Folded Canvas
Near Augusta, Montana : : 2017
Sage – Badlands, South Dakota
I have a neatly folded pile of heavy cotton canvas and imagine unfolding it and attaching it to a wall. I won’t need to build a frame because I’ll gesso it on the wall, paint it on the wall, and display it in the same way. I’ll need to re-arrange my current studio space to accommodate it, or have to rent the corner of a warehouse somewhere else. Once it’s unfolded, it’ll be close to nine feet by eighteen feet. I purchased the bulk canvas years ago and used the other half to assemble four large stretched canvases. I have a lot left and that’s what I’ll use to paint something big. I imagine it’ll incorporate some big view in Montana, the Dakota Badlands, maybe Minnesota, or another enormous horizon from my youth—one that’s filled with sagebrush, grazing cattle, or wheat. It’s impossible to predict what a painting will become, but I like thinking about it.
I imagine a space that I can walk into—where I can get lost, my orientation completely in question because I can’t locate myself in space. It might shift what other people think they’re seeing too. The space could feel like a moment on countless road trips I’ve taken during the day and at night; in the dust of August or crisp nights of winter. At some point on every trip, I pull the vehicle over to the side of the road, or into an adjacent field and stay for awhile. If it’s dark, I stare into the sky stars. Sometimes during the day, I’ll open the tailgate and sit with my lunch, or dinner. I might even have food left that my wife prepared, and if I’m prepared, a thermos of coffee. If I’m in the middle of nowhere, there might be crickets, grasshoppers and meadowlarks surrounding me. It’s like I’m swimming in it. If I’m lucky, once in awhile the air will be still and heavy with sage or sweet grass, and will just drift there.
Songs :: Break My Heart Sweetly by John Moreland, and Plains (Eastern Montana Blues) by George Winston
© C. Davidson