4 PM: stopping work for the day. the image is now inspired by a detail of one of the figures in vermeer's love letter. her gaze reflects her question as to the nature of the letter she's holding, but goes deeper than that. the picture surface, layered as it is, reveals hints of the paintings and collaged elements beneath, creating a complexity that goes, one hopes, beyond the subject. the picture plane itself becomes the subject, invigorated by my intense response to vermeer's use of his characteristic dots of light, formed, one suspects, by the optical device he used for most of his paintings: the camera obscura. with his unique, even for the 17th c., style of working, plus the way he capitalized on the optical device considered by the church to be of the devil, he transcended his time and rose to the realm of the gods of painting.
i'll continue work on gaze 27 tomorrow morning, but it will be a short day, as we are having an actionlab meeting at one of the schools across the valley.
2 PM: i scrumbled gaze 27, then began working into it, with a furious passion i might add. it's now in a pregnant state, waiting, as it were for godot.
DETAIL: gaze 27 as it looked this morning, pre-scromble
11:20 AM: when i entered my studio, gaze 27 was hard to look at. it's destiny is to become one more layer of a painting in process. how does my experience with the faun relate to this? dimitri says it wasn't a faun; rather a messenger wanting to whisper something in my ear. now look at the woman in gaze 27 about to be scrombled. is she not whispering something in my ear? i need to listen.
Faun Whisperer: about 20 minutes up the trail, i looked up and saw a faun about 50 feet in front of me. she was looking at me and her legs were trembling slightly. i said "Good Morning! Come say hello!" while her mom watched nervously, she approached and nuzzled against my leg. i patted her head & watched as her mom backed away, probably concluding i was safe. this continued until i made a move to keep walking up the trail. the faun clearly did not want me to leave.
mikela was about 5 minutes behind me, so she didn't witness this. as i continued up the trail, i looked back and saw the faun following me. i stopped and she ran up again and nuzzled my leg. it was hard to leave, but after a few minutes of patting her head, i continued up the trail, looking back every few minutes to see her continuing to follow me. finally, i went round a bend & when i looked back she had joined her mom. the whole thing still seems slightly surreal, but i do feel changed by the experience; hard to put into words....