The Original full-Length text
written by victoria chapman (september 4, 2023)
sample text:
The poem, Four Quartets, is T.S. Eliot’s desire to focus on the present moment, the order of the universe, and all things that co-exist. Shane Guffogg shares this desire. In April of 2023, the artist began creating twenty-one paintings, inspired by three stanzas from the first chapter, Burnt Norton. The paintings are a visual exploration, through lines, and color, that represent the exchange of thought through time.
Guffogg began reading the Four Quartets thirty-plus years ago and continues to contemplate Eliot’s exploration of the abstract that exists between the experience of life and those moments that become memories. The poem was written in England from 1936 – 1942 and consists of four sections that are relative to time, reflecting on the four classical elements; air, earth, water, and fire.
T.S. Eliot writes,
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
only through time is time conquered. - Burnt Norton Section II
Eliot was influenced by Eastern and Western literature; Bhagavad Vita, Confessions of Saint Augustine, and The Divine Comedy. Eliot was also inspired by Beethoven’s quartet, and that may have shaped the title of the poem and the musical sentiment of the verses. Guffogg intuitively picked up on this musicality, most likely due to his sound-to-color synesthesia. These paintings propose an inherent sound score by the visual rhythm like an intuited perception that is guided in the composition through his choice of lines and colors. The largest painting in the exhibition, Only Through Time is Time Conquered, can be felt, almost like an organic machine that is moving back and forth – the blue lines pulsating in the center of the painting summoning the supporting red and yellow lines, infusing the contrasting tones with an oceanic movement. The artist shared with me how he worked on the largest painting in the exhibition, which gives us insight into the connection to sound and color.
As I was working on the seven by nine-foot canvas, and listening to abstract-classical-orchestrated music – there’s a lot of dissident chords. When I am working on these paintings, especially “Only Through Time, Time is Conquered,” I often have complementary colors pushing against each other. I crave music that does the same with notes. This tension makes the music unsettling. But this also pushes away any thoughts so that I’m purely in the moment while making these paintings.
How important is the title of the painting? The artist answered that the title informed the painting, but it did not predict or create the painting.
Only through time is time conquered, Reach into the silence, and Neither flesh nor fleshless,
These three stanzas explore Eliot’s desire to live within and without time, which is to be present.
Since Guffogg’s first encounter with the Four Quartets, his fascination has not wavered. If anything, it has grown deeper, which is evident in the developing complexities of his paintings and can also be seen in how he lives life, taking each moment in each day as something that is fleeting but permanent. Guffogg uses glazes to paint the illusion of various light sources within the composition. He has also written and published numerous articles analyzing paintings of the old masters and reads books on artists’ materials from the past. The results are figurative subjects painted as abstract forms. There is a balanced struggle between the light and dark, yin and yang, represented through painted transparent veils of light and complementary colors, that push the illusionary picture plane further back into an infinite shadow of darkness as light pushes toward the viewer. The paintings embody a certain timelessness; capturing the eternal moment, which is the key and link to Eliot. The viewer is an integral part of the work because these paintings require an exploration that engages the conscious and subconscious, which the artist seamlessly fuses together, bridging the essence of what is felt rather than merely perceived.