The Direction of Intention

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Tonight, for the first time this year, for the first time since I started my wandering, I stretched a new canvas. Actually, to be more specific, I stapled it on the wall. I don’t know what possessed me. It was after midnight and I was closing up shop and suddenly I found myself unfurling a large piece of canvas, covering the wall and the surrounding furniture with plastic, and stretching and stapling the canvas to the wall. It’s a big piece!

Preparing a new canvas is a ritual. It is a commitment to the unknown. It is a dance with the gods of possibility. Preparing the canvas is calling the muses. It is to walk to the leaping off place and call into the void, “I am ready for you,” and to expect an answer. It is an act of surrender, an invitation to battle, a flirtation with a lover, a cry of anticipation, a step into silence. Preparing the canvas is to step through the threshold.

The first coat of gesso tightens the fibers and pulls the canvas tight. I relish this process because it is messy and furious and fast and that was especially true tonight. I was splashing gesso and water onto the newly stretched canvas as if I had no control. I needed to do it. I needed to call into that void. I needed to issue a challenge, “I’m here. Take me.” It had been a long, long time since the last ritual passage.

I recognize this frenzy. In the past it has come when the doors that have been locked tight for months suddenly open and the universe like the light of a full moon pours in. The frenzy is a kind of madness, a response to the moonlight and there are few satisfactions greater than dropping the brush into a bucket after the madness passes and asking myself, “What’s this?”

It is potential. It is the universe standing on the edge of the leaping place calling to me and saying, “I’m ready for you.” And this journey, like all great journeys into art, begins with a smile of recognition and a leap into the unknown.

Filed under: Art, Truly Powerful People |