I'm having some nice insights working with the Chinese brush. It's astonishing how one simple tool is used in such a complex way. The tiny little moves you make with it have such import. To be able to tone down and center my energy enough to become aware of this is a huge success for me. I feel that as a westerner I live so externally. The Chinese personality seems much more subtle.

This Image 'Chinese Brush and Seal". Elena Ray Copyright 2007.

With this image I really wanted it to be a black and white. I worked it for multiple files (I save working files in sequential order so that I can always revert back to a previous version if needed.) in black and white, really working the tones in a quest to balance this somewhat teetering composition. I printed it multiple ...

Often I need to be exposed to another artist to get turned back on, and then I'm blissfully lost, again, to these mediums I've chosen to work in (which revealed themselves through another's work, as infinitely translatable). Everything seems possible if only I could take the uninterrupted time that it requires to immerse myself in the meaning of the mediums and the poetry of the meaning. Secret understanding shimmers veiled in the dark corners of my mind.

I feel lucky...privileged to be working with such beautiful materials. They're pure. I want to understand them. I'm beginning to truly see the physical vitality of my chosen materials.

More and more I realize that I don't want to create imagery that leaves a residue of oxidized desire. So many things in our culture seem ultimately to be about: "choose me buy me". Will I merely be the tool of the salesman? Will my love be chained to the marketplace? What I dream of is an art that undoes desire and liberates the immaculate presence of the subject. But I wonder; is desire the energy that endurance requires to go deeper into that subject. Is it the necessary energy component that motivates the courage for discovery? It is so energizing. This energy is manipulated by everyone from the queen bee to the advertising agency-and so seems free of any meaning of it's own. It's politically neutral and available. Is it fundamentally and simply sexual?...I want to know ...