Don't be afraid of the dark
the beauty of night beaches, beauty in black and putting a f%&#ing dirty mind to good use
Night visions
As much of an old dating profile cliche it is, there’s something to be said for taking a walk on a beach, especially after dark in a place with little to no light pollution. I might know that I’m in another part of the world when I travel, but something that really seals it is looking into the night sky and not being able to recognize some of the constellations. Even being able to see more stars than at home in Philly is a big deal.
When we were in Holbox, Mexico a few weeks ago, we took several nighttime beach walks where there was very little light pollution and lots of stars. One night, this led to a long conversation between my partner, Julia, and myself about the vastness of space, our continual curiosity about what could be out there in terms of life or other phenomena and just being able to see so many more stars than when back home.
Being on the beach at night during the new moon phase can be kind of surreal when you can see a lot of stars and mostly just hear the water breaking on the beach. The most that you can see of the water is a few feet in front of you. Beyond that is just darkness. I thought it might be interesting to see how my phone camera would handle the darkness and took a bunch of nighttime beach photos. Some looking out to the water and some of the sky and clouds. Many of these made the very familiar beach views appear quite alien…
A soft darkness
Further considering the beauty in darkness, this diptych from 2013 has been on my mind a lot in recent days. I don’t exactly know why, but I’ve had a very big urge to dig this out from the lower part of a pile of paintings. I started wanting to look at it last Thursday, but was also feeling lazy about having to move a bunch of other work just to see it again. I got over that yesterday. I pulled it out, hung it up on the wall and was glad that I did. It’s a big favorite of mine and while I’m happy to have it become a part of someone’s collection and home, I’m glad that I’m still able to just unwrap and stare at it for as long as I want, at the moment.
I had just come off of a body of colorful and complex work that had taken up the better part of a year and was exhibited in a solo show earlier in 2013. I wanted to jump into something that was kind of the opposite in terms of color, at least. I was ready to make something with black that didn’t (I hoped) automatically denote sadness, depression or other negative ideas associated with black. I wanted to make something that was dark, beautiful with things to discover the longer you looked at it. That last part is a staple of art-making for me; I want people to linger with my work and/or return to it as they find various points of interest they may have missed on previous viewings.
The “simple complexity” I was looking for I think I managed to achieve here. I was looking to make something that was dark, monochromatic and that seemed to have images appear and disappear at the same time as they emerged from the background. I chose to use a basic stencil I had and repeated the image in different areas with varying degrees of clarity. It was a continuous play between applying paint, letting it dry a little, wiping, scraping, reapplying paint, etc… until it got to a point where it began making visual sense to me. The trickiest part was making sure that the light background showed through in enough places but didn’t overtake foreground elements. Finding that sweet spot is never easy.
Coincidentally, this painting sat untitled for the past twelve years until just before I started putting together this section of the post you’re reading. How’s that for delayed gratification? As soon as I titled this section, the painting’s title came to me and made sense.
I love black as a color and hope to be able to make a series of paintings using mostly black alone and chromatic variations of it. That’s going to be the key to a series I’ve had in mind for a while now. After I made the three Black Drawing paintings in 2023 and 2024 (see Black Drawing 1, above), I’ve been on a kick to push this idea to another level with a possible new series of paintings, but slightly different than this. I have a ton of ideas that may work and as soon as I get sufficient funds for materials, it’s on.
Sounds familiar
I’ve been rereading some old graphic novel collections of X-Men comics and reading the middle panel above brought a grin of recognition to my face, considering what’s going on now in our country and elsewhere. This is part of a conversation between Magneto (white costume) and Scott Summers, aka, “Cyclops”. For most of mutant comic history, Magneto had been an adversary of Charles Xavier and the X-Mem team(s), but at this point in X-Men lore, Cyclops and Magneto have an alliance with Magneto being a part of the X-Men. There’s a lot of backstory going on, but I’m not going to bore you with that because this is the most pertinent part that I wanted to share. The parallels to today’s worldly political and social conditions in Magneto’s speech from a comic written twelve years ago where too good to pass up.
This is the kind of thing that I’ve always liked about many Marvel comics, that sense of a grounded reality wrapped in fantastical situations and people/beings with amazing powers and so on. Most of Marvel’s vast cast of characters have to deal with humanizing situations that can make them relatable. The idea for the mutant X-Men, according to Stan Lee, were metaphors for what was happening with the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s. They are the feared and hated “other” of the Marvel Universe who have to often battle with other mutants and human beings who want to eradicate them simply for being different. What Magneto is talking about here is essentially what’s going on now, with authoritarian administrations in the US and abroad that are hell-bent on harming anyone and anything they see as an enemy and beneath them to hold onto power.
Say what, now?
This painting, Middle Finger, Right Hand, Right There (2023) was one of those “oops” moments that I left intact and built on. I’d laid down the second layer of glitter-infused acrylic gel here about 15 minutes earlier. I thought enough time had passed to check the firmness of the surface to see if I could put more paint on it. Well, as you see here, the gel hadn’t hardened enough, leaving my finger print right there for all to see.
Yeah, I was a little annoyed, but I turned that around pretty fast and chose to keep the “mistake” and work it into the piece. For about three more layers, I worked around that part, making it stand out even more amid the mostly monochromatic surface. The title revealed itself so easy with this one. A most perfect double-entendre for a very one-of-a-kind piece of mine.
No one asked…
…but here’s some Midnight for you.
That’s it for the moment. I have some thoughts about and general notes about the state of the reception of Black figuration and abstraction and Black folks’ reactions to Thomas J. Price’s piece in Times Square, Grounded In The Stars, but those will have to wait a few more days.
As always, thanks for being here and I’ll see you soon!
TM
“I was ready to make something with black that didn’t (I hoped) automatically denote sadness, depression or other negative ideas associated with black.”
Yes, I relate to this. I’ve grown to strongly dislike the simplistic dualistic notion typically associated with darkness and light. The nighttime can be very peaceful and comforting, perhaps more so on a starlit beach, sure, but the darkness is an essential part of it.
The diptych does really draw one’s attention; it seems like the kind of work that you can get absorbed in if you’re able to let your mind stroll as it will. Thanks, Tim! 🙏
Oooh I really like the black diptych