Falling through the earth–falling through matter–falling into my body–the touch starts heavy and becomes light–the intensity of the touch falling–falling as passing through space–reaching through space–falling as submission, surrender–falling into air–everything falling away–allowing one movement to exist as autonomous–falling rain–falling as anti-gravity and anti-time–falling as breathing, as in the rise and fall of breath–falling as an articulation of air–falling as lightening, dissolving, trusting–falling as letting go–falling as falling through our boundaries
Over the last two monsoon cycles I painted in the open in a single rural location in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra.
In these paintings, I offer sequences of small body-scale surfaces marked with the moment of contact between living matter—my alert eyes, fingers and body moving, stone pigments slipping into line—in company with swarming swallows, timed to slow dripping raindrops, sweeping hot wind, slicing seedlings, rustling grass, swerving rain, descending dusk, billowing dust, rolling python, dissolving light, piercing embers, resting creatures. My offering invites you to feel for our co-presence.
In durational immersion, I painted my embodied experience of the monsoon cycle. From parched land to wet constancy to faded dry then wetness again. I painted outside in the gushing rain and in the deafening dry. I painted in the melting heat and chilling damp. I painted in grass rising above my head and I painted in grass retreating into dust beneath my feet. Before the Western Ghats body of work, I followed the monsoon cycles of New Mexico for 3 years, painting.
My painting—painting as drawing, painting through drawing, painting out of drawing—comes from durational experiences of change, sensation, and connection.
Drawing with–not drawing alone–where drawings represents change–transformation –presentness–directness–spontaneity–malleability–becoming–openendedness–responsiveness–improvisation–undoing–sensing and feeling only–changing directionality –changing weight–changing shape–changing substance–changing solidity–changing density–changing speed–changing matter.
— Claire Baker