Page 47 - Studio International - July August 1968

Left, Red blotch 1954, oil and enamel on canvas, 65 x 42 in.
Estate of the artist. Courtesy: Betty Parsons Gallery, New York
Below, Jack 1966, goldleaf on fibreglass, 781 x 781 x 781 in.
Estate of the artist. Courtesy: Betty Parsons Gallery, New York

formality. In effect, Feeley went back to the true nature of his draw- tions whose meaning is manifested in complex interrelation with the
ing, to the rendering of form as immanent and expressive. Speaking pictorial rectangle. In short, a Feeley painting becomes an unfolding
to Alloway of Red blotch (1954), a key painting in his reorientation, of form, of form within form, some of it subtly implied or intuitive,
Feeley explained its relation to his expressionist phase : 'All that some of it explicit. Inevitably, a Feeley motif will refer to its own
time... spent in breaking up space in exciting and dynamic ways structure, then to its structural bearing as between motifs, and
turned me toward a conception of movement which was almost the finally to the whole of the rectangle, whose controlled dynamism of
contradiction of what you might call the dynamic and the exciting. relationship is the painting.
So I suppose the reason I can see that red and green picture as The painting is never merely designed. The forms are not in general
significant has to do with the absence of all those textural variations biomorphic or geometric. Direct reference is rare. Usually, the
and all that brush dynamism. I suppose in fact I just placed it and paintings combine intuitive and rational procedures, but with the
didn't do anything about the dynamic brush-work, rather allowed former predominating. Often, Feeley would work out what he'd
the paint just to sit there. With the red and green picture, I think I sensed and discover the accuracy and effectiveness of his insight.
just sensed the shape of the canvas as an event, as against the notion Feeley was an inventor of forms, not a maker of images. In this
of the canvas creating an arena for events. It took me some time to connection, drawing became especially important to him again. It
catch up to this. It struck me increasingly that the things I couldn't was a kind of meditation through which he literally drew his forms
forget in art, in connection with movement, were things more like out of the world of sensation. In short, it was how he felt about
pyramids, which made no attempt to be exciting, and Egyptian things—objects, places, events, states of mind, whatever it might be—
sculpture, and all sorts of early forms that got all of their life not that formalized them. His intelligence did not run to symbols.
through the dynamic but through something that just sat still and Structure came out of sensation; it was a proposition not an absolute.
had a presence rather than some sort of an agitated fit.'4 A random page of jottings I found among Feeley's papers bears the
Two elements in this statement have special bearing upon Feeley's lines, 'Let the mind do nothing/observe nothing/hold fast to nothing/
mature development. The first is his willingness to be arbitrary with- empty'.5 That was one mood, but in fact Feeley was an intellectual,
in the shape of the canvas considered as an event-1 just placed it'. with an immense curiosity about the world. His availability to
The form or forms in Feeley's later paintings are intuitions or inven- intuition and to inner promptings came, not from mysticism or from