Another piece that I completed on the Uuniversity of Hawaii Manoa Valley Campus. This piece is of one of the many beautiful and stunning trees on the campus there. The trees were probably one of the most attractive parts of the whole schooling and educational experience there. This tree that I painted is a Baobab or “Dead Rat Tree” as they like to call them in parts of the English speaking world.
Category: Painting
Seeing Through Scripture to The Sacred Mountain
I completed this painting as a student at University of Hawaii Manoa under the benevolent guidance of a painting teacher of mine there, Mr Jason Willome. During that time I was living up valley and would spend many afternoons sitting in a coffee shop drinking chai, eating homemade manna breads and reading The Heart of The World by Ian Baker. Many sittings I enjoyed with the thick book (just over 400 pages), and with every turned page grew more enthralled in the exploration and adventure as I followed the author on his great pilgrimage deep into the mysteries of Ancient Tibet. His journeys had led him to the foothills of Namcha Barwa, one of the tallest mountains in the world and the termination point of the Far Eastern flank of the Himalayan range.
Underneath that mountain the Tsangpo Gorge, deepest in the world, plunges four times deeper than our beloved Grand Canyon here in the USA. The legend contained in scriptures had it that a great waterfall exists there in the thick of the rhododendrons and mired chasms. Ian Baker set out to find it, and the book encapsulates and recounts his absolutely epic journey over many years in doing so. After I read it, I set out to portray the story in a painted fashion, and this piece was the result of that effort. I used a variety of techniques to achieve something akin to looking through torn scripture at the colossal landscape, and above you can see how I started with selective priming then continued with a series of washes and finally an inkjet transfer of Tibetan Script.
The piece was featured in Lotus Space’s video series entitled Inpo: The Art of Invisibility, which was broadcast on Hawaii public television. It is my sincere hope that I can one day visit the gorge and see the great Namcha Barwa. May all beings be in bliss. Om Mani Padme Hum.
My Final Painting of 2013 – Tantric Manna Dip
Take a Tantric Manna Dip… or something like that. This here is my last piece of the last year, as it is now a bright and sunny day in the fresh field of 2014. I was encouraged and commissioned to make this piece for a long time friend and supporter, and I chose to work along the lines of the geometric pieces / compositions that I started playing with in College and continued with earlier in the summer of 2013. The geometry is a fusion piece made of a central octahedron nestled inside of a star tetrahedron and surrounded by the more-so spherical likes of the cuboctahedron or as Buckminster Fuller used to call it, the Vector Equilibrium. Enjoy the view and 2014!
Some New Pieces on Wood
I have grown to love the simple work of a permanent marker on a piece of wood. Here are some recent creations: a couple with eyes and faces and the other built around a deceased bee that I found and pinned to a small board. The bee slowly disintegrated while the piece as a whole grew in complexity and became a cross floating above a wave and mist of some sort. Thank you to Alohi for modeling one of the mask pieces.
Elementet Collaboration
This piece has been hanging in from the trees in our backyard for some time now. It was completed back in 2009 as a collaborative project between my friend Cha Maul and I. During my time at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Valley I built four triangular canvases on which I painted an interpretation of the four elements – water, air, earth and fire. Later I unstretched the canvases and in the Santa Fe Awning shop, overlapped the edges and placed a series of metal eye-holes. These were then wrapped with some bungee cordage and attached to a scrap-metal tetrahedron structure that Cha welded. The result is a metal tetrahedron with an elemental painting for each face. Although one couldn’t easily roll it as a die, I have tried to lift it up so that one may see all of the faces.
– Joseph Stodgel, 12/27/13
LOVE TREE PRODUCTIONS 