or deep surface
The visual surface of a body of water in nature is affected both by the light playing across it and the depths it conceals. The depths help shape, manipulate and define the light patterns we see on the surface. That submerged darkness is integral.
It is deep surface.
It is the pattern-making potential, or tension, between this light and this shade—between positive and negative space—that I explore in these water studies. They can also be seen as meditations on movement or even ultimately, dance.
In most conditions, the body of water will reflect the sky and its surroundings. This is specular light. The Latin sense of the word specular means having the properties of a mirror. Add something of a breeze and you have ripples disturbing—and combining with—the reflection on the surface of the water in a myriad of unique, constantly shifting and engaging ways. Fleeting, fugitive forms that compel our attention. As we look we speculate. In its original Latin sense speculate also means: ‘the act of looking‘ itself.
We look because the ever-changing and apparently random nature of these dancing patterns is in tension with the basic human desire to seek order and rhythm and to find safe pattern and the solace of the settled state. The water patterns hold our attention because they are never settled. We try to fix them, to order, to still and thereby to control ... it is futile and therefore we continue to speculate.
This series is ultimately an attempt to describe what it is we are trying to fix and control when we can’t drag our eyes away. What is it that we see and how that relates to what we are trying to see. By stilling the movement, paradoxically, my work does not resolve this speculation; rather, it complicates it.
Deep surface also acts as a metaphor for ourselves. What we think of as safely hidden is always, somehow, on the surface, despite our best efforts, in ways we can never fully understand. These depths interact constantly with what we consciously want the world to see and understand. That which we optimistically hope may well, for others, glitter.
Paul Greene
©Paul Greene. 2016. All Rights Reserved.
