An oil spill then.

One of the ongoing discussions here at A&P seems to revolve around the value of rendering in art. Some of us emphasize the importance of being able to accurately portray what is serving as a model. I can’t render much of an opinion as I can’t render, period.

That said, there is room, perhaps, to consider such rendering in a greater context. in some cases, it might be a kind of penmanship where the elegance of the gesture exceeds the eloquence of the message: the hand being of equal value to the bookkeeper as to the poet. Behind Michelangelo stands a great synthetic power.

I am becoming more aware of Karl’s drawing which is beginning to speak to me. I’m becoming more comfortable with the technique and I’m being caught by gestures. There’s the woman with her hands resting on an outcropping as though it were an aid to her devotions. For me, Karl’s painting technique is a fine evocation of a period and a place, but the outcropping…that’s where a sense of mystery enters.

I used to be a bit of a rockhound as a kid and I know that many of the finest crystals are formed by what percolates up from below. I’m sure that everyone here enjoys his or her crystal moments without really knowing what is causing them.

I’ll look for the Scientific American. I agree that the unconscious is huge and has a great impact on art, but I’d allow conscious thought to contribute more than an oil slick’s worth. After all, there are many conscious decisions in artmaking that tend to at least set larger parameters, as well as more minor details. I imagine, for example, that most painters are thinking about most brush strokes, even if there’s more behind the gesture than they’re aware of.

The June/July edition of Scientific American Mind.

It’s hot here - got your drift all wrong. Scientific American’s state of excitement has nothing to do with your point. Disregard.

Scientific American was excited.

Do you mean to say “mediations” or “medications”?

Popova is powerful. Inspirational!

I did not know that pernod which I drank as a teenager in France was absinth. Checking in Wikipedia, I also read that Wormwood is supposed to be nontoxic, contrary to what one of my students claimed in her term paper.

But that is old hat. Nowadays, one seems to taps one’s subconscious below that ’slick of oil’ using various mediations.