bodhi - The Paintings of Joan Watts
Its been a long
while since I’ve touched the blog and it feels very appropriate that my first
one back in business is to highlight the newest work of Santa Fe painter, Joan
Watts.
An exhibition of
Watts’ latest series of paintings, bodhi is up for another week or so
at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, in the Railyard (through June 26). This group of
20 paintings has a special place in my heart. I was honored to be invited up
(Joan’s house and studio is up the hill from our apartment – I can see the edge
of her house from my porch) to visit Joan and see the first three of the series
almost two years ago. Joan and I talked, with the idea of me writing up an
essay about her work and particularly its connection to Buddhism. As happens
with me, I procrastinated and the article didn’t get written. In the end,
though, this was fortuitous, as Joan invited me back up again to see the
completed 20 paintings in the fall of 2017. She had named the series bodhi, and it turned out that this
series, to my mind, is a perfect expression and encapsulation both of Joan’s
skill and depth as an artist, but of the ways in which Buddhism and meditation
infuse her work.
I wrote the essay
and as it turns out, local art book publisher, Radius Books, accepted a
proposal to create a special book featuring Joan’s work and my essay. The book
will be coming out at the end of August and having seen the proofs I can say it
will be beautiful. This is the kind of book that is a work of art in and of
itself. (Here’s a sneak peak, here: https://www.amazon.com/Joan-Watts-bodhi-Michaela-Kahn/dp/1942185472/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529256380&sr=8-1&keywords=bodhi+joan+watts;
and here: https://radiusbooks.org/books/joan-watts-bodhi/).
Walking through
the gallery on the night of the opening, I was struck again by the power of
these paintings. They are mostly white – only the faintest bit of color is anchored
at the bottom of each piece, which rises and fades into pure white as it goes
up. You can see the artist’s hand at work in the painterly waves across the
surface.
These are minimalist works and demand time, patience, and attention.
They require that the person looking at them gives something of themselves to
the viewing. Each piece held me for a while. As I stood there I could have
sworn that I was on the precipice of understanding some strange unknown language
speaking through them.
To give you a
bit of a taste of bodhi and of my
essay – I am including the press release I wrote for the show, which includes
some excerpts from the essay. As we get closer to the book release date, I will
circle back round with some more of the essay. And in the meantime I think a
few articles about art, minimalist art, and maybe even how I came to write
about it, may be in the offing.
Enjoy the images
and if you’re in Santa Fe – go see Joan Watts’ bodhi in person!
From the press release:
Each painting is
a breath.
Have you ever
really felt a breath? Inhale. Slowly. Feel the texture of the air, cool through
the nose, the slow expansion of belly, chest, throat. You are a
three-dimensional being. You are connected to this invisible matrix that binds
the world together. The world is inside you. Exhale, slowly. Chest falling,
muscles letting go, the air leaving you, warmer now having taken a bit of your
heat. You are falling outside yourself, released, part of the world. This is
only the beginning of where the twenty paintings of the series, bodhi, by Joan Watts, are leading you.
After two and a
half years when physical limitations prohibited Joan Watts from painting as she
was used to, Watts discovered a new mode of working which has allowed her to
create a new series. No longer able to spend whole days in her studio, Watts
required a reduction of the elements and variables used in her process. Brushes
had to go. Her use of saw-horses had to change. Drawing inspiration from the
meditative practice of Japanese calligraphy – where a practitioner will create
a complex character in a single elegant movement - calling on years of both
artistic and meditative practice, Watts was able to adapt her method of working
into a heightened state of concentrated effort.
In reducing her
artistic process down to the bare essentials, Watts is, in effect, re-creating
the experience of meditation on her canvases and panels. What is sitting
meditation itself but a trimming down to essentials? Cut out the distractions,
the extraneous noise. In the beginning, as meditation is often taught, the
novice is told to merely follow her breath. In. Out. It is much harder than it
sounds. Almost immediately thoughts, memories, emotions rise up. In meditation
you are taught to recognize these thoughts and emotions and then let them go.
The paintings of
bodhi strip away distractions. A
single color, a square format, gentle textural waves, a subtle fade into white.
These paintings enact and guide us toward a meditative possibility. With their
rising and expansive movement, they have an ability (if we are willing to give
ourselves over to it) to lead us back into our own body, our breath. Color on
the canvas pools, rises and fades, like a thought or an emotion inside us:
roiling in, shading our mind, and then, with our exhalation, the thought too
disappears into white.
Watts’ work in bodhi
is a gift of space and solitude, a small piece brought back from beyond and
made tangible to lure us, to perhaps help show us how to make the journey for
ourselves.
[[Credit for the photos goes to Charlotte Jackson Fine Art]]
