David Wiley

It is the first real spring day of the year, and as it often happens on the first spring day I feel a strong urge to paint.   As I enter my studio everything appears to be in proper order, waiting, beckoning, inviting me to begin.   I start squeezing my colors onto the palette, greeting each of these old friends heartily as I free them on by one from the darkness of the tube into the light of days without end.  All of these color genies have done prodigious service for me in the past, and they are indicating a willingness to do so again.   After serving them a small sprinkle of water I sit down to stare at my piece of paper for an unknown period of time, as is my custom. This full sheet of Fabriano Artistico 280 lb. hot press paper is brilliantly white.   Dazzling!  What is it that wants to live in this palace ablaze with emptiness?   Part of my job is to find out, so I begin searching the archives of my mind for possible candidates.  There are lots of things I like to put into my paintings, and there is always room for new ones.   And since among the things I like to include are all the colors, it is quite a long list, especially considering that no "thing', including color, is ever used the same way twice. So now I am looking at a continent I have not yet created, examining a battlefield where the battle is yet to be fought, and staring at a scented bed waiting for the lovemaking to begin.   I am contemplating an empty space, in any event, where things are about to happen. There is always the option of brushing on an active, exuberant color for the opening curtain, an orange or a red or a magenta, or perhaps a cobalt blue, and let it give me hints and tips and clues about what to do next.   That has always been one of my favorite ways to begin a painting.  On this occasion I decide to open the drama with a patch of magenta at the top and a patch of cobalt blue at the bottom.  It has always been my habit to paint vertically, but not every time.   The saying is that those who paint vertically are concerned with heaven and hell, while those who paint horizontally are more interested in earthly matters.    Being interested in everything, I should be painting on circular paper.  No matter.  There vertical format suits me fine.   I get the paper good and wet and stare at it for a while, trying to decide where to put the magenta and how much, ditto the cobalt blue.   After a bit I begin to feel like a go player competing with himself.  Where to place the first black stone?  Where to put the white?   The opening is important insofar as it may set the tone for everything that follows.   The decision to use cobalt blue and magenta was not as important as deciding where to put them.   Then of course there is the question of how much paint, what size and shape.  In a game of go you don't have to worry about the size and shape of the stones, nor the color, only where to put them, which is complex enough by itself.   The go game is a preparation for battlefield considerations, the strategy and focus.   "I shall place my orange here to support the left flank," etcetera.   I am also a mid-nineteenth century explorer trekking into the interior of Africa.   I have to be as prepared, alert, and attentive as possible in order to learn from the things that happen as I proceed.   Not only do I need all my wits and wildness, I am a scholar of sorts as well, absorbed in the understanding of what I have just created.   Later, as the painting develops, I will become a matador, passionate, fearless and precise.  In the beginning I may be tentative, feeling out the terrain while taking a long look into the prism we call imagination. I can never help asking the question What kind of world do I want to create? and What shall I pluck from the infinite possibilities?   This is the stage at which the artist starts to become Creator, a god making a new universe, or at least a glimpse of a new universe.   This would seem to be the most exalted phase of the painting process.  But is it?  Sometimes this phenomenon is followed by a trancelike state in which I observe myself being a medium working at the direction of an unknown force.  This is when the conscious decision-making halts, and all the powers that exist within conspire to guide the hand that holds the brush. My mind wanders for a long time as I stare at the blank paper.   Eventually I stop fantasizing and, after rewetting the paper, brush a gob of magenta onto the top area in a kind of bent oblong shape with a little tail on the end.   This I gaze at in a paroxysm of joy and excitement, realizing that I have now embarked upon my adventure. I wait for the magenta to reveal its purpose to me, listening for its voice.  Perhaps this dollop of red-violet has a message from the cave of the ancients, or maybe it has something to do with the Magenta Gate of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.   Or it could well be a warning and an invitation from the Sirens of the Magenta Isle.  Or it might be a signal from the beautiful memory that is just barely still alive. Sometimes a monolog will not do for long; another voice must enter the fray in order for the conversation to begin in earnest.   Thus I reason as I wet the paper again, then apply a brush full of cobalt blue.   Aha!  Much better!  Now the instruments of the orchestra can begin making their appearances.   Now the still vast spaces of white can begin to realize their potential for a world filled with wonders.   Now the poetry of color can begin to work its way through those great in-betweens of a universe without time…  I look at the paper with its two colors and wonder what it is they want to be.   What are they telling me, individually and in unison?   It is important to understand this, although I know I can never understand it in the reasoning part of my mind.   What I really need is for them to give me a sign, an indication of what the next move should be.   The trick is to comprehend what they are saying.   