Okay, this, I think, is a pretty nice digital painting. This is from the most recent series called Liminality. And I guess it’s natural that I like this, because it’s a more recent painting. Yeah, I run into trouble with some of these Random Daily posts, because the paintings are old, well, I can look back at them nostalgically, and very often, I think they’re very good pieces. You know, they’re still things that I did years ago and they’re not necessarily the kinds of things I’m interested in doing now. This, however, is a really nice image, I think, for a variety of reasons.
This group that I’ve called Liminality is a group of pieces that I’m doing with the anticipation of using them as springboards, I guess, anyway, if not studies, for things I would like to do once I retire. My goal for several years, anyway, has been to, in a couple years, retire and have some time to get back to painting and painting full time and painting on some larger things, getting someplace where I have the space to do that. I’ve got my eye on New Mexico, which is a place that I’ve always liked and thought was a beautiful landscape. And I’m hoping to be able to scrape together enough money to get a place there and get back to full time painting work. But in the meantime, I do a lot of artwork with the intention of exploring these things later on.
So liminality is a term that refers to that liminal state, that, in between. It’s used, sort of anthropologically, to refer to a coming of age, and usually that’s, you know, an adolescent sort of coming of age. But I see no reason not to apply it to the sort of coming of age that I am attaining as I move towards retirement. I mean, I’m transitioning from my sort of, you know, middle life, and really, in many ways, you know, that working era, productive period, into what I hope is a much more productive, but, nevertheless, final sort of phase of my life, you know. If, I’m optimistic, and I certainly usually am, you know, I’m moving into the final third of my life, if I can hope to manage to live into my 90s, which is what I’ve got my eye on. We’ll see how that turns out.
But this particular piece, I think, is very nice. I do these digital drawings, but with the intention of painting in this manner. And so, the digital tools allow for, you know, really anything. You can do whatever you want to, but I know myself, I know my interests in actual tangible physical paint. And so I try to make these images by using the digital materials in a way that could be done with, you know, paint on canvas. And so that’s what this is. This is an image, and I’m pleased with the way the whiteness works. I’m pleased with the way the gestural line works. I’m pleased with the color relationships and the linear elements. The piece, um, yeah, I like the fact that it is non objective, and yet references both, the physical, human form, and the landscape, and just line for the sake of line, you know. It’s the essence of drawing, and I’ve packed a lot of – allowed a lot of meaning to be apparent in it.
You know, in a lot of the drawings I do these days, my intention is to document that moment, and that person that I am at that time, and so there’s a great deal of handwriting involved, and documentation involved – and a great deal of allowed meaning, but not especially intended, meaning, you know, and I would like to think that any meaning or interpretation, or appreciation, or response that a viewer might have to it, would be their own.
There’s plenty in this piece to please and intrigue and satisfy me, and there’s plenty in it that is undefined and ambiguous, and yet there are certainly elements of it that are… familiar to me, if not referential. I mean, I don’t think there’s intentional referentiality. I don’t really know that that’s true. I think there probably is. But it’s really an allowed meaning that’s going on – I hope. And so this is a pretty nice piece. I think this is one of the better pieces from the liminality group, and I think that the liminality group is a pretty good group. And we’ll see, I expect that I’m going to carry on with that sort of a theme, as I approach retirement, because, really, everything that I’m doing is, right now, reflective of that idea of, in between states, you know, a coming of age. I’m doing a lot of things with the intention of exploring them further when I’ve got the time and the wherewithal to do it after I retire from my current teaching occupation.