Over the Rhone and Into the Night: Just Be Graceful

Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies/revue d'études interculturelle de l'image, 2013

Van Gogh Among the Philosophers-Lexington Books, 2018

Art as the self-representation of consciousness of the times, the Zeitgeist, is a prime locus of investigation of pre-philosophical as well as philosophical self-understanding, as indeed is proposed by the Heidegger-Jaspers argument over the import of Van Gogh's painting as a sign of the times. The materiality of the world represented in Van Gogh's art is illumined from within and operates its own transfiguration in a paradoxical movement of immanence cum transcendence. This essay considers Van Gogh through the eyes of Karl Jaspers, Heidegger, Derrida, and Thomas Altizer, towards an articulation of the theological relevance of his art in

To Nurith, my mother, who with infinite love taught me how to look at paintings 1. To draw a line by candlelight I n his memoirs, the painter Giorgio de Chirico returns to his childhood with particular attention to the times and events surrounding the death of his father. In his description of that period clouded by death, there are two particular episodes that invite us to draw a connection between de Chirico's experience of loss and mourning and the developing sense of his vocation as an artist. The first episode had taken place a few weeks before the death of Giorgio's father.

2019

Jean-Jacques Rousseau; he was also a composer, novelist and botanist-is on its cover. For Durner, as for me, the writing of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has long been an important, ongoing source of inspiration. This extended conversation with Durner about the relation of her work to practices and histories of painting acts as an important companion piece to the book. Durner reflects on her development as an artist since the 1980s and on how the activity of painting has led her to identify and pursue some particularly deep veins of intellectual and ethical curiosity and concern. Uppermost here are Durner's explorations of the aesthetic and ethical potential of the interrelated concepts of largesse, plenitude, generosity and extravagance, explorations that have emerged as much within and from her painterly practice as within and from her engagements with philosophy, particularly, phenomenology. I think of this conversation as a companion piece to The Question of Painting because, as well as reflecting on Merleau-Pontean and painterly themes, it is also deeply phenomenological in its approach. It tells an expansive story of art, philosophy, the ethical, and the political through the lived experiences and insights of one person. As Merleau-Ponty put it (and these words are among my favourite; I come back to them again and again!): 'We are grafted to the universal [a concept which he treated nonreductively, as open and full of differences] by that which is most our own.' 1 Jorella Andrews London, November 2018 introduction jorella andrews A great deal of intellectual energy is circulating today around the question of painting. Arguably, this is connected with a renewed philosophical interest in aesthetics as it relates to ethical and political agency and with various developments in visual and material culture. These developments include the recent emergence of the interdisciplinary field known as the 'new materialisms'-as in the work of such thinkers as Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti,

Jung journal, 2019

LAURA SOBLE I walk from the parking garage through the theater building, past the campus lagoon. I sit on a bench and listen to a sound collage: birds, skateboards, bike gears, a whirr of building machinery, footsteps-fast-paced as the time for class approaches. College students hurry by wearing heavy backpacks, earbuds in, and I am transported back forty years to when I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). I hear a bird call-who. .. who. .. whooooo, who. .. who. .. whooooo. I reflect on who I am, where I've been. .. This place brings back many sense memories-of riding my bike to and from classes, of the familiarity of the landscape, the smell of the lagoon-still the same-contrasted with changes and upgrades to the campus I notice. I am bathed in remembering-perhaps reclaiming sights, sounds, experiences that have been less conscious in the past forty years of launching into the world, pursuing an art, working, raising a family, changing paths, obtaining more education and training, going through a divorce and moving to a new city. .. and the last seven years of analytical training. I remember the advice of my directing professor in college: "You need to ask the hard questions, love. The hard questions." **** My aesthetic response to the fourth Art and Psyche conference in Santa Barbara was telling-a combination of awe, sensory overload, ambivalence, exhilaration, and exhaustion. Art and Psyche, Conference IV was a huge buffet, with more offerings than could possibly be consumed during the gathering. The schedule for each day was full, from morning through evening with keynote talks, plenary sessions, break-out offerings, and evening performances. Not only was there more than could be absorbed, but also the time given for presentations-sometimes just thirty minutes-felt compressed. It was a huge amuse-bouche-offering enticing tastes of many visual images, ideas, presentation styles, personalities, and work. On one level I was inspired by the embarrassment of riches; on another, I found that I longed for more space to connect with and discuss material with both presenters and other participants.

The world around attempts to peer into the world of Van Gogh. The Royal Academy in 2010, in all its usual dramatic expertise, attempted to put together, the life history, of this very brave, and experimental artist of the 19th century. A lover of life, art and God, but, some called this man’s work foolish in his day. And yet again the same frustrations exist for anyone and everyone who has ever had the charge to go forth and discover something new. The 2010, exhibition at the Royal Academy, had many virtues.

2017

This practice-based research investigates the relationship between making paintings and the phenomenological experience of light. Two such encounters with light- natural light as recorded on a rural residency at the Sidney Nolan Trust in September 2016, and the cinematic light presented in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s La Double Vie de Veronique were examined and compared through a body of paintings and prints. The study of the two encounters revealed a flux in relation to the stillness of painting, leading to the adoption of using stilled imagery incorporated in a system of painting. Philosophical enquiry from Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nigel Wentworth, and biographical information from Krzysztof Kieslowski is introduced to aid reflection of the painting process. Through construction of a variety of different painted surfaces- a group made in relation to an experience of natural light and another suite made in response to cinematic light, specific agencies of light were identified and exam...