I know these two very well, and I'm aware that both of them not only have many interests but many facets to their personalities.  Cobalt blue, being the lover of yellow green, often begs to have that color placed next to it, blending and intermingling with it in a display of gentle intercourse.  Usually I give into this plea, and now I give into it again, this being the first day of spring after all.    Wetting the paper once more, I lay the yellow green all around one side of the cobalt blue, and immediately these two begin to occupy themselves conceiving a new color, while magenta watches from a distance with considerable interest. What can I do now to stir things up between these three?  Magenta, who is a bit of a rogue, and having perhaps an excess of joie de vivre, is perfectly capable of setting off a few fireworks.  How do I want them to relate to each other and the new colors that are about to enter their lives?   I am exploring Africa, conducting a battle and a symphony at the same time, making love and writing a play.   The participants are all there on my palette, waiting to be introduced and act out their parts in the unfolding drama, the play that writes itself as it progresses, the symphony that composes itself as it goes along, performed in an aviary teeming with birds of all colors. There is always the question of action, since something has to be done, and with movement come line and shape.   The terms of progress must be reckoned in the light of inertia, at least to the degree of providing, however vague, a motive for action.   Feeling ebullient this day, I throw all caution to the wind, dip into the flame red and paint an irregular circle just barely touching the other colors.   No sooner have I done this than I have a sudden impulse to put some cerulean in the area where the red circle touches the yellow-green.   This I do.   And now I am in the thick of it, the exploration, the battle, the love-making, the go game, the poetry, the music.   Everything.   And now that I have created a few of the building blocks of my new universe, I begin to wonder what kind of life I want to inhabit it.   There should be flowers and trees of some sort, and a few representatives from the world of fauna.  First though, I need to put in some green to get life started, a good warm sap green bursting with the urge to bloom and flourish.   So I apply a fair amount of this color near the magenta and the cobalt blue, missing for now the red circle, which is an abstract form of life and, as such, needs to keep its distance for the color of physical life until other things are resolved.  What creatures?  I have always been partial to the gerenuk, and I see no reason why I should not use it now.   But I had also been envisioning a turtle whose shell is a maze of brilliant colors.   Then it strikes me that the cobalt blue would serve well as the turtle's head, and that if I tilt the turtle slightly I can have him walking on the inside of the red circle.   Things are happening now.  The action is in full swing.  I begin to see birds and cats and beetles and bats.   What about the Sunken Cathedral of Ys?  It should be included somehow.  Yes, there must be water and waves.  And I must not forget to leave space for an orange sun.  And there ought to be a palm tree, a perfect palm tree.   And a blue pyramid.  And a sleeping lion.  How to get all these things, plus whatever else comes to mind, into the same painting without it looking like the contents of a child's toy box? I sit back for a while and gaze at what I have done so far.  What about the orchestration of color?   Always that to consider first.   And last.  That will work itself out, I tell myself.   What I need now is for the painting to tell me how to accommodate the gerenuk, who should be orange or violet, emerging from green.  If I place the gerenuk above the turtle so that the tips of the horns are just touching the red circle this will have a good effect.  Then it hits me like a bolt!   There must be something with wings, not necessarily a bird.  I don't want  to give my gerenuk or turtle wings.   Will I have to add an angel or naiad or a sprite?   I decide on a winged sprite.   She will be holding a silent dialog with the gerenuk.  I'll have them staring into eachother's eyes.   Now I get back to work, slowly revealing the character of my new world.   As I paint a flood of images begins to sweep over me.  There should be a tower somewhere.   And  violet snake.  How am I going to put all these things in without making a mess?   Style, of course, is the answer.   Picasso filled his panting with all sorts of things he liked, and they all got along with eachother because they were enchanted with the style of their creator.  I want to believe that my own style is powerful enough to bring all these things together in a harmonious and meaningful way.  This is not easy, but I have one of the keys:  binding the painting together with the music and the poetry of color.   I could put a platypus right in the middle of the paper and it would work if the color orchestration made it work.  Or so I think optimistically as I ponder my next move.   The color wheel, my "pack of jokers", is spinning around faster and faster.  Wherever it stops, that is the color I'll use next. One of the keys, I realize to making this painting communicate what I want it to, the feeling that accompanies the discovery of a new world, is the inspired application of green, not an easy color to use.   What about having the gerenuk sticking up from the middle of a heart-shaped pair of green leaves growing from the top of the turtle shell?   Would that be too designlike, too schematic?  Not if I do it right.   But first there are other things.   The golden temples of Asia.  The blue Patagonian pumpkin fish.  Monuments in the Valleys of the Mountains of the Moon.  All the rings of the circus are in full operation now.   Yet at this instant I am certain that I am being who I really am.   The questions Who are you? and What are you doing on this planet?  have been momentarily answered.