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I wish you to know a few things when entering my paintings. You see, the original purpose and thought behind my work was sub-creation itself.

I have a hard time limiting my paintings to a single genre. But if I were to give them one to squeeze into, I would call it Abstract Auto-Mythopoeia. This form would specifically be employed to engage each and every spectator as a sub-creator in which a symbiotic relationship of viewer and the viewed dictate the story line, character development, and even the finite minutia.

Voyage of the Tangerine mixed media on canvas 36 x 60 inches

When I was a child, I remember laying on my back and peering into the clouds. They acted as my own cinematic implements, in which, my imagination was the writer, director, and editor. I would see chariots racing by, swashbuckling heroes, and beautiful maidens. While it could be argued that I sub-created the entire “cloud movie”, I did not create the clouds.

This overtly harped notion of “sub-creator” comes from the essay “On Fairy-Stories” by literary genius J. R. R. Tolkien. The author seems to summarize it best in the following:

Severance of the Continuum mixed media on canvas 36 x 72 inches

When an author creates a believable world what really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful ‘sub-creator’. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.

A medium or vehicle must exist to bridge the gap between imagination, reality, and the sub-creation that dictates everything in between and beyond. Everyone employs their own tool to accomplish the task; It seems to me that Art, and Artistry of all types, is the most natural path to create this link. This is the purpose of this series “Macrocosm and Microcosm.”

While not something exclusive or novel to the ancient greeks, Macrocosm and Microcosm derives from the greek philosophy of repeating patterns throughout all levels of the cosmos. Macrocosm or universal, being what we perceive to be the greatest scale, and Microcosm or sub-atomic being what we perceive as the smallest.

Mohave Tributary mixed media on canvas 72 x 48 inches

If one were to casually glance anywhere in the cosmos, one would find the same fluid and organic melding of shape and color that I endeavor to mimic in my own work. This fluidity to me is an icon and direct representation of unrestrained creative freedom, an expression of uninhibited artistic liberty.

We all are too often captives, prisoners of the existence and the self-imposed restraints by our own daily lives. We have enslaved ourselves. By becoming a child, and peering into the clouds, we create our own world, without limitations and containing only the natural laws we give it. Art should do the same. Art is meant to free us. While sub-creating these painting I nudged the most wonderful sagas and novellas along. And if you ask me, I will tell you the story that I witnessed when sub-creating the works. However, I encourage you to sub-create your own. But first, you should become a child, as they do it so easily. Sub-creation is about letting go of the ego and and giving in to the will of your own Inner Artist of artists.

Sweat dreams for now, I return to my dreamscape,

- Wallace DuVall

Poseidon’s Pinwheel mixed media on canvas 38 x 42 inches