Personal Reflections, by Arthur Secunda

The lithograph entitled Big Black Sur ("sur" meaning south in Spanish) is a semi-cryptic reference to Big Sur in California, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. This lithograph also has special connotations and connections for me with certain other key landscape/seascapes. There is a merging of the landscape and the seascape, which corresponds in my mind to parts of the Costa Brava in Spain, certain areas of the Italian Riviera, the Amalfi coast, and the extended islands around Naples. It doesn't represent a specific place so much as an icon made up of memories of the essence of ways in which the seas and lands merge. It's the idea of a "brush stroke" of the sea merging into a "brush stroke" of the land, for example. At the point they merge, there appears to be a random spotting or placement of ocean, rock, and verdure coming together and separating. The transition of this ebb and flow is eternal and very symbolic.

I have heard people describe the California coast as the "edge" or the "rim." But certain basins and inlets at Big Sur, the Costa Brava, or the Amalfi coast are the opposite for me: they imply continuation rather than termination. I also attempt to illuminate my work with an electrical character as if there is an inner light emanating from behind the rocks and the sea. There are places in California, near Santa Barbara for example, where the water is fluorescent and glows at certain times. I've seen that phenomenon in the Mediterranean as well. When you put your hands under the water and animate them, you get flashes and light movements akin to underwater fireworks.

In any case, Big Black Sur was done in Barcelona at Poligrafa workshop in a wonderful ambiance of Catalan conviviality and extraordinary collaboration from the printers. My artist colleagues, Jim Bird and Kenneth Noland, working alongside me at the time, inspired me by their friendship and work attitudes.

Big Black Sur was done by tearing transfer paper, and dipping it into ink, then laying it down on the stone very much as if one were creating a three-dimensional relief. The minimal use of color (black) presented a challenge in developing the illusion of deep space. Considering the infinite graphic possibilities, I am always cautious of falling into the trap of being overly decorative. The term "decorative," in the renaissance sense, has a beautiful and positive meaning.

In Big Black Sur, I wanted the black and white to look random and yet perfectly placed. There is a difference spatially when one looks at what purports to be sky behind the mountains and the upper third of the print between that white and the white of what represents the sea. Because of the distribution of blacks, the weight being at the bottom, the central area fuses the transition into the top which is mostly white, while the white of the ocean and central area looks whiter than the white in the sky because there's more black to make the white appear more brilliant. So what can be called the sky tends to be slightly grayer if one looks carefully.

I like this visual effect, because it brings to mind other associations for me. For example, in the Hebrides Islands in Scotland, beyond Oban, the air and water have a magical glow. That's where the Loch Ness Monster is supposed to be seen. Everything there looks monster-like in the water. It is a surreal seascape and easy to see how one could imagine experiencing the Loch Ness Monster there on high. Matsushima in Japan, where the poet Basho found refuge, is another very beautiful coastal region with that mystical aura.

But the actual names of the places are not important. It's the summation of memories of Italy, California, Spain, France, Japan, Scotland, and so forth that coalesced and generalized this memory in a gestalt that included all of these and other places from my experiences. Without thinking of those places, without referring to them consciously, the visualness and sensualness of their essences popped forth at the moment of their need to me.

Comparing Big Black Sur with Camargue or my other landscapes, the picture space seems pressed up against the picture plane because of the way the two colors are used. In a sense, I wanted the shapes in the landscape to project toward the viewer's eyes. The connotation of going into a background exists because one knows that landscapes and seascapes recede. But subliminally, we know about the picture's flatness. If one were to tilt the picture to the side horizontally and imagine it as one would look at a Clifford Still painting, for example, one could see that the forms move across the picture plane, up and down and crossways, rather than into the background.

The title Big Black Sur, in addition to the Big Sur reference, emphasizes the black's blackness. And it empowers the word "sur," which means "south," and, in effect, means "Big Black South." Thus, south to me connotes the mediterranean, the midi, the Costa Brava, California, and other places that are southern in climate, topography, and culture. Finally, Big Black Sur is a refined merging of land and rock and sea within an enigmatic, dreamlike zen, cubist, and timeless space.

One of the great compliments I have received was not from an art critic but from a shy woman in Japan who came to my exhibit in Tokyo and acquired Big Black Sur. She felt compelled to tell me why she wanted it, and explained that, though my exhibition was made up of brilliant colors, in this piece, she believed I was showing my virtuosity by excluding color except for black, and that that exclusion represented an expression not only of my creative talent but of my modesty. I was very moved that she was able to sum up in a few soft-spoken words a quality about exclusion and simplicity in such an abstract way.

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