Chapters
by Daniel Stuelpnagel
Chapter Nine
untitled # 207 (2003)
collection of Laurent Chevillard (Lyons)And so it was off to Barcelona, Spain.
I had an invitation to travel and visit with friends, and my Spanish from school was still with me, so for two months I stayed on the south side of the city near Montjuic, and a stone’s throw from several world-class museums that would affect me deeply.
Being on the Mediterranean, I was fascinated by the layout of the city and the mix of old and new.
I had visions of Los Angeles, and yet felt like I could walk around a corner and be living in the Middle Ages. The magical experience of the old world became my daily surroundings, and the language and cultural immersion took over my mind.
untitled # 210 (2003)
private collection (Los Angeles)And the seascapes once again took over my studio work, so much so that people were asking me why I kept painting the same picture over and over.
I painted more than thirty-five seascapes in 2003 alone, and I was enjoying the work, and in some crucial way exploring the subtle nuances of color and compositional intervals within that rather specific series.
The primordial horizon remains a compelling and evocative subject, offering a narrow avenue of interpretation between photorealism and pure abstraction.
This was a building block of the creative quest. By encouraging my pursuit of the integration of geometry with nature, Norman had added fuel to the fire. And yet, I evidently had more developmental work to do before I could take it further.
While I was happy with the work I had exhibited, I still sought deeper integration. With a fresh look at European influences and old world dedication, craftsmanship and sensibilities, I had some new tools to bring to the challenges that awaited me in the studio, and plenty of work ahead.
untitled # 219 (2003)From my childhood trips to the Delaware and Maryland beaches and the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina, later to numerous points in Florida, also Bermuda, Mexico and Spain’s Costa Del Sol, then on to San Francisco and Los Angeles, Galápagos, Barcelona and Mallorca, I felt I had charted a course reflecting a primary passion, when it came to gazing at the horizon and swimming as far out in the sea as possible.
Something was becoming integrated; my interest in science spoke of the elements, a desire to preserve the natural world, empirical evidence, wave forms and particle physics, along with my growing experience in the mystical world of art. The confluence of these various threads had come into sharp focus since my first trip to California, so I knew it was time to return.
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