The function of darkness

I have been sitting with this little piece of musing for a while- not sure whether to release it into the blog or not. So while another is cooking away, I thought I would take a peek...and- it seems like this piece still has some energy. So here it is:

My resurgence in painting was prompted by Ad Reinhardt two years ago and a suggestion was given to me back then that it might be an idea to make a small version of Ad's blue black painting myself.

Well, two years later, I have. It is, what I would call, a 'study'- of colour and form. It is a very interesting journey into this darkest of dark colour and to discover through experimentation, how Ad might have achieved the effects he did- without doing exactly as he did (my technical skills is way short of inadequate) but sort of following his idea. I am discovering a great deal about this colour- the difficulty in achieving complete saturation of colour on canvass. Also, despite the 'formlessness' of this monochromatic world, I found my mind busily putting form and colour on- it was very difficult to just sit with a dark void. Yesterday, I desparately wanted to put some colour into the painting- even the thinnest line of something...so it took great restraint to stick with the colour and to put on just a few shades lighter- to see how much of this colour would be absorbed. This morning, it is fascinating to see that the vibrant blue had dried and become very very muted and in losing it's vibrancy, a subtle hazy hint of 'something' hovering in the background.

While this little study was carrying on, there was a parallel discussion on Lent. I am a huge skeptic when it comes to rituals and in particular, religious rituals. In the context of Lent, I made a mental connection with the dark painting. In giving up bright colours, in staying with this dark dark canvas, I was reminded of vibrancy and of life. It seems a very natural tendency that when we let ourselves let go of what we have and enter a world of 'lessness' that we realise the value of what we have given up. So, just like Lent, we are joyful when we can re-embrace our old habits and the stuff we had before and for a short while, valuing them in a way that we had never valued them before. But what I think we are missing when we do this is the possibility of going down a different path. Even though I am not a christian, I happen to think that Easter is a story that encourages us to live a different life- that through the period of Lent, we allow ourselves to let go of some of our habits that prevent us from realising our full potential and that coming out of Lent, we are able to 'spring' into a newness.