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When I spotted this blue door in 2000 or 2001 against the sunset I was drawn immediately to photograph and then paint it. It does absolutely capture an inversion. It is a vivid moment. Most just see another sunset. The blue door in fact inverts on its own inversion. The very essence of a door represents protection from the elements, with the promise of warmth and shelter on the other side. And its very stark blueness represents the promise of blue sky and the happy warmth of summer to come. The sunset is the very antithesis of the cold blue black emptiness of winter and night and loneliness.
And in reality, it's not that I'm becoming interested in inversionism, apparently I've been there all along, just lacking a good definition. In Wyoming where I grew up I used to watch the summertime afternoon storms roll in and roll out every hour or so, or icicles grow overnight in the wintertime. Walk from indoors to out when it's 40 below zero and you know inversion. Perhaps it's why I was drawn to New Mexico at the edge of the Rockies and the Southwest, to a place where the light and shadow shift constantly, where we have four distinct seasons, where the old and new are in decay at the same time, where we are on the edge of new and old civilizations -- Los Alamos and the bomb, Taos and the Tewa Pueblo. Inversion drew me to paint in the first place, to capture and describe something instantly and almost beyond words, of things on the edge of change -- whether real or imagined -- crescent moons, shadow vs. brilliant sunlight, dreams vs reality, or urban vs. rural, things that are too fleeting to paint "in plein air". It seems I constantly explore the reality around me looking for "event horizons".
August 2012
http://www.theartistswindowonline.com
 A Blue Door Amidst the Evening Flame - Oil on Canvas (36"x18") |
 The Chapel on the Hill - Oil on Canvas (18"x18") |
 Lost in Space - Oil on canvas (20"x20") |
 Once Upon a Crescent Moon - Oil on canvas (18"x18") |