-mail me!
Absurd Buses and Himalayan Nights
This short story is based on my experiences in Nepal and India. I put my friend Glenn in the lead role. Glenn also tread alot of the same paths I did in India and Nepal, though he would probably not ride on the roof of the bus, but who knows? maybe he did!
This story is dedicated to my friend Matthew Jarvis, or as one of the Dharamshala girls used to call him: "Jarvis"
Glenn smudged the glass with his fingers and peered at the bouncing jungle, “where should we be now? I don’t know, at least seven hours till Kathmandu.”
He stared into inky black as his teeth were continually rattled by the absurd bus with its vinyl upholstered plywood benches and riot of colours, now shrouded in utter night. The bus was rather full of unconscious Nepalese and Indians who bounced about like marionettes in their sleep. It really was an absurd bus –its suspension arranged to amplify rather than absorb the irregularities of the mountain road from the border to Kathmandu.
He dozed impossibly through the tumult, and was eventually stirred by the bus not shaking him about. It slowed to an utterly remote stop along the mountain road. It could have been a dream as children, mothers with babies, grandparents, great grandparents and men smoking cigarettes materialized out of wild jungle and onto the bus from God knows where on their way to God knows where. Impossibly beautiful and wild, the dark eyes of the Nepalese mountaineers were bleary with sleep, glass bangles jangled and smells of food spices, fragrant perspiration, jasmine, and hair oil made an intoxicating blend with the Himalayan night air. The cold draft sharpened the senses, and wonder and fascination wrapped the moment and slowed it. Suddenly alert, fascinated, Glenn watched the bus fill to capacity, and yet continue to fill, then stuff, then finally cram, till the remnants of the beautiful ambrosial multitude could be heard settling themselves on the roof among the luggage, presumably huddling together against what was sure to be a chill seven hours of smoking and laughing, rolled up like their cigarettes in thin wool shawls.
The little boys and girls had been carried forward with the boarding passengers, evidently unconcerned about where their mothers and grandmothers where, and settled into laps. Babies slept oblivious, slung on the hips of their mothers in the picturesque manner of the Indian subcontinent. As the bus lurched forward, the smaller children were tossed, but such was the airtight arrangement of the passengers, there was not room for anyone to fall. Not a word was spoken, perhaps some murmurs, infants croaked or sighed, and Glenn shuffled restless, feeling guilt and compassion –it must have been about four in the morning, “where were they going?” He watched a little girl standing, swaying... Nepalese were small, but he felt this girl was younger than his youngest sister, maybe two or three. The poor thing was neither asleep nor awake, swooning with fatigue, but with no room to do anything but bounce on the hips of the pungent crowd about her. His heart opened wide as he watched the pitiful scene, and impulsively he scooped the tender girl with her bird bones and her tinkling anklets and held her tight and warm to his breast, smoothing the stray hairs from her forehead in an affectionate gesture. The children on the absurd bus belonged to everyone and to no one, unless it be that they all belonged to the Parabramha, the all pervading spirit which is as real to wordless processions which mysteriously board absurd Himalayan buses as night and cold air.
Dawn followed slowly after twilight; a brilliant valley appeared beneath sheer slopes terminating in madly rushing waters, magnificent hills hemmed in the valley above keeping the journey in shade for the early morning. As the mountain road became more difficult to negotiate, bleak concrete dwellings were replaced by fantastic little stone homesteads and outbuildings whose upper stories perched on ancient timbers, grey with age. The railings and sills were wood, ornate and carved, everything appeared to be in miniature. The all pervading spirit which inhabited the soul of every passenger on the bus was also flowing, torrential like the waters among the valley floor. Glenn’s pupils dilated and the paddle ball game the plywood seat was playing with his backside became remote as the valley emerged from dusk to morning –something was starting to happen, as real and as intimate as the sun clearing the horizon high, high above them. As if with a snap, time and space became elastic as the elements from which the valley was formed became more concrete. The bones of the earth and the unfathomable depth of rock beneath their tires was as an ocean, stirring in its depths, profound and conscious, wearing a kaleidoscope of morning greens ochres and greys as a cloak. Through it flowed far below, the sound and the downward rush of the mountain river was drowning out the sound of the noisy engine and crunching tires. The beams of sunlight that pierced the mist in the pass above turned the grey mountainside gold and green, its shafts pregnant with fire, its light stirring, but flowing neither forward nor backward but rather flowing into and out of itself. The light was illuminating the valley not as a lamp throws light on the objects placed beneath its beam, but rather the light within every particle of earth water and air was stirred and awakened by the sunlight’s arrival in the valley. “Tableau”. The word floated into Glenn’s mind. His mind had been utterly still –without a single thought to stir the calm reflection of the transcendent vision on the surface of his consciousness. The reflected splendour rippled slightly. “Tableau”. Again the word slowly stirred the workings of his mind from profound and quiet meditation. He saw a picture of himself from outside, a brown cherub in fuscia and green cotton, silver bangles, a scarlet cardigan, and dusty grey feet was curled convulsively in his lap. Her heavy black braid was shedding rivulets of oily curls to frame her round face and to accent her thick curling eyelashes. There was no bus between the young Canadian with the god-child clinging to his breast and the valley. The edge of the mountain track sped past as the pair ascended the brightening valley with its whitewashed stone buildings crowned with silver grey hand-worked wood and slate roofs arranged like scales of fishes. Rhododendrons littered the mountainside in a riot of purple and pink and coral, and the mists of falling waters roared among the gorges of the valley, their plumes dancing with the columns of sunlight. Glenn watched himself as his fontanel bone dissolved, and a column of energy flowed from the base of his spine, flowing not down, but upward filling himself then flowing cool from out of the top of his head, finally returning to his body and dissolving it into a blissful tapestry of wind, water, fire, earth, and energy.
