Physicality

Schnabel's canvas is at least three stories high

"Is physicality even a word?"

"Well, why not?  If it isn't, it should be."

It hit me when we were at the gallery looking at Julian Schnabel's huge canvases of surfers and again in his bullfighting series.  Just the sheer, physical, selfish pleasure of the artist to be in the moment, blind to their audience.  I could imagine Schnabel's extreme reach and the will required to leave those marks.

It made my fingertips tingle when looking at Hesse, Goodwin and Martin At Work.  In Martin's meditative series, 'Work Ethic,'  12 white canvases, which on close inspection are anything BUT blank space.  The textures teased into being in the table-sized sculptures of Goodwin and Hesse.  Art not a fleeting, external idea but a physical response.

Then off we go to listen to Autorickshaw at Hugh's room. The exotic fusion of Indian scales and improvisational jazz.  In the middle of it all, a tabla lesson.  Did you know a tabla student will spend months just vocalizing the sounds, before the teacher allows them to tap and flutter the complicated beats against the skin of the drums?  The player manifests the music only after they have internalized the sound.  One of the compositions featured the tabla, with the singer vocalizing the tabla sounds, and the bass guitar echoing the syntax.  Amazing!  Sample an entire Autorickshaw  concert at CBC On Demand.