The Same Mind

I looked at the work I was making and felt the need to sit down with my journal for a discussion about what was happening. The journal holds many spontaneous thoughts that at times become posts for my website.  I wrote:

As you can imagine the new work is responded to with; “Well, it is great to finally see what I am looking at”. This is a natural response and is warranted though the shift occurred naturally and, in fact, the work is still made from the same mind and is based on the same elements of line and erasing. Will I return to the other work? Yes, in some fashion.

I think I was not being entirely truthful in that response. I remember the pull I felt when I wrote it then and I feel it now even as I re-read it. There is no return to the earlier work, you cannot take the same breath twice – there is only continuation.

I am now in the work that I want to be in.  It is made by the same mind that created the earlier work. The viewer may see two different bodies of work – I see a continuation. Within myself, the preoccupations that make the work are the same, yes, the energy is different- the time we live in is different.

My work is not about thought (ideas). It is about action, it is about the body, it is somatic.  It is true that aesthetic considerations and the history of the canon are awarenesses in my mind. But at this point in my studio life those, too, are embodied.   I am free to work in response to an environment.