The Transitional Image

White

Kinwashi is a different paper after it has been whitewashed with opaque Ink Aid. White creates positive emptiness.

I saw a white on white photograph where the were no blacks, only pale greys, to support the white. It was an exceptionally calming image. Adding blacks into the image would have reduced it's transporting mechanism.

Is it possible to express oneself in words using only the upper tonal ranges of language?

Without strain or effects, could one be present with almost no shadow in their expression?

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This Image: "Mostly White Abstract". Elena Ray Copyright 2007. Kinwashi substrate. A rejected Kinwashi print which was painted over with acrylic and Inkaid then scanned. The final substrate was ultimately used for the print "Study Dream Love".

Desire

More and more I realize that I don't want to create imagery that leaves a residue of oxidized desire. So many things in our culture seem ultimately to be about: "choose me buy me". Will I merely be the tool of the salesman? Will my love be chained to the marketplace? What I dream of is an art that undoes desire and liberates the immaculate presence of the subject. But I wonder; is desire the energy that endurance needs to pursue the purity in the object. Is desire the necessary energy component that motivates the courage it takes for discovery? Desire is energizing. This energy is manipulated by everyone from the queen bee to the advertising agency-and so seems free of any meaning of it's own. It's politically neutral and available. Is it fundamentally and simply sexual? I don't have any desire to be like those Buddhists that endlessly try to extinguish desire and ego...I want to know desire, and probably how to use it...Like a tea bag in hot water, I want to infuse my essence into it.

I see something beautiful and my spirit is activated...My heart opens my lungs fill up. I feel happy...if I don't become attached to having it and then can't have it. Of course, that is the problem. We are routinely and purposefully excited. Anybody of the slightest seduction can touch you in a place where nobody can see. Every siren effects a crash of the brain into the heart. Constant debris scatters into the psyche. The debris of our culture. The debris of history. Wouldn't it be interesting to extract oneself from those ruined old plots. There must be a new story somewhere, somehow.
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This Image "Zen Tea" Elena Ray Copyright 2004

Materials

Often I need to be exposed to another artist to get turned back on, and then I'm opened wide, again, to these mediums (which reveal themselves, through another's work, as infinitely translatable). Everything seems possible if only I could take the uninterrupted time that it requires to immerse myself in the meaning of the mediums and the poetry of the meaning. Insight shimmers veiled in the dark reaches of my mind.

I am lucky...privileged to be working with such beautiful materials. They're pure. I want to understand them. I'm beginning to truly see the physical vitality of my chosen materials.

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This Image "Closed Open Nude". Elena Ray copyright 2007 . Another variation of this pose which I love so much. This was a small multi-layered collage that was scanned and then printed poster size on Kozo.

3.1

desabandhascittasya dharana

The mind has reached the ability to be directed (dharana) when the direction towards a chosen object is possible in spite of many other potential objects within the reach of the individual.

Yoga Sutra 3.1
Translated by T.K. V. Desikachar

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This Image "Untitled" Copyright Elena Ray 2007.

Inward Turning Nude

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This Image "Inward Turning Nude". Elena Ray copyright 2007. Photo montage of sitting nude in motion. Pigment ink on unique Ink Aid coated acrylic primed watercolor substrate.

Describing experience

My latest greatest experiences-writing them down...I started doing this in my personal journal yesterday morning and watched my handwriting quickly disintegrate into illegible scribbles. Some relish their memoirs, but for me I feel devitalized when I attempt to preserve life with words. Writing is it's own singular experience. So many of the thoughts I have come only through the act of writing. I am not writing as an accountant of my being. I am actually experiencing when I write.

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This Image "White Horse". Photo based collage. Elena Ray Copyright 2003.

Pathos

One thing I feel is that my ability to understand the world is deepening and becoming ever more intimate. Conversely, the deeper I go the less I understand myself, and my personal mystery becomes less clear and more problematic.

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This Image "The Clay Pot Is Praying, Waiting To Be Formed". Elena Ray Copyright 1999.