Windowpane Paintings: A Collaboration.

I love art. I’m sure you have figured that out. I also love math. Creating arrays and determining a grid’s area is the work of 3rd graders, and their teacher. I spent much time during the last school year teaching both, and more. Math is a creative dance my students and I do together.

Windowpane art is an array. It’s math and art. There is also a third contributor: the artist. It’s a collaborative process. At a gallery talk years ago in Upstate, N.Y., I listened to two artists describe their collaboration as a triad of expression. Their individual artistic voices made two. The duet of their voices, the collaborative act, made the third. 

In my windowpane paintings there is a similar conversation. First, the creative, visual idea arrives and then lingers. Next, it moves from conceptual images played in the cinema of my thoughts to graspable, translatable and tangible artwork that waits for me to paint. It solidifies into an artwork I can clearly see in my mind. For me, the first dialogist is the artistic idea. 

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Next to join the collaborative conversation is math; the counting, dividing and then multiplying to figure out the equal area of the panes, the measurement for the space between each, and the width of the vertical and horizontal boarders. 

Lastly, I put the tape down; a physical, mathematical act. It's a very slow and cautious act. There are no lines to follow, just a few marked pointers to guide me. I measure every move forward. If the width varies, I carefully pull the softly laid tape back up so as to not pull bits of paper with it. 

When that one length of washi tape looks perfect, I move on to the next. I do this until all the panes are made. It can take an hour or more depending on the number of panes in the piece. For me, it is a form of meditation. It requires a dedicated focus on the moment, on what is right in front of you, and it is a deep quieting of one's self. It is stillness like prayer. 

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Art is the third contributor to the collaboration; the drawings within each pane and the visual / narrative dialog between them. When all the sketches are made, I reach for my favorite watercolor paintbrush. Color is the breath of art's expression in this conversation between artist, math and art.

Now that the windowpanes are measured and taped, I will start drawing tomorrow. I will return to my sketches and earlier work, yet I want to sustain fidelity to the new work that has beckoned me for weeks. I was simply too exhausted from teaching this past school year to start before now. I gifted myself rest. Now, it's time to paint. ©

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