{"id":16042,"date":"2022-02-19T16:08:44","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T20:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/?p=16042"},"modified":"2025-06-26T09:53:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T13:53:35","slug":"tenth-chapter-painting-from-nature-with-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/archives\/16042","title":{"rendered":"Tenth chapter \u2014 Painting from nature with paper . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFollow the ways of natural creation, the becoming, the functioning of forms, then perhaps starting from nature you will achieve formations of your own, and one day you may even become like nature yourself and start creating.\u201d
\n\u2014 Paul Klee
\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>As I pushed toward the hanging date for CHANGE OF SEEN<\/em> last month, I pulled out an unfinished work. In 2020 it had been my hope to complete it as part of the Paint By Nature<\/em><\/a> entry \u2014 an interpretation of an urban oak tree. Everything was done except for the tree itself, which I\u2019d wanted to paste together in a burst of spontaneity. The \u201cstart\u201d went into cold storage when I ran out of time for two submissions. Fast forward to January 2022. Now I had the ideal scenario. My tight deadline would not allow me to indulge any slowdown or second guess. Positive, unanticipated things often happen when I occasionally challenge myself to work under a severe constraint. The hesitant, rational mind is sidelined in favor of an intuitive response that is rooted in everything one has ever created. This can be the case with music, writing, or nearly any artistic format, but the phenomenon especially lends itself to painting. <\/p>\n

Interestingly, I\u2019ve always preferred watercolors to other paint mediums because of its unpredictability and the \u201chappy accidents\u201d that occur. I admire oils greatly, but they hold no attraction for me as I approach my 70s. I hadn\u2019t expected to discover that \u201cpainting in papers\u201d could captivate me so and knit a reverence for nature into my art. <\/a><\/a>One of the primary appeals of collage is total flexibility. It\u2019s almost impossible to make a blunder, if one stays \u201cin the zone\u201d without letting the intellect gain an upper hand. When others use words such as exacting<\/em> or meticulous<\/em> to describe what I do, it usually throws me, because I consider my approach as more instinctive. And yet, there is no denying the presence of \u201cartisanship.\u201d With any task at hand, craft is essential. It was drilled into me with rigor after I chose the path of applied design. (That the young are asked to dedicate themselves to a particular discipline and to ignore countless alternatives is a weird fact of life. Many of us spend decades unraveling it.) So, a certain precision is fused into my method, even when I\u2019m racing the clock. One man\u2019s chaos is another man\u2019s perfectionism.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve lived my adult life trying to spin creative gold in a studio of one sort or another. A supremacy of the natural world in my youth had been set aside as part of an itinerary toward the graphic arts profession. Reflecting on a long journey that leads to the ever-rolling \u201cnow,\u201d I recognize that nature was always calling. It influenced my leaving big cities for a smaller community. It provided a firm foundation for my diet and a health-oriented lifestyle. It was an unfailing source for well-being when conditions seemed out of balance. Even so, an unsatisfied need remained elusive until I finally took paper and paste outdoors, where the potential for inspiration was out of arm\u2019s reach. That I could respond with collage, and find it so rewarding, is something I hadn\u2019t foreseen.<\/p>\n

If you want to start with the first chapter, you can find that story here<\/a>. It\u2019s been almost five years of direct observation, and I\u2019m itching to begin a new season of working en plein air.<\/em> The broader point I\u2019d like to make is how the experience also has invigorated the way I approach representational collage in the studio. It feels like it\u2019s all been funneled into an evolving intuition. Working outside has transformed how I make visual decisions even when using photographic reference under pressure, as I did with Grand Chinkapin<\/em><\/a>. After quickly preparing piles of printed scrap that seemed appropriate for tree foliage, I was able to explode those ingredients into place with a minimum of conscious thought \u2014 not unlike I try to do every time I take my collage kit<\/a> on location. \u201cPainting from nature with paper\u201d has become a more integrated practice, inside or outside. Change of Seen<\/em><\/strong><\/a> shares this adventure with others.<\/p>\n

 
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Grand Chinkapin<\/em><\/strong>
\ncollage with combined mediums by J A Dixon
\n0% \/ 100% \u2014 site to studio
\n11 x 7.75 inches + shadow-box frame<\/p>\n

\u2022  S O L D<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFollow the ways of natural creation, the becoming, the functioning of forms, then perhaps starting from nature you will achieve formations of your own, and one day you may even become like nature yourself and start creating.\u201d \u2014 Paul Klee   As I pushed toward the hanging date for CHANGE OF SEEN last month, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,89,1,11,160,216,8,22,18,249,35,46,12],"tags":[322,90,308,316,317,436,557,313,567,415,418,318,321,319],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16042"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16042"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19780,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16042\/revisions\/19780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/jadixon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}