Chapters
by Daniel Stuelpnagel
Chapter Sixteen
untitled # 338 (2006)Travel.
Though I had been to Spain for a trip in high school, and a few scattered trips over the years within the United States, not until I reached out and made the trip to California and Ecuador did the possibilities really take hold.
Subsequent trips to Spain and Italy had instilled in me the realization that this was a powerful catalyst for creative developments in the studio, even as I embraced the challenge at times of not actually having a studio, so it became a developmental tension between movement and stillness, a parallel to the long-standing duality of tranquil seascapes and active geometry in my work.
And the travel had brought me the beginnings of integration, if not resolution. I was fascinated with maps, and the compass rose, and the nautical imagery of global exploration, along with satellite photos and a general sense that further exploration on a physical and geographical plane would lead to satisfying results within my personal search.
Hence the title Exploratory Searchery, which I had coined as the name for my first four-color print piece, when I designed and ordered fifty copies of a small brochure in Sacramento in late 2003, a booklet and art catalog including travel photos along with the art works developed for the Parish Gallery show, and recapitulating my time in Barcelona and Galápagos.
untitled # 340 (2006)I was extending my creative powers to reach out into the realm of abstract representation, rendering compelling visions of places I had never seen.
The more remote the imagined location, seemingly the sharper and more real these paintings became. I was gradually learning to trust the process, recognizing that by building on the teachings and influences of other artists, and adding my own unique preferences to the subtle details of the craft of painting and the art of distilling creative inspiration, I was becoming capable of fulfilling my mission to be fully immersed in the work.
I had often found much of conceptual art to be self-contained and self-referential, easily grasped and just as easily relegated to the dustbin of art history by its facile conceits, gimmicks of conveyance, and the novelty of shock value.
At the same time, perhaps I was curious, or reluctant, lacking the context to recognize the conceptual intricacy and aesthetic durability of my own work from within the timeline and practical considerations that made me feel but a small part of the art world.
My long-standing emphasis on being prolific in order to move the work forward, regarded by some artists as bean-counting, was essential for me to continue iterating the different views of the world I wished to divulge.
If anything, moving forward, even as I focus ever more closely on the further developments of process, I am determined to be even more prolific, embracing opportunities in the same way that I originally set out to pick up where Mondrian left off.
In fact, with regard to the work of Mondrian, my main influence out of many, I have been mirroring his trajectory in reverse. Where he began his work in the early 20th century with traditional landscapes, these became more and more abstract until he proceeded to develop his unique style of grid-based geometric abstractions, a visionary precursor of the digital age and an iconic body of work ensconced in major museums around the world.
So, being inspired by his later and more popularized work during my studies in art school, I picked up the thread, and so far have worked my way back to an inspired vision of the natural world of the landscape, through a different lens, from a different perspective, or perhaps just on a different scale.
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