Glenn opened his eyes. A tiny woman was shaking his shoulder and grinning above him displaying her gold teeth. She wordlessly indicated to the rather ordinary looking Nepalese girl in his lap, and he lifted the sleeping child into her mother’s waiting arms. Glenn uncrooked his stiff legs and wobbled out on to the gravel where the bus had parked and surveyed it in the midday sun. It wasn’t just absurd, it was impossible. The bus was crowned with a lavender roof, it was decorated like a cake with some kind of metal that shone like chrome where all the filigrees of icing would be. Instead of candles or cherries, the bus was topped with luggage and a satisfied looking boy of about fourteen smoking, too bored to stretch his legs and chat loudly with the other boys. An absolute riot of verses or slogans festooned the rest of the bus in what was presumably Nepalese script, except where little vignettes with trompe l’oeil frames were painted with Hindu deities. Durga was resplendent with dozens of arms, each wielding a blood smeared weapon. She had her foot placed on the neck of a decapitated bull, a demon with a handlebar moustache was emerging from the massive wound brandishing a scimitar, and finding himself impaled on the Goddess’s mighty pike. Elsewhere, Shiva was mediating in his tiger skin ascetic’s robe, his pale skin the colour of moonlight to match the sliver of a young moon that adorned his matted hair, gathered in a topknot. He was surrounded by a motley crew of demons and unruly men sporting all manner of physical handicaps, the white bull Nandi kneeling in supplication before His crosslegged form. Divine life was flowing from Shiva’s fontanel, and it gathered at His feet to form the source of the river Ganges. On the side of the bus’s hood, Bal Krishna, Krishna in the form of a child, was dancing with the gopis, the milkmaids, to the tune of the flute melody of the little body, his black hair shedding rivulets of oily curls to frame his round indigo face and to accent his curling eyelashes. Atop the steps into the bus was a shrine to Lord Ganesha, The eternal Lord of innocence was cast in bronze, and smeared with red paste, hemmed in all around with electric candles, silver and scarlet tinsel, and a brass altar where rose scented incense and sandalwood burned. His elephant head with its cherubic cheeks was rosy red, fanned by his great ears and festooned with garlands of silk flowers. His four arms were brandishing weapons and sweets, and he danced upon a lotus. The amber and red lights, the tinsel medallions, the rainbow colours on the rims and bumpers should have clashed in their excess, but the impossible bus looked fantastic. As he found his seat back on the bus, Glenn saw his little friend, now awake, and he flashed her a smile. He knew she did not recognise him, but she smiled shyly.
