Preludes 7 – 12

This is a collection of 6 hand-painted sections interspersed with black leader – which has been and will ONLY be shown in this form and under this title. The first is what I call “plein-aire abstract” inasmuch as I am, while making the film, observing specific surroundings (primarily Vancouver Island, mostly the city of Victoria) but am painting the reactions of my internal optic system affected by external scenes, only occasionally (and obliquely) identifiable. The ocean, the trees, the varieties of cityscape and landscape assert themselves as “pictures” (there is even a mirror image of a neon bar sign which persists for a few frames twice) but the images are essentially a wash and tangle of nervous feedback, sometimes influenced by, say, the colours of inlet waters, sometimes the wave movements, but more ordinarily by the cellular shifts and shapes of the optic system receiving exterior imagery. The second is as removed as possible from any recognition of either exterior scene or interior feedback phenomena. It is, in its ineffability, as close to pure visual music as I can make it, more inspired by “The Preludes” of Bach or “The Preludium” of Buxtehuda than anything of my surroundings when I was painting. The third, again, is “plein-aire abstraction” as defined above (painted in New York City) – with, for example, even a correctly toned green impression of The Statue of Liberty – and, then, impressions of Toronto with its architectural particulars appearing, midst hurrying people- shapes (almost as if photographed at times). This segment is “double-printed” (i.e. 2 frames for every painted one). The fourth is also “double-printed” and, as such, is an extreme mixture of (1) darks shot through with jewel-like bursts of colour, and (2) very white bursts of light and fleeting coloured forms. This is purely interior vision and as unlike anything describable as I could possibly make it. “Double-printing” and “plein-aire” also is the fifth section: herein thick weaves of multi-colored lines and dull-coloured blobs play off against each other. The sixth, and last section is almost a bursting of mostly golden light forms as if heralding sunlight itself in their hurried (single-frame) display. (Stan Brakhage)