Randee Silv

"If both San shamans of South Africa and Upper Paleolithic cave painters first felt and saw fields of dots, zigzags, arcs, spirals, rectangular forms, nested curves and meandering lines that slanted, flickered, pulsated and blended one with another during the first stage of trance as they entered into the spirit world to later return and engrave or paint their visions, could this mean that art didn't begin with figures and representation, but with the abstract?

Working with oilsticks has given my surface the tactile diversity, and my strokes the continuous flow, that I need as I paint within those moments before gestures transform themselves into recognizable images, in that space between what's familiar and what’s not yet been encountered, where there's not an apparent boundary, only sensations of infinite possibility.

With each journey I've made to Morocco, I've found myself immersed in the organic vitality and abundant earthen textures of its walls, in the imbedded storytelling of successive paintings, re-paintings and graffiti. I then recognized that my own canvases were also absorbing an accumulation of impulses, changes, marks, shapes, scrapings, wear and tear.

Through my friendship with M'allim Najib Soudani in Essaouiria, Morocco, I’ve been able to observe for myself the intensity and power of trance while, playing the gut stringed guimbri, he directs the dancer's passage with the transiting spirits during the Gnawa night ritual, the Lila. The Gnawa, who came from many different places south of the Sahara, practice this syncretistic evening ceremony that fuses Islamic, Berber and Sufi elements with the Black African animism of their ancestors.

My curiosity only ventured deeper as I began connecting this quality of concentration, and its kinetic looseness, with how I respond within my own work. Listening to particular recordings of John Coltrane and of Miles Davis, I noticed how the grooves seemed to propel me into a space where the force and shape of the music meshed with my own strokes in a way very similar to the interchange between dancers and m'allim.

I've become intrigued with how Paleolithic image makers transformed inner entoptic visions into a concrete visual presence. Something was unlocked, identified. Something was acknowledged. Something was shared. I recognize in my own gestures a continuing affinity with the way these indeterminate abstract marks were first painted on cave walls."

-Randee Silv