Glenn awoke, he did not know from how long a sleep, but they must have come down the pass because the cold mount ain air had been replaced by a stifling heat. The quiet of the night journey that had accompanied the noise of the bus had been replaced by rhythmic bajhans which were blaring from tiny speakers mounted in the bus –a suitably absurd volume for the tiny speakers that squawked and hissed with distortion. The scene had changed, and a crowd of strangers had mostly replaced the villagers whom he had travelled with, including the girl, and there were some empty seats. In spite of that, men could still be heard on the roof. Babies started crying, and the heat was making the air feel still in spite of the wind the whipped through the open windows. Though his stream of thought had slowly returned, the strange sense of elasticity of time had remained and Glenn was watching himself from the point of view of a witness, as if in the third person. The bus route seemed like more like a milk truck than an express bus, stopping at every tiny hamlet and for any many woman or child who flagged it down from their tiny villages along the track. Every time the bus stopped moving to pick up or drop off more passengers, the atmosphere inside seemed to get hotter. As Glenn hopped off to help a girl and her little brothers get their luggage onto the roof, Glenn watched himself reach for a hand up himself and sat down among the laughing men and boys atop the bus. It bus lurched and swayed and bounced down the switchbacks, teetering on the brink of mighty chasms and bouncing through the hot wind. Great birds that looked like vultures floated, suspended in the silver air above them, and monkeys could be seen and heard adding to the flood of thrilling sensation that made him delirious with enthusiasm. His previously quiet mind became flooded with all manner of ideas and inspiration as melodies and poetic verses sprang spontaneously to his mind and all of his deepest longings and hopes brimmed in his intoxicated state, and still the joyride continued by the hour. He drank greedily from his water as the hot air sucked the moisture from him and tugged at his clothes and close cropped hair. The squawky bajhans echoed from the rock faces and the hum of the tires blended with the rush of the wind in his ears and the din of the men’s exuberant talk.
Glenn reflected that many more than seven hours must have passed. The cool night had forced him inside, and the scattered lights of the outskirts of Kathmandu had given way to the crazy bustle of a Kathmandu city night. All sense of discovery had been replaced by an ardent desire to correctly follow the route that he had mapped out in the Canadian consul in Delhi, and he found the room without incident. An observer in the tiny room with its window wide open to the lights, the smoke, the night smells and the bats of Kathmandu, would have seen a young Canadian man sitting before a photo of his guru, meditating in the light of a stub of candle wreathed in tendrils of incense smoke. But Glenn was still racing up to the mountain pass with an angelic child pressed to his heart. And meditating in a tiny Kathmandu hotel room. And nowhere at all. And everywhere.
This story is dedicated to my friend Matthew Jarvis, or as one of the Dharamshala girls used to call him: "Jarvis"
Glenn smudged the glass with his fingers and peered at the bouncing jungle, “where should we be now? I don’t know, at least seven hours till Kathmandu.”
He stared into inky black as his teeth were continually rattled by the absurd bus with its vinyl upholstered plywood benches and riot of colours, now shrouded in utter night. The bus was rather full of unconscious Nepalese and Indians who bounced about like marionettes in their sleep. It really was an absurd bus –its suspension arranged to amplify rather than absorb the irregularities of the mountain road from the border to Kathmandu.
He dozed impossibly through the tumult, and was eventually stirred by the bus not shaking him about. It slowed to an utterly remote stop along the mountain road. It could have been a dream as children, mothers with babies, grandparents, great grandparents and men smoking cigarettes materialized out of wild jungle and onto the bus from God knows where on their way to God knows where. Impossibly beautiful and wild, the dark eyes of the Nepalese mountaineers were bleary with sleep, glass bangles jangled and smells of food spices, fragrant perspiration, jasmine, and hair oil made an intoxicating blend with the Himalayan night air. The cold draft sharpened the senses, and wonder and fascination wrapped the moment and slowed it. Suddenly alert, fascinated, Glenn watched the bus fill to capacity, and yet continue to fill, then stuff, then finally cram, till the remnants of the beautiful ambrosial multitude could be heard settling themselves on the roof among the luggage, presumably huddling together against what was sure to be a chill seven hours of smoking and laughing, rolled up like their cigarettes in thin wool shawls.
The little boys and girls had been carried forward with the boarding passengers, evidently unconcerned about where their mothers and grandmothers where, and settled into laps. Babies slept oblivious, slung on the hips of their mothers in the picturesque manner of the Indian subcontinent. As the bus lurched forward, the smaller children were tossed, but such was the airtight arrangement of the passengers, there was not room for anyone to fall. Not a word was spoken, perhaps some murmurs, infants croaked or sighed, and Glenn shuffled restless, feeling guilt and compassion –it must have been about four in the morning, “where were they going?” He watched a little girl standing, swaying... Nepalese were small, but he felt this girl was younger than his youngest sister, maybe two or three. The poor thing was neither asleep nor awake, swooning with fatigue, but with no room to do anything but bounce on the hips of the pungent crowd about her. His heart opened wide as he watched the pitiful scene, and impulsively he scooped the tender girl with her bird bones and her tinkling anklets and held her tight and warm to his breast, smoothing the stray hairs from her forehead in an affectionate gesture. The children on the absurd bus belonged to everyone and to no one, unless it be that they all belonged to the Parabramha, the all pervading spirit which is as real to wordless processions which mysteriously board absurd Himalayan buses as night and cold air.
