About this Piece
#78 - Quanta:"Bark Talk Totem Dance" ; The central eucalyptus tree icon is a perfect reference from my 1989 Australian Kakadu National Park watercolor field trip. All first phase watercolor painting to Jazz music was freely translated from the field watercolors and adapted to fit this icon. My initial experiences painting there were with these trees and their bark textural surface compositions. Each watercolor in this series begins with a hands on oil pastel rub down of the washes to improve their transition to one another before the "collaging" processes can begin. This "collaging" process is not about a cut and paste traditional approach to collage but it involves a coordinated interaction of geometrical crystallographic ordering, color /sound harmonics, and an entrainment with the poetic nature of the Australian outback and Aboriginal cultural experiences.
The cut out shapes form a 'falling totem', which came about from a game I played with wooden blocks with my son who likes to topple them when they got built up. The geometrical ordering functions through the colored oil pastel lines and plastic tape lines. The main reason for using the open bark aspect of a "Eucalyptus tree", which was instrumental to my introduction to the Aboriginal Dreamtime concept. The first set of paintings in the park were done on small bark papers to Aboriginal tapes. The recorded studio musical 'collage' tapes also used in the outback were later used again in my studio to help me recall the Australian outback experiences. This 'Bio - sonic process' helped me create the colors, rhythms, and poetic consciousness for each collage. Each collage uniquely represents a special place in the park, its geology, plant life, and my interpretations of the Aboriginal Dreamtime culture, their music, and connections to nature. Each park site environment had a wealth of Aboriginal accessible cultural visual experiences in the form of huge rock wall paintings, termite mounds, many geological rock formations, waterfalls, and a variety of plants and trees. Input from a wide range of music genres and cultural traditions of excellent musicians allowed me to view these wonders with an open heart by 'listening' to their stories. It is through the Aboriginal stories on tape and eucalyptus tree/bark talk watercolor exchanges that I was able to sample the Aboriginal Dreamtime phenomena and its universal and poetic significance.
About the Artist
David W. McCullough - Quantum Artist Statement
For fifty years my paintings, sculpture, and works on paper have been concerned with capturing nature's light energy, color, and geological crystalline Geomancy. Since the early 1980's I have consciously been developing a quantum coherent aesthetic based on my field trips and studio work.
My quantum art aesthetic is multi - disciplinary. It consists mainly of nature field research and originating creative innovative uses for all mediums in conjunction with studies of the disciplines of Chemistry, Mineralogy, Crystallography, Geology, Physics, Bio - physics, Mythology, and music, art, and poetry. I began in 1970 making art in my Dallas studio which also afforded me access to the National Park system in the Southwest, mid - west, and Southern states surrounding Texas. I have concentrated my watercolor field trips on the 'Four Corners' region that includes Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. They are my 'outback studio' outposts where I can paint watercolor, draw, and photograph, nature's holistic systems, Her psyche, and entrain with its geological crystalline Geomancy.
This field research is always assisted by recorded music and is the foundation stone of all my abstracted quantum art studio compositions. The field artworks captured essence of natural phenomena in the parks and at Native American rock painted sites assists me in maintaining an integrity to these places and its potential transference to all mediums and processes. I have also traveled to Kakadu and Grampean national parks in Australia to study them and paint at their Aboriginal rock painting sites. The Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, art and music, as well as the Native American mythology, and ethnological studies of their cultural operating systems has greatly informed the quantum potential of the use of imagery, coloration, rhythms, and Alchemy in my artworks.
The onsite watercolor painting experiences ground my quantum aesthetic and give it a mystical, universal, and naturalistic quality. They also have given me many insights into how to create an optical chemistry in the paintings that changes in the light and reflects their transcendental nature essences.
Musicians from all idioms and instrumentation throughout the world have contributed to the flow of spiritual energy that drives the processing of quantum aesthetic realizations which stimulate my creative activity. Their music resonates in the watercolor coloration and its rhythmical sensuality and lyrical poesis.
This has resulted in a Gaia poesis that represents nature's harm0onic complexity and its geological geometric ordering systems throughout the mineral kingdom and plant world. The poetic audio visual fusion of artistic expression, nature's psyche, and the emotional of musicians' imaginative insights are all woven together into a what I call, "sonic expressionism." These sonic rhythmical patterns and geometric ordering relationships animate the audio visual entanglement of conscious intentions and quantum coherence systematically into a harmonic entrainment process.
Animating words to metaphoric delight, like "collaging" is to take ordinary aesthetic learned processes like collage and turn it into a quantum - way processing juggernaut. Simply put quantum art is about being affected by a creative energy flow of pure awareness that allows our being to process consciousness in the moment so we can respond to the adventure of discovering new possibilities to making lively spirit filled artworks.