Exhibit Dates: November 17 – December 30, 2023
Cosmologies of the Soul
My philosophy of painting – “the Painter’s Path” – is about process rather than product (i.e. painting as a “finished object”). Process painting directs one’s unplanned actions totally toward the flow of the work leaving the painter in a state of “unknowing” and surprise. Process painting is spontaneous and grown rather than constructed. Its resolution is an undeniable Presence which confronts us, waiting and enduring, self-existing and self-sufficient. However, one has to be willing to shipwreck the work, to explode it, in order for the work to become what it is, to reveal nothing outside itself.
In my paintings I look through the personal to the suprapersonal; that is, I look past individuality to something larger than myself. My work is not just about the “splish-splash” of abstract painting (although I don’t deny that action.) I attend its unfolding presence, its visual (visionary) recital. A bringing of the new and magical into the open. It is a deep engagement with both process and technical mastery.
I like to think my drawings are intimate whether small or large. I experiment with charcoal, ink, graphite, chalk, carbon, and water combinations. I rapidly put down sweeping and scumbled marks on paper. I intentionally scrape them off or smear the surface. I begin to draw again. These steps happen any number of times. The imagery arises from my letting go of control and being absorbed solely in the process.
~ Josh Goldberg
Seeker of Affinities
I am a seeker of affinities
I am a seeker of the light’s uncertain hours
I am a seeker ignited by the deepest sleeves
I am a seeker discharging small storms
I am a seeker dreaming between divine debris
I am a seeker before the candle’s darkened face
I am a seeker in the cellar’s penumbra
I am a seeker briny with the sea of gazing
I am a seeker over a grey field
I am a seeker living in the hole of an abyss
I am a seeker in lavish disruption
I am a seeker with the swiftness of fire
I am a seeker with the hair of your name on my tongue
I am a seeker at risk of asymmetry
I am a seeker of undressed timber
I am a seeker of telepathic summers
I am a seeker of tender infancies
I am a seeker nursing at the breast of the universe
I am a seeker self-given to the milky half-light
I am a seeker in the infinity of my reflections
I am a seeker whose blood’s swan cries out to you
I am a seeker expectorating ghosts of past sins
I am a seeker who has nothing to say which he does not know
I am a seeker in the bloodstream who sets the internal parameters of creation
I am a seeker in the bardo of waking life
I am a seeker with a fist of seeds
I am a seeker that gnaws his own eye
I am a seeker with a catch of beetles who summons tornadoes and hurricanes
I am a seeker on the ground listening to universes to come
I am a seeker that shadows phosphorescence
I am a seeker in the indigenous continent of a dark somewhere
I am a seeker jousting with the stars
I am a seeker on the rim of every question
I am a seeker at the fringe of madness where silence becomes singing
I am a seeker who shelters the lost forms of heaven
I am a seeker too lame to wander home
I am a seeker who follows the fatigues of faith
I am a seeker who hides his head under one wing
I am a seeker of the purest myths
I am a seeker screaming like a cat of desire
I am a seeker who can freeze the salamander
I am a seeker who spent infant years with crows
I am a seeker in the last light made nocturnal
I am a seeker who will not diminish in this fragile country
I am a seeker with a deaf side
I am a seeker whose tomorrow sees dark blue rafters
I am a seeker who is powerless at the two curves of your belly
I am a seeker here and there where the cocoon begins and ends
I am a seeker running backwards toward the unsayable
I am a seeker of anxious possibilities
I am a seeker in the waiting rooms of forgettable tasks
I am a seeker in the corner of the mirror at midday longing
I am a seeker full tilting toward rich twilights
I am a seeker with the silken memories of ancient skies
I am a seeker digging toward himself
I am a seeker of transparent alignments
I am a seeker with snow-ridden doubt
I am a seeker without baroque remorse
I am a seeker bristling with granules of the sublime
I am a seeker in the morning of the afternoon night
I am a speaker of infinities
With no message other than this:
Everyone in this world wants something
But I seek the vanishing path
The yeast of spirit
In time’s after-cast
Presence in place of the bone of appearance
One in essence
Both leaf and leaf-shadow
The dragon hum and the dead tree.
Image: “Cycles of Visual Recital” 72″x 60″, Acrylic
Cover image: “The Scale of Observation” 14×16, Ink, Charcoal, Chalk, & Acrylic on Paper