encounters with nondual awareness

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Big Sea #1) 1969
graphite on acrylic ground on paper

I often now talk about building a painting
 instead of painting a painting.
 

This needs a little this, this needs a little this, this needs a little this.
I don’t question it, I follow my intuition. That’s what I do.

Sometimes I'm convinced that there is nothing else but the physical act of making the art.

Most of the changes in the work occur when I have had some kind of an experience that has been like a little awakening experience. Usually out in life and I’ve forgotten all about it and then somehow it creeps into the work. I don’t know how to say that.

It’s hard to talk about painting. I mean, it’s hard for me to talk about the painting because I don’t know a lot about it. You know, in a way I don’t know that much about it. It isn’t like I’m totally in control of everything.

I do like kind of impossible images. I mean images that are hard to pin down. That aren’t like a tabletop and an apple, but images that are really almost like mind images. Images that are space but they’re hard to grasp. But then they’re very graspable here, I mean, I make them accessible through another way, through manipulating the paint.
Source: PBS Website