Collision course

I'm not sure this one's done yet, but I'm excited about it nonetheless -- primarily because I've discovered/invented a new tool: a strip of corrugated cardboard.

I rumple it up so it can take a number of shapes instead of being a stiff straight line, then dip the edge in paint and sort of rumble it onto the page. It's great fun to do (although if you do different colors on the opposite edges, your fingers tend to get covered in paint), and it gives me the sort of lines I've been looking for, that I haven't been able to achieve with a brush, knife, or sponge.

... which just goes to show that if you can keep going into the studio, or sitting down at the typewriter or piano, and play through your frustrations, sometimes you can actually get to the other side.

In Gurdjieff work, if I remember correctly, they call this Third Force. According to Gurdjieff's Law of Three, the First Force is positive, the Second Force is negative, and the Third Force is the reconciling or facilitating force, and is how the world moves forward.

So in this case the first force would be my love of color and desire to paint, the second force would be my frustrations with the technical aspects of painting, and the third force would be the discovery of a new tool

If I were a more Gurdjieffian person (which I'm not; I've just studied a wee bit about it) I might actually look at our current situation, this horrific pandemic, the lockdown, the crowded hospitals and the economic impact in a more positive way: We could see life as we knew it, back before the virus, as essentially positive, a First Force; the virus as essentially negative, a Second Force; and the collision of the two (which I now see as light collides with dark in this picture) as an opportunity for Third Force to enter the realm; for humans to begin taking steps to care more diligently for one another, to understand our underlying unity, and to provide for both the future and the less fortunate.

My husband likes to remind me that Social Security, the SEC, and several other things in danger of being scrapped under this administration, were instituted by the federal government in response to the horrors of the depression. Perhaps the horrors of the pandemic will encourage more socially conscious action?

We can only hope.

Learnings: That strip of corrugated cardboard makes sharp lines
                   Paine's Gray and Yellow Ochre are boring together. 
                  Small amounts of black and white are not enough to alleviate boredom.