{"id":5496,"date":"2015-02-24T13:53:10","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T13:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=5496"},"modified":"2015-02-12T13:53:44","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T13:53:44","slug":"the-mystery-of-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=5496","title":{"rendered":"The mystery of painting"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Still<\/a>

Still Life with Pocket Door<\/p><\/div>\n

If someone were to ask me right now what my painting is about, I might offer\u00a0something that would probably occur to me if I were someone else\u00a0appraising the work I\u2019ve done over the past couple years. I might say Dorsey is continuing to work in several different modes: adding to the series of large jars he has exhibited in the past, doing a few suburban landscapes, and exploring smaller alla prima<\/em> paintings executed very quickly, almost like Japanese sumi-e. In all of this work, he\u2019s drawn to the ordinary and everyday. Mostly, though, he has continued his central pursuit of fairly traditional still life. His love for this genre seems to come from a variety of influences. Yet the effect of these paintings when seen together, aside from whatever virtues still life has always had, is to make one feel as if the artist is wistful, even desperate, for a world that\u2019s fast disappearing. There\u2019s something about these paintings that reminds one of the rag waved in the air by the uppermost member of that pile of survivors in Gericault\u2019s Raft of the Medusa<\/em>, the one trying to catch the eye of a savior on the tall ship just emerging over the horizon before time runs out on the life raft. In a time when the middle class seems to be rapidly disappearing, taking with it the promise of opportunity for most people in our society, Dorsey seems to be drawn again and again to the subject of domestic serenity as embodied in a little heirloom sugar bowl or a couple flowers from a backyard garden. Intentionally small potatoes\u2014though, strictly speaking, he hasn\u2019t painted any potatoes yet. Domestic happiness was the daemon<\/em> of both Chardin and Vermeer, two painters who have had a powerful sway over his work so far. It isn\u2019t a small thing, though, to have reminders of what it meant in America to have a flourishing middle class, a thriving\u00a0bourgeoisie so despised by intellectuals, the economic topsoil of a robust free society, something fast disappearing in the world right now.<\/p>\n

This might be what someone would say about the paintings in this show, though it\u2019s merely hindsight and speculation on my part. None of this even crossed my mind as I\u2019ve done this work, though much of it sounds sensible enough now. Subconsciously, I\u2019m drawn to simple and commonplace subjects, and now that we live in a time of extremes, a novel way to go against the grain these days might be to offer little glimpses of a lost American dream. But this commentary is all ex post facto<\/em> on my part. None of this has much to do with what consciously drives me as I paint, which is mostly concerned with tackling formal challenges. If I have a philosophy of painting, it\u2019s essentially that most of what a great painting conveys to a viewer is invested in the painting subconsciously and non-conceptually\u2014at the level where a painting is a sort of visual music. It can\u2019t be translated into words, and what matters most remains as elusive for the painter as it is for the viewer. A good painting\u2019s effect has far more to do with the physical act of painting than an artist\u2019s intentions. You start off wanting to create an image that captures certain qualities of light and color and form, and yet what often has the biggest impact on a viewer isn\u2019t, strictly speaking, visible at all. It\u2019s the silent resonance of the slow time invested in making the picture. Painting is an act of intense mindfulness, a way of training the mind for the patience required to see and show what\u2019s actually see-able as clearly as possible, in the hope of triggering a sense of an entire world behind and around it. Slow time, as Keats put it, is how I lure my heart out into the open so that I can get to know it a little better.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If someone were to ask me right now what my painting is about, I might offer\u00a0something that would probably occur to me if I were someone else\u00a0appraising the work I\u2019ve done over the past couple years. I might say Dorsey is continuing to work in several different modes: adding to the series of large jars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe mystery of painting - represent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=5496\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The mystery of painting - represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If someone were to ask me right now what my painting is about, I might offer\u00a0something that would probably occur to me if I were someone else\u00a0appraising the work I\u2019ve done over the past couple years. 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