Reworking monsters
Dear friends,
I spent October painting in Minnesota, working primarily on a diptych three meters wide. My aerie on the deck overlooking Lake Zumbra offers a brief respite, a time to listen to the loons, follow the movement of the wind on the water, and find an appropriate form for the flashes of lake seen through the screen of oaks. I’m not sure that I will ever entirely understand all the ways that blue functions in the world, or in a painting!
In November 1883, Camille Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien from Rouen, where he was concluding a series of paintings, “Sometimes I am afraid to turn around canvases which I have piled against the wall; I am constantly afraid of finding monsters where I believed there were precious gems!” This experience must be familiar to many artists — it certainly is to me. Last year, I pulled together a group of paintings and drawings that later struck me as disappointing, as well as works that were unfinished, or abandoned.
Recalling the struggles they entailed, I realized that the marginal status of these works offered something unexpected: a heightened degree of creative license, a freedom to invent more boldly if they were taken up again. As I had never found a way to resolve them, I had nothing to lose in trying to imagine a new and different ending. Partly in response to the climate crisis, I have been moving towards more liquid media, as though there were some felt equivalence between the violence of the present moment and the unfettered flow of oil paint and solvent. Loosening the chemical and mental bonds all at once is producing an interesting synergy.
I continue to be amazed at the degree to which finding appropriate form is a process of relinquishing, as opposed to exerting, conscious control; allowing cues from the working process to determine the flow of aesthetic decisions. How else to explain finding myself working outside on a Deluge image, standing on a tall ladder, dribbling mineral spirits into a field of charcoal dust on a huge sheet of paper?!
You can find my portfolio on cbcampbell.com, and follow me on Instagram @studiocampbell for recent works and studio process.
If any of this speaks to you, I would be delighted to hear from you. Please feel free to forward this email to anyone who might be interested.
Thanks, Christopher Campbell