F. Michael Wells
painter@sirius.com

How did an Indiana farm boy get the notion of becoming an artist, a painter? It certainly didn't come from my parents (my father in particular who tried his best to disuade me from the idea), or anyone one else in my family, who, so far as I know, never set foot in an art museum or gallery. What little exposure I had to what might be called art came either from looking at pictures in books and magazines or through watching television. I'm certain cartoons and Walt Disney were major influences.

And yet, by the time I was nine years old I felt fairly convinced that I wanted to b a "painter" when I grew up. This knowledge came from my own creativity, my own sense of exploration and play, my own intuitive approach to just about everything. This intuitive approach is a key to understanding my life and my art.

One afternoon when I was eight years old I was looking through a music book that was kept in the family library. This library had been a window until just before I was born. At that time an addition was put on the house and although the window was now blocked off, my parents kept the window frame on the inside and used that as the bookshelf for the library. Among old family photographs, a small iron paperweight shaped like an anvil and a sizable collection of Readers' Digests was this book of illustrated songs. It had probably been brought home from school by one of my older sisters and never returned.

There was one painting in the book that held a particular fascination. I have it here to show you. It is entitled One Center and is by Wassily Kandinsky. I can assure you that in 1956 in southern rural Indiana, neither I nor anyone I knew had any idea who Kandinsky was or what this painting was about. But that was part of its fascination.

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I SAW THIS PICTURE I TOOK IT TO MY MOTHER AND ASKED HER WHAT IT WAS. SHE DIDN'T KNOW, SHE SAID, "JUST SOME PICTURE SOMEBODY MADE UP, I GUESS." THAT SHE DIDN'T KNOW WAS IN ITSELF PECULIAR TO ME. I MEAN, IT WAS UNUSUAL TO COME ACROSS SOMETHING SHE DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT.

On this particular afternoon, though, I sat on the living room couch with the sun coming through the window to my right with this book on my lap and the stubborn determination of a child to "figure this picture out." I had this intuition--sort of like a funny feeling--that if I just looked at it long enough, somehow, I would understand what it "was." I felt certain it was a picture of something.

As I held this book in my lap and looked at the picture I grew restless. It was interesting to look at but it seemed impenetrable. It bothered me to look at something I had no way of understanding. Suddenly, this idea came into my head that maybe I should just relax and look, without trying to think anything. Where this came from I have no idea. But I tried it. I just relaxed and looked.

It took a while but eventually something began to happen. As I allowed my attention to relax, I became more aware of myself, of the atmosphere of the room and of this peculiar picture that held my gaze. Then, strangely, the painting became like a doorway which rather suddenly opened and drew me into its world. It was a shocking experience for a child--even an imaginative child like myself. At that moment I "understood" what this painting was about, I even said so out loud: "Oh, this is a picture of space!"

Now, of course, what my child's mind meant by "space" was probably not exactly what Kandinsky or any other abstract painter would have meant by that word. Nevertheless, it was the word that came to mind. What it really meant to me was the world of that picture. "Space" to me was a dream like world that had more to do with having watched a lot of television and seen some science fiction movies. "Space," for me, was an imaginary realm of perception.

What I'm trying to illustrate with this little story is that right from the beginning I understood that a painting, a good painting, was something more than just a pretty picture. Somehow it was supposed to do something to the person looking at it. What has kept me interested in painting over the years is a series of experiences. Occasionally I run into a painting in a gallery or a museum--or another artist's studio--that does something to me. In 1965, for example, I had a semilar experience looking at a painting in the Ringling Brothers Museum in Sarasota Florida. At that time I was a sophomore in high school, very involved in painting. Our painting class was on a field trip to see the winners of the 1964 Guggenheim International. I no longer recall the name of the artist or painting, but I recall vividly that it was a large, predominantly orange canvas with a blue circle brushed briskly in the middle. After looking at it for some time, this painting also opened up and drew me into it's magical world.

Moments like this are rare, but they are important because they motivate me to paint. After the Kandinsky opened up, for example, I became very excited. I got out my ruler, compass, watercolor tin and pad of paper and began making paintings of my own. The disappointment came, of course, when I discovered that my paintings didn't magically "open up" in the way Kandinsky's had. This was a little painful. Making a painting, even for a child, is lot of work. It takes time. You have to think about it, figure it out, draw the lines, mix the colors--and somehow everything has to be just so.

These pictures I was making were completely abstract and geometric. But that they didn't "work" for me, though disappointing, brought questions. Why not? What was different? Was it something in the painting, the shapes or arrangements of colors, or something in me that needed to be different? The answer, of course, is that they are not unrelated.

It has been these inner questions, the inner dynamics of looking with the eyes, mind and heart, and then trying to make something with the hands that would somehow touch someone else, that have guided me toward becoming a painter.

For me, the painting as an object should be meaningful. For example, I think about the warp and weft of the canvas interlacing to form the vertical support of the painting. In the esoteric traditions, a horizontal line represents passing time while a vertical line represents the infinite and eternal. Where they cross, as in the interstices of the canvas, represents the continuous now in which we live. When we allow our attention to this now expand and include more of our field of awareness, the line of passing time begins to look more like an infinite, vertical plane of possibilities--not unlike a painting's surface on a canvas. The mind can make a lot out of very little, as you see. The point, though, is not merely to "think these words in the head," but, somehow, to experience the significance of this in one's self.

For me, this is what painting is all about: creating events which can be experienced in passing time but which point beyond themselves to another quality of experience. This other quality of experience somehow stands outside passing time in what, for lace of a better word, we call eternity. But of course what I mean by this word cannot be explained. It is something that can be experienced but which seems impossible, mysterious or incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't had the experience.

I would like to take this just a bit further, if I may. Paint, for me, is both bodily substance and primal substance. I love the materials of painting, the smell of the oil, the sensuality of the paint, the beauty of a good brush and a fresh canvas. I love the silky sensuality of paint.

When I make a grand sweeping motion across a wet field of paint with a broad brush--as you seen in Out of Bounds, I am aware that I am playing with primal forces. By my action something comes into being that was not there before. This is true alchemy! A certain order is brought to the chaos of unformed matter. And what do we see? Not a thing. In this instance what we see is the way light reflects off the surface of paint. But it's more than that.

It takes three things to make a painting--the painting itself, of course, the light which reflects off its surface, and someone to be cognizant of all that. This latter part is, in my opinion, the most important part. This moment of awareness is the creative act. Because, as we see in Out of Bounds, what we see is not just light reflecting off a painted surface but what the mind makes of that reflection. From that our minds generate a sense of surface or form in space. None of that is in the paint; it's in the creative participation, the mind of the viewer.

But there is yet another level. This level has to do with energy and the quality of attention both the artist and the viewer bring to this creative act of perception. It is one thing to just glance or look casually at a painting. It is one thing to study a painting intellectually or sentimentally. It is quite another to become absorbed by the world in which that painting lives. What I'm getting at here is that, for me, a painting needs to do more than "represent" something. Somehow, to truly come alive, to touch the depths of feeling and knowledge that are possible in us, the painting needs to do more than symbolize or represent something; it needs to become the symbol itself.