The Cosmology Of Fluidism

COSMIC UNITY

Everything is connected, intertwined and in touch with everything else simultaneously. Matter, space, energy, time, body, and mind are specific patterns or relationships in the same basic thing. Instead of a rigid container of isolated objects, reality is more like an infinite eternal ocean of distinct waves, where each wave (each conscious form) rises up from the main medium. There is but one unity from which every separate shape is born.

UBIQUITOUS FLUID PATTERNS

Leonardo da Vinci was in tune to this point of view, as he saw landscapes in water stains on walls. As children, we are in tune to this point of view, when we pretend to see animals in cloud formations. Everywhere in nature, there are hints of common structures that connect everyone and everything. From the tiniest particle to the biggest galaxy, "stuff" swirls, twirls and explodes to create patterns of branching, folding, knotting and twisting. These are the clustering patterns of fluid flow, and these patterns contain the possibility of all things.

In using the natural flow of water, by way of the natural flow of paint, I stay close to the fundamental process of all existence. When I make a painting, I alone do not control the designs. Instead, I am an action of the designing process myself. I participate with designs, rather than possessing the outcome of them. I liberate designs from already-existing structure. I tweak designs one way or another, but I do not will the final details. I see a wave of possibility, which I try to ride to a good conclusion.

WATER

Water is the most outstanding place on Earth where we see fluid patterns. Water, by way of paint, therefore, has been my favorite medium. Water is the primary substance both of the human body and of the human habitat. In cultures throughout the world, water always has had associations with the creative principle. Water is a powerful metaphor for how we perceive life (for example, "flow of time", "sea of change", "stream of consciousness", "security leak"). Water represents the cosmic ocean from which all life originated and into which all life must dissolve.

FLUIDISM

In the original style of art that I call "fluidism", I deal with complex patterns that emerge spontaneously in fluid flow. I am specifically interested in fluid flow that human muscle power can produce in various liquid substances, ranging from acrylic paints to egg whites. Here the painting surface does not stay fixed in one place or in one plane (as in traditional painting) but can be moved or manipulated to create shaping forces within the paint directly.

I once considered calling my style of art "catastrophism", because the efforts I applied to paint, when I first started this style, were often sharp and violent. These efforts created catastrophes in the paint or sudden, unpredictable destructions and reconstructions of the liquid. In other words, by applying these primitive (but not simple) efforts, I churned out complex shapes. I frequently incorporated planned shapes and preconceived backgrounds with these spontaneous shapes. Interactions between intentional human logic and unintentional liquid logic have always fascinated me.

ANCESTRAL SHAPES

I see the intricate patterns of fluid flow as ancestors of all patterns that are familiar to us. The shape of a bird, the shape of a face, the shape of a continent each is first a more primitive shape in a flowing fluid. The flow of reality evolves into human forms. Flow is our place of birth and our place of death that recycles into new life again. Cells, animals, suns and galaxies are offspring of fluid dynamic flow. We are many, yet we are one with this flow.

BASIC PHYSICAL PROPERTIES

Painting, in general, occurs immediately and directly off the hand, in tangible, three-dimensional materials, with unrestrained degrees of freedom. My particular style of painting expresses basic physical properties such as mass, drag, momentum, gravity, surface tension, viscosity, collisions. These are at full play (in the moment). The shapes I present are actual phenomena of nature. They are real fluid patterns, either frozen in their original media, or captured at their peaks of appeal in photographs.

HUMAN BODY

Fluidism paintings and photographs arise from the human body's close interaction with the physical world. The liquid configuration of my body interacts with actual, liquid materials of the greater cosmos.

UNIVERSAL WISDOM

Fluidism paintings and photographs are miniature versions of a physical process that happens at all levels of reality, from the sub-atomic to the mega-galactic. When making these paintings, I am in touch with a process that precedes intelligence. I am collaborating with nature to make an artifact that reminds us of the wisdom contained in the fabric of the universe-- a wisdom that exceeds words, a wisdom that exceeds knowing, but a wisdom that shapes and moves us as participants in a great dynamic continuum.

(c) 2011 Robert G. Kernodle