Dawn followed slowly after twilight; a brilliant valley appeared beneath sheer slopes terminating in madly rushing waters, magnificent hills hemmed in the valley above keeping the journey in shade for the early morning. As the mountain road became more difficult to negotiate, bleak concrete dwellings were replaced by fantastic little stone homesteads and outbuildings whose upper stories perched on ancient timbers, grey with age. The railings and sills were wood, ornate and carved, everything appeared to be in miniature. The all pervading spirit which inhabited the soul of every passenger on the bus was also flowing, torrential like the waters among the valley floor. Glenn’s pupils dilated and the paddle ball game the plywood seat was playing with his backside became remote as the valley emerged from dusk to morning –something was starting to happen, as real and as intimate as the sun clearing the horizon high, high above them. As if with a snap, time and space became elastic as the elements from which the valley was formed became more concrete. The bones of the earth and the unfathomable depth of rock beneath their tires was as an ocean, stirring in its depths, profound and conscious, wearing a kaleidoscope of morning greens ochres and greys as a cloak. Through it flowed far below, the sound and the downward rush of the mountain river was drowning out the sound of the noisy engine and crunching tires. The beams of sunlight that pierced the mist in the pass above turned the grey mountainside gold and green, its shafts pregnant with fire, its light stirring, but flowing neither forward nor backward but rather flowing into and out of itself. The light was illuminating the valley not as a lamp throws light on the objects placed beneath its beam, but rather the light within every particle of earth water and air was stirred and awakened by the sunlight’s arrival in the valley. “Tableau”. The word floated into Glenn’s mind. His mind had been utterly still –without a single thought to stir the calm reflection of the transcendent vision on the surface of his consciousness. The reflected splendour rippled slightly. “Tableau”. Again the word slowly stirred the workings of his mind from profound and quiet meditation. He saw a picture of himself from outside, a brown cherub in fuscia and green cotton, silver bangles, a scarlet cardigan, and dusty grey feet was curled convulsively in his lap. Her heavy black braid was shedding rivulets of oily curls to frame her round face and to accent her thick curling eyelashes. There was no bus between the young Canadian with the god-child clinging to his breast and the valley. The edge of the mountain track sped past as the pair ascended the brightening valley with its whitewashed stone buildings crowned with silver grey hand-worked wood and slate roofs arranged like scales of fishes. Rhododendrons littered the mountainside in a riot of purple and pink and coral, and the mists of falling waters roared among the gorges of the valley, their plumes dancing with the columns of sunlight. Glenn watched himself as his fontanel bone dissolved, and a column of energy flowed from the base of his spine, flowing not down, but upward filling himself then flowing cool from out of the top of his head, finally returning to his body and dissolving it into a blissful tapestry of wind, water, fire, earth, and energy.
Glenn opened his eyes. A tiny woman was shaking his shoulder and grinning above him displaying her gold teeth. She wordlessly indicated to the rather ordinary looking Nepalese girl in his lap, and he lifted the sleeping child into her mother’s waiting arms. Glenn uncrooked his stiff legs and wobbled out on to the gravel where the bus had parked and surveyed it in the midday sun. It wasn’t just absurd, it was impossible. The bus was crowned with a lavender roof, it was decorated like a cake with some kind of metal that shone like chrome where all the filigrees of icing would be. Instead of candles or cherries, the bus was topped with luggage and a satisfied looking boy of about fourteen smoking, too bored to stretch his legs and chat loudly with the other boys. An absolute riot of verses or slogans festooned the rest of the bus in what was presumably Nepalese script, except where little vignettes with trompe l’oeil frames were painted with Hindu deities. Durga was resplendent with dozens of arms, each wielding a blood smeared weapon. She had her foot placed on the neck of a decapitated bull, a demon with a handlebar moustache was emerging from the massive wound brandishing a scimitar, and finding himself impaled on the Goddess’s mighty pike. Elsewhere, Shiva was mediating in his tiger skin ascetic’s robe, his pale skin the colour of moonlight to match the sliver of a young moon that adorned his matted hair, gathered in a topknot. He was surrounded by a motley crew of demons and unruly men sporting all manner of physical handicaps, the white bull Nandi kneeling in supplication before His crosslegged form. Divine life was flowing from Shiva’s fontanel, and it gathered at His feet to form the source of the river Ganges. On the side of the bus’s hood, Bal Krishna, Krishna in the form of a child, was dancing with the gopis, the milkmaids, to the tune of the flute melody of the little body, his black hair shedding rivulets of oily curls to frame his round indigo face and to accent his curling eyelashes. Atop the steps into the bus was a shrine to Lord Ganesha, The eternal Lord of innocence was cast in bronze, and smeared with red paste, hemmed in all around with electric candles, silver and scarlet tinsel, and a brass altar where rose scented incense and sandalwood burned. His elephant head with its cherubic cheeks was rosy red, fanned by his great ears and festooned with garlands of silk flowers. His four arms were brandishing weapons and sweets, and he danced upon a lotus. The amber and red lights, the tinsel medallions, the rainbow colours on the rims and bumpers should have clashed in their excess, but the impossible bus looked fantastic. As he found his seat back on the bus, Glenn saw his little friend, now awake, and he flashed her a smile. He knew she did not recognise him, but she smiled shyly.
