Wheel within a Wheel Collection — Group #1

Tags

Painting, Rollo May, The Courage to Create, Watercolor, Wheel within a Wheel Series

Wheel within a Wheel as a series consists of a selection of 100 paintings. The first artworks began as a set done on a pad of watercolor paper (14 in x 20 in, sheet size.) Through the process of defining each design, the birth of my own language as an artist began to unfold and develop over a 10 year period.

These last few days, (during small breaks in the day) I began to read Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create. I am interested in the study of art through various academic disciplines, (not only history and natural sciences as I mentioned in earlier postings,) but (as in this case) also psychology.

Some of Rollo May’s language, as he describes the work of being an artist, is also worth noting (and quoting.) He describes creativity as a process that by nature has an “intensity,” an “absorption, [a] being caught up in, [and] wholly involved” where what an artist feels “is not anxiety or fear; it is joy.” And a “Joy defined as the emotion that goes with…actualizing one’s own potentialities.” An artist is engaged in “the process of bringing something new into being… Creativity is the most basic manifestation of a man or woman fulfilling his or her own being in the world.”

What (I must admit,) I especially enjoyed about all of this is the fact that at one time, several years ago, I spoke in a similar fashion about art-making: “I am most alive when I’m painting…While I am in the moment of creating art, I am open to a process of discovery that is intensely fulfilling for me.” (2008)

With these reflections in mind (as an introduction,) I invite you to examine the first ten Wheel within a Wheel paintings — arranged in ascending order just as the designs progressed and built one upon the other that year (2003.)