The Transitional Image

Abundance

Some regrets I have about my past are based on times where I had the ability to be generous but wasn't. I see now how letting go instead of withholding would have been beneficial both for me and the recipient. The lost opportunity cannot be rewritten. But constant change ensures I will have the possibility to participate in many more happy efforts (people seem happy when they are being helped, even if they are in trouble). I too am the recipient of many of my friend's and families' time, talent, and material muscle. I have been assisted by people who I might never be able to repay. So I think, it works; giving and receiving as a movement. Keep it going. The wealth is in each one of us. When it's withheld, poverty claims it's place.

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This image "Figs In A Bowl" Elena Ray Copyright 2006

Transforming

"...knowledge, obsession, daring. The creative process..."
Edward O. Wilson
Consilience

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This Image. "Sky Over Fire Pool With Two Trees". Abstract mixed medium painting; acrylic and watercolor on paper with inked Chinese character. 8. 5 x 11". Elena Ray Copyright 2007.

Created yesterday after a particularly present and powerful yoga practice from which I promptly began to menstruate. At the moment it feels to me the most profound painting I have so far produced.

I value the brief process of producing small paintings and collages. They are finely "Now". It's complete. I'm fulfilled. I move on.

It felt incredible to create directly from my own dynamic moment; blood and opened cellular energy; the feeling that my attained balance and cleanly spinning connection was becoming unhinged by the heat and hunger of the incoming biological process.

My first true landscape as a painter, an inner landscape composed of ancient alchemical symbols, which came without intention. It evolved just from the physical act of my hand moving the brush, the inner events, the intense energy generated.

Boundary

I'm discovering the line of a boundary-how it fluxes around me, protecting me, strengthening my energy. It is a connection of radiant cosmic forces, their colors and elements inexhaustible resources: the wisdom of the old, the power of the living energy of color, silence, the planetary atomic spirit...

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This Image. Untitled. Elena Ray Copyright 2007.

Subtle Body

It's what wounds you that you love.

When I was a little girl I fell into a cactus patch. Now I have a cactus garden.

A little later my fast white pony bit me on the cheek and left a pale scar that lasted into my teenage years. Now I relish the mean spirit of some great souls I know.

It's as if pain is some kind of slow moving infectious medium that forms in your subtle being. You get a taste for it. It becomes the most exciting thing to approach. It is unpredictable; it does not conform to your expectations. But it delivers knowledge that reverberates in the deepest reaches of your mind.

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Untitled image Copyright Elena Ray 2007

Dinner 4:30 PM Friday

This Image " Tinkyada Brown Rice Corkscrew Pasta With Tomatoes Tossed In Barrel Aged Balsamic Vinegar And Virgin Olive Oil Topped With Goat Cheese Mozzarella". I'm already getting distracted from this series-my Achilles heel...I want to do everything. I want to be a food photographer, a still life photographer, shoot nudes, do portraits, travel photography, shoot soft focus grainy alternative images with pinhole cameras and make palladium prints, tintypes, pigment ink prints on Washi...shoot Polaroids, write poetry, and paint...I'm hungry.

Lunch 2:30 Wednesday

This Image "Organic Green Salad With Green Beans Coated With Lemon Juice And Olive Oil, Topped With Toasted Sesame Seeds". Not shown baked hormone/antibiotic free chicken smothered in mole poblano sauce (it wasn't pretty). Elena Ray copyright 2007. I tried to stick to shooting my food on the same surface ala Simplyphoto, (she's not blogging about her food at the moment) but couldn't maintain that discipline. I don't have her lovely wood table... We can't be other people, we can only be ourselves. I suppose that's one of the reasons we love, other people have qualities we admire and are energized by-they transport us to new universes.

Breakfast 7 AM Tuesday

This Image " Two cage free eggs sunny side up in organic butter topping two dry slices of toasted Ezekiel sprouted grain bread". Not shown-1/2 glass of non fat rice milk. Photo inspired by Simply Photo blog of which I am simply fascinated by. How can anyone be so intrigued by their own everyday life in this way-and do such a lovely job expressing it??? Is it contemporary Wabi Sabi, nouveau Bourgeoisie, or something previously undone; a fresh form and completely natural? Whatever it is, it makes me look at my food with much more interest. Food is a complex subject for me. Often, in the market, I'm like a rabbit in the headlights. I have a tremendous appetite, I'm hungry, I'm a sugar junkie, I'm too busy to cook, yet too informed to pile my cart up with frozen entres...

The Other Enso

I Meant Much More Than I Said

I wish conversation could be three dimensional. But the spoken sentence, in it's need to convey information concisely, is one dimensional and arrives in a linear trajectory. There is no art for expressing what lies beneath our words; the other meanings that contradict what we say but that we also mean at the same time in conjunction with what we just said to the contrary. The shadow is missing from our words. English, the language of commerce, is built from signs. All it can do is point to meaning-but it is not it's own meaning and so our conversations are nowhere-we are just lonely travelers looking for a market where we can exchange our goods.

If we spoke poetically conversations would be real experiences. Poetry, rich in metaphor and symbol leaps over the rational. Poetry is not limited by the strict necessity of exchanging concise measurements of understanding. Then, if we could dance while we spoke and spoke in poetry, perhaps we would be truly alive when we conversed, not just signers on the road to some distant possibility of exchange; the business of getting to know each other.

I find myself wanting to be quiet. Like Rimbaud I could abandon poetry and just sail away to really live. But the modern in me thinks I might instead engage everyone I know with rhymes and gestures. If it's beautiful and full of energy, it wouldn't be so eccentric and strange would it? Could it really be the evolutionary normal, and this old flat process we continue to utilize-could that be what's really strange?

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This Image "Untitled" Collage element become digital painting. Elena Ray Copyright 2007

Gerhard Richter 1984

23 April 1984. "I have committed myself to thinking and acting without the aid of an ideology. I have nothing to help me, no idea that I can serve in return for being told what to do, no regulation that tells me how, no belief to show me the way, no image of the future, no construction that I might place on things in order to be given an overriding meaning.

I recognize only what is, and in my view any description and pictorialization of what we do not know is meaningless. ideologies seduce; they invariably exploit ignorance and legitimize war."

Gerhard Richter
The Daily Practice Of Painting

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This Image "Id". Mixed Medium photograph. 11" x 17" Elena Ray Copyright 2007

Loving What Is Impossible

With painting I approach the impossible-my heart and hands are so ambitious, my abilities so limited, I am fated to fail. What I love about collage is my impassive destruction of these paintings and then the assemblages, from what is left. In this way for me, art and life takes on a kind of ragged brilliance.

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This photo based mixed medium image never existed in the three dimensional world. It was composed from a number of prints and ruined paintings, collaged and then montaged. The image was commissioned for the cover of Prospect magazine to illustrate the tension between eastern and western philosophy. I admit I was impressed with myself that such a brainy publication would ask me for art-and then actually accepted it!