Here's my latest in art and life.
I saw a mouse in our apt, so I set live traps a few weeks ago. They haven't worked, but did I catch, ZIP my first mouse (eating snacks in my backpack) last night about midnight. Then I saw a mouse's tail sticking out of my stove top while I was eating nachos. Maybe it's the mice, or the move, or whatever, but the art has taken a solid turn into recurring themes of innocence, vulnerability, and trauma.
I started this collage painting in San Fran while staying with my sweet sis and her family last October. The bloody thing Mary rides is a placenta...I've gotten a lot of flack for planting mine, so laugh that my sis planned to eat hers. Lots of my art has the appearance of underwaterness. I don't plan it that way, but I think lots of what happens on the pages comes from the subconscious, so the water makes sense...and I use a lot of fish in my collages, just because.
According to Jung, fish, being cold blooded and primitive creatures, may symbolize a deep level of unconsciousness...and 'Fishes and snakes are favorite symbols for describing psychic happenings or experiences that suddenly dart out of the unconscious and have a frightening or redeeming effect' (Jung).
The random words are from magazines and a prayer card:
1. I will grant peace to their families
Stealing under water
unveiling each of these
if a snake had bitten her
three times through
reached out and touched her
her eyes were so clear
when and often alone
I made this collage at C's kitchen table on an art group night.
This collage is made from 1950s magazine images of rock formations, a jellyfish, a baby, a woman, pottery, bloody seal carcass, etc...I found that using gray in these collages works well, since several of the images are in b/w (grayscale). I've also noticed that I try to create scrappy rough textures, because the magazine images are flat and shiny and less interesting to me. For this one, I collaged and painted the whole thing and then put it in the sink and scrubbed off most of the paint and some of the images.
Recurring motifs: mary, fish, child, baby, fish hook, underwater...This one works less because the magazine image is of a painting, and worse yet, a masterpiece. it's just lovely and way too distracting. Besides that, one of the things I like best about photo montage is the clash of the real and the unreal, the tension held in the juxtaposition of sharp static focus and blurring shifting paint, and it feels more true and like life, or at least how life feels to me.
I woke up on Christmas Eve morning thinking about a dream I had about making art. I couldn't remember it, except for the good feeling I had in the dream, that I can't remember now at all. I got up and made this collage at my kitchen table...my Dad shuffled in and I asked if he wanted to make a collage. I went to his figure study classes when I was little. He had a stroke last year. I told him Rauschenberg's art reminded me of him and how his fixing america book ideas could be worked out visually. I told him he could plan an exhibit, or we could do a show together about his stroke. Then he thanked me and read the paper. I'll keep you posted.
all for now, friends...I wish you a very happy new year!
Kris
