Aaron Aryadharma Matheson
The Red — Blaze — is the Morning —
The Violet — is Noon —
The Yellow — Day — is falling —
And after that — is None —
But Miles of Sparks — at Evening —
Reveal the Width that burned —
The Territory Argent — that never yet — consumed —
~Emily Dickinson 1863
I paint to touch the skin of life and feel it more vividly. To feel the resistance of the support under the loaded brush, the weight of a word, the charge in an action. The surface can’t hope to reflect the deeper forces that animate it, but those forces become more visible and vibrant.
I am aware of the sublimity of the sun, moon, stars and mountains, and by contrast, my smaller hopes and concerns. I can entangle myself with them in a painting, to reflect on what they mean to me. The binary knowledge of convention is replaced with a field of possibilities in painting: distance and surface, form and emptiness, touching and relinquishing. Meanings constellate around the image like poetic metaphor.
What is left is an openness or gulf between means and end- the painting and the world- what we want to be and who we are. Rather than accepting that gap as the status quo, meaning-making yearns across it towards an ever-retreating goal- how to make art in a world that takes account of this gap between broken images, our failures and shortfalls, and the renewal of dreams.
What is left is a full, bright moon and that ‘territory argent’ of stars.
- Aaron Aryadharma Matheson (2021)