Studio Sunday-Words on Canvas

This is my entry for the 8 cubed Exhibition at the Newburyport Art Association. Here's how it works: for your $8. entry fee you get an 8" x 8" canvas. You paint, draw, collage, whatever on it and return it for the exhibition. I started out not liking the stark white canvas. My first thought was to paint or stain it and then do abstract brush work on it in black. My next thought was that I really prefer paper as a surface and that I would cover the canvas. Then I looked at the calendar and realized I had very little time before the entries were due. I decided I would keep it simple and use my Pentel brush pen on the canvas as it was. I did some tests on paper. My first idea was abstract brush work which I did in columns. It seemed kind of empty and so I wrote a quote in between the columns.

I didn't really like this so I wrote one quote four times—horizontally, vertically, and diagonally in both directions. It was something I had written when I came home from the week at Green Gulch Zen Center with Jenny Hunter Groat in 1988:

See the silence. Hear the space. Touch the grace.

I'm interested in the idea of repeating words that are important to me and the idea that words have power whether they can be read or not.

I liked this idea and started on the canvas. I stopped after writing the the quote in 3 directions—horizontally, vertically, and diagonally in one direction. I then wrote the words around the edges so that they could be read.

I worked with the canvas flat on the table for the front but propped it in between bricks to give my hand a place to rest as I wrote on the sides.

Here it is on the wall with its 8 cubed companions at the NAA. The exhibition continues until August 24.