Lapis
This tube of paint cost me $600 I think?
Material and its relationship to intention is king. Its primacy in the artist's practice cannot be replaced, and any concessions, excuses, or compromises made weaken the integrity of the work.
true Lapis-Ultramarine is greatest of the painter's pigments. Its quality cannot be replicated in a similar way to intention; although synthetic ultramarine is chemically indistinguishable to lapis, the uniformity in pigment size found in synthetic blues destroy the jewel like qualities that are captured by the genuine product.
the historical symbolistic value of lapis is infinite, and reverberates all that its history encapsulates even into today. Its primary use in religious art to express the infinite, the divine, and the motherly have lasting effects on today, for those with the eyes to see.
It is hard for me not to see blue, and to see both terror and joy synthesized within in it together. Ultramarine, beyond the sea.
I think of all that I gestured towards in the title for the part 1 of my exhibit, The Sea is never Full, and remember the wisdom of John Gill, that The sea is not always a sea. The sea is a people, the sea is a person, the sea is a mother, the sea is an aunt, the sea is God— and all rivers run into the sea, and yet the sea is never full— and the sea is blue.
Pietro Perugino, “Polittico della Certosa di Pavia (Vergine col Bambino e angeli)” (1500), with lapis lazuli used in its blues (via National Gallery/Wikimedia)
photo by Mohammed Salem, Inas Abu Maamar (36) cradles the body of her niece Saly (5) who was killed, along with her mother and sister, when an Israeli missile struck their home, in Khan Younis, Gaza.
Blue is a 1993 experimental film directed by Derek Jarman. It is his final feature film, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications. Such complications had already rendered him partially blind at the time of the film's release and he was only able to see in shades of blue.