Glenn awoke, he did not know from how long a sleep, but they must have come down the pass because the cold mount ain air had been replaced by a stifling heat. The quiet of the night journey that had accompanied the noise of the bus had been replaced by rhythmic bajhans which were blaring from tiny speakers mounted in the bus –a suitably absurd volume for the tiny speakers that squawked and hissed with distortion. The scene had changed, and a crowd of strangers had mostly replaced the villagers whom he had travelled with, including the girl, and there were some empty seats. In spite of that, men could still be heard on the roof. Babies started crying, and the heat was making the air feel still in spite of the wind the whipped through the open windows. Though his stream of thought had slowly returned, the strange sense of elasticity of time had remained and Glenn was watching himself from the point of view of a witness, as if in the third person. The bus route seemed like more like a milk truck than an express bus, stopping at every tiny hamlet and for any many woman or child who flagged it down from their tiny villages along the track. Every time the bus stopped moving to pick up or drop off more passengers, the atmosphere inside seemed to get hotter. As Glenn hopped off to help a girl and her little brothers get their luggage onto the roof, Glenn watched himself reach for a hand up himself and sat down among the laughing men and boys atop the bus. It bus lurched and swayed and bounced down the switchbacks, teetering on the brink of mighty chasms and bouncing through the hot wind. Great birds that looked like vultures floated, suspended in the silver air above them, and monkeys could be seen and heard adding to the flood of thrilling sensation that made him delirious with enthusiasm. His previously quiet mind became flooded with all manner of ideas and inspiration as melodies and poetic verses sprang spontaneously to his mind and all of his deepest longings and hopes brimmed in his intoxicated state, and still the joyride continued by the hour. He drank greedily from his water as the hot air sucked the moisture from him and tugged at his clothes and close cropped hair. The squawky bajhans echoed from the rock faces and the hum of the tires blended with the rush of the wind in his ears and the din of the men’s exuberant talk.
Glenn reflected that many more than seven hours must have passed. The cool night had forced him inside, and the scattered lights of the outskirts of Kathmandu had given way to the crazy bustle of a Kathmandu city night. All sense of discovery had been replaced by an ardent desire to correctly follow the route that he had mapped out in the Canadian consul in Delhi, and he found the room without incident. An observer in the tiny room with its window wide open to the lights, the smoke, the night smells and the bats of Kathmandu, would have seen a young Canadian man sitting before a photo of his guru, meditating in the light of a stub of candle wreathed in tendrils of incense smoke. But Glenn was still racing up to the mountain pass with an angelic child pressed to his heart. And meditating in a tiny Kathmandu hotel room. And nowhere at all. And everywhere.
letter to Mandelbrot
Here is a letter I wrote to professor Benoit Mandelbrot. The professor died a few month after I sent this, so I suppose he never read it or looked at the images. I will look over the blog and see if the images are there, if not I will add them. I guess I'll call it "Open Letter to the legacy of Benoit Mandelbrot".
Professor Mandelbrot,
I wanted to bring these paintings to your attention for various reasons, in a nutshell because I suspect you will be able to provide some key to understanding their meaning and importance.
While studying Fine Arts at University of Waterloo in 1992, a friend of mine, a PhD student in theoretical physics introduced me to the world of fractals, mostly through images, but also through discussion. That time was the genesis of a body of work in my painting process, producing paintings which I call “thoughtless organic”. Somehow seeing images of the Mandelbrot set produced a change in the way I saw and interpreted visual reality, and I wanted to paint about that.
