Consciousness Alone is the Most Exhilarating Thing

Consciousness Alone is the Most Exhilarating Thing

"​Consciousness Alone is the Most Exhilarating Thing" - oil on linen panel, 10 x 10.  Available here and at Artfinder.


“Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?” 
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

I'm lost in space again in the studio.  It's an exhilarating place to be.

Fueled by our most recent read, a delightful book in the Monk and Robot series.  Filled with tea-serving traveling monks, robots who live in the wild and philosophies that just leave me weeping with delight.  Life as imagined on this moon world  is something to be carefully sipped and savored.

What have I done this past year?  I've thrown purposeful productivity to the wind in favor of a more meandering existence.  I mean, I get the important things done, but maybe the most important thing is really simply existing.  Just being is good enough.  In fact, it's splendidly marvelous.  It does result in a very random path in the studio, with no less than ten paintings in various stages of exploration.  Each of them on top of a prior painting that has been recycled.  

And, thanks to the insightful recommendations of reader/artist Carol E, there is a huge container of cold wax and a new book of inspirational techniques waiting to become...something.  Atoms arranged in the right way, perhaps?

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About the art - using the Afterlight app to insert an inspirational photo of a space helmet into a portrait reference photo, I created a jumping off point for a light pencil sketch on linen.  Choosing an extremely narrow color palette and adding thinned layers of oil paint with rubber wedge, brush and fingers.  Allowing dragged paint to become highlights and reflections.  Wondering what the woman in the helmet is pondering.