Above: Photo emulsion, acrylic paint, Oil paint.

This below is a screen print of an image of a chair overlapping over each other multiple times until the original image is not recognisable anymore. 

It is like when you overlap your signature one on top of each other, the “self” in mind disappears.

But how can I reproduce this process on to a canvas without the screen printing process? Overlapping of images but maintaining the element of chance to create the image. This also removes some of the thinking mind in deciding what the image should look like and allowing the mistake made to keep its place in the process as the mistake comes from “nothing” in mind which might have an element of the “new” in it. The thinking mind has its limitations as it can only do what it knows and from its past.

 Epiphany 1

I could use the materials that come from screen printing without the paraphernalia. I would replace the screen with the projected shadow on canvas soaked in photo emulsion.

Difficult road ahead as the photo emulsion is not colourfast and hence the image disappeared with time as light continued to process the image. I see a beautiful idea and image disappear in front of me.

Epiphany 2

Literally like a pop-up in my head, a solution. Something new from nothing in mind. A probability possibility manifested from the ether when the mind is in silence and defeated, a solution was created: use the photo emulsion as a binder and add pigments to it.  The pigments will be colourfast and the photo emulsion was a good binder and the final image could be crystallised and immortalised. All the images below were created by this process of projecting the shadow and using photo emulsion and UV light.

Art a Scared Space:

The image being made:

The Collection.

Sizes

6ft x 5ft

Sizes 3 ft x 3 ft

I think in the arts and in innovations, we have to realise that the mind has its limitations. It is important we see this so that we recognise the new when it appears as it would have no reference in the past in mind to give the “new” in art any importance and the discoveries and innovations are usually discarded because of this. We need to see that the mind can only do itself or use its experiences and its past as a kind of repository for its work. These are its limitations and the mind cannot work outside itself. Hence the progress in art and innovation and I dare say the process of evolution of the mind itself is a slow front line and always a puzzle of the old in oneself. The new comes from “nothing”. The mind has no reference in itself to recognise anything new when it appears.

14 October 2019