Currents

Sometimes inspiration for a new piece of art is like an undammed river in monsoon season—a fast-flowing torrent of rushing ideas and images. But the strong pull of this current is brief and seasonal, and eventually the swollen river returns to its steady pace. Or, sometimes more frequently, inspiration is like the slow, ancient pace of a glacier—a frozen river sliding over the icy landscape at an almost imperceptible rate. But it is these slow currents that etch valleys, drop boulders, and carve out lakes. When inspiration is slow or reluctant to come, it doesn't mean that the current isn’t flowing. There is important work being done under the surface of that slow, icy current that even the artist may not be fully aware of, and we just need to give this type of inspiration time to flow at its own pace. But it is true that the viewer of a finished art piece cannot know, unless told, what kind of inspiration carried the artist through the process.

I created “Currents” in conversation with this idea. “Currents” could evoke both currents in water and currents in ice. The swirling of blue and white could be an eddy in a stream reflecting the sky, or an aerial view of the ancient twist of the surface of a glacier. The slices of near-black could be rippling water or unfathomably deep crevasses. And, I could have been struck with the inspiration for this painting like a flash flood, or I may have only had the barest inkling of inspiration for weeks before I was even able to put one stroke of paint on canvas. But you don’t know, you can’t see the currents under the surface.