Not being a mathematician, I cannot prove that my impressions were correct but it seemed to me that the Mandelbrot set images and their self similarity at any scale signalled something extremely important about visual reality. I felt that the beauty expressed in the set was connected to the way nature manifests beauty in complexity. It seemed to me that wherever I looked in nature, I could see a language of forms that became visible only through randomness, and that there was a subtle message everywhere taking shape whenever there was infinite complexity. Of course, I also began to see that infinite complexity was everywhere.
I noticed how the spontaneous beauty in the shifting patterns of nature is a very hard thing to paint, and I began a two pronged attack on these difficulties, on the one had through working very hard to represent exactly what my eye could see though painting and drawing, and on the other hand I began to develop other work painting imagery with no reference to phenomenal reality. It is the non representational work which I would like to present to you now, the culmination of 18 years of development.
It seems to me that you would be foremost among those who could recognise the “language of forms” if I have been able to generate it through my painting process. I realise that you are very busy, very much in demand, and I would not approach you, except that I have convinced myself that some absolutely unprecedented imagery has begun to appear in my “thoughtless organic” works. I am a painter and not a philosopher or a scientist, so I will not try to argue the importance of these paintings, rather I will allow the images to speak for themselves. Please share with me any insight you may have into the work, I need your help as I am not in a position to sanction the meaning or importance of the work myself.
In closing, I think it may be important to note that when I am painting these pictures, my mind is at rest with almost no thoughts, and no concepts or mental pictures of any kind about where the work is going. I do not know from stage to stage what shape the painting will take next, and there is some spontaneous process at work which generates the imagery without any visual reference or source material of any kind. I’m not sure it isn’t the same process that generates beauty in chaos in the natural world. There is a strange witness state in which I watch the images unfold, and though I do not know much about how I arrived at the stage where I can maintain this state, I have seen that it is the key to the process. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any insight or encouragement you may have to offer.
I am extremely grateful for you kind attention and time,
William Downey
Professor Mandelbrot,
I wanted to bring these paintings to your attention for various reasons, in a nutshell because I suspect you will be able to provide some key to understanding their meaning and importance.
While studying Fine Arts at University of Waterloo in 1992, a friend of mine, a PhD student in theoretical physics introduced me to the world of fractals, mostly through images, but also through discussion. That time was the genesis of a body of work in my painting process, producing paintings which I call “thoughtless organic”. Somehow seeing images of the Mandelbrot set produced a change in the way I saw and interpreted visual reality, and I wanted to paint about that.
Not being a mathematician, I cannot prove that my impressions were correct but it seemed to me that the Mandelbrot set images and their self similarity at any scale signalled something extremely important about visual reality. I felt that the beauty expressed in the set was connected to the way nature manifests beauty in complexity. It seemed to me that wherever I looked in nature, I could see a language of forms that became visible only through randomness, and that there was a subtle message everywhere taking shape whenever there was infinite complexity. Of course, I also began to see that infinite complexity was everywhere.
I noticed how the spontaneous beauty in the shifting patterns of nature is a very hard thing to paint, and I began a two pronged attack on these difficulties, on the one had through working very hard to represent exactly what my eye could see though painting and drawing, and on the other hand I began to develop other work painting imagery with no reference to phenomenal reality. It is the non representational work which I would like to present to you now, the culmination of 18 years of development.
It seems to me that you would be foremost among those who could recognise the “language of forms” if I have been able to generate it through my painting process. I realise that you are very busy, very much in demand, and I would not approach you, except that I have convinced myself that some absolutely unprecedented imagery has begun to appear in my “thoughtless organic” works. I am a painter and not a philosopher or a scientist, so I will not try to argue the importance of these paintings, rather I will allow the images to speak for themselves. Please share with me any insight you may have into the work, I need your help as I am not in a position to sanction the meaning or importance of the work myself.
In closing, I think it may be important to note that when I am painting these pictures, my mind is at rest with almost no thoughts, and no concepts or mental pictures of any kind about where the work is going. I do not know from stage to stage what shape the painting will take next, and there is some spontaneous process at work which generates the imagery without any visual reference or source material of any kind. I’m not sure it isn’t the same process that generates beauty in chaos in the natural world. There is a strange witness state in which I watch the images unfold, and though I do not know much about how I arrived at the stage where I can maintain this state, I have seen that it is the key to the process. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any insight or encouragement you may have to offer.
I am extremely grateful for you kind attention and time,
William Downey
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