What Lies Beneath:creating my artwork

Though I haven’t been inspired much in the past year to paint, doing it today reminded me of why I need to. Quite simply, it makes me happy, happier than just about anything else in the world. It complements the focused type of energy I need to write. For me, art is a chaotic, wild thing, filled with stimulating images and certainly surging in on mania. It’s so cathartic for me to paint madly. I couldn’t feel happier than working like that, with colours and papers flying, a big ol’ mess.

Thing is, with my collages, you never know what’s under the layers. The way they unfold surprises- you never know what you will find, what lies beneath. It surprises even me to lay them out, then shroud them or highlight them, as fate dictates.

Nothing pleases me more than the twisting contexts of fragmented images- they unravel like dreams into the fabric of my painting. Words, objects, pictures all become mystical relics: I curate them into a new meaning, or I cover them so that their mystery permeates the paints and papers. Each canvas is a world infused, confused, more ethereal than surreal. It is fate alone that brings me to lay a particular image down- my eyes may have glanced over it, my hands may have unearthed something different. I comb the world for paper paraphernalia, wherever I am, culling images from the media, from books, from the camera, that I might use later. And might not- most go into the pool, and find their way back out again, into another thrift store, or a dumpster, where they may be found, probably not.

Some writers feel they somehow channel their material from beyond, that the stories ‘come out of nowhere’ and are somehow more real than the fiction guise they wear.  In some ways, I feel the act of creating art is indeed a spiritual, or even spiritualist experience. While I doubt Seth is on the other side sending secretly coded messages to my scissors and paintbrush, I do feel I tap into the soul pool beyond, that these stories unfolding through me have a veracity that news stories do not. I translate the ineffable inspiration and darkness of human experience. I unearth words, and place them in new possibilities of meaning. As I sift through endless imagery, contexts shift and shimmer. History’s pulse beats from the canvas: the future suggests itself through the past, but always with a few surprises.

Visit artist/author Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net.