The ideas don’t always come fluidly. Interesting things can often happen, but usually in the context of smaller works that have the feel of sketches or studies. You just keep plugging away until, in retrospect, an interesting image occurs.
My personal life has included the sale of my childhood home. 60+ years of memories, gone in a hour’s closing meeting. The new owners seem happy, and our final months were full of fun and bonding, as we worked through the clutter. But I don’t think the full impact is fully processed, so it seemed logical to explore it in the studio. I like the idea of a home as a container for personal psychological truth.
Thus, the upstairs becomes an analog for higher aspirations, the sky above a spiritual landscape, the entire thing an apparatus for living. I like to take simple images and explore visual variations.
Late in Spring, there’s a tendency to emerge into the mild air. In the heat of Summer we’ll be hiding inside again, from the ecological disaster we’ve caused. And as creeping fascism advances, our homes are tiny fortresses against the brutal reality of a threatening external world. We need to understand their function. They make us coffee and hold our books, yes, but they express a consciousness. In a culture of external suppression of individuality, they speak for us, and to us. Our houses are becoming more married to our psychological states:
I’ve talked about the value of community: schools, libraries, even cafes and bars, to help us to resist the repressive forces of puritanism and reactionary political forces. Homes can fortify our individuality against such repression, and prepare us for the hard work of building community. The architect Le Corbusier said: “A home is a machine for living in”, but it can’t work in isolation. The Puritan ideal of always moving west, away from people you disagree with (brutalizing the natives as you acquire their land ), leads to the sort of gun fetish, fortress mentality of current political conservatism. A more open sense of home includes community, and the inflow of outside energy, which explains the current argument over the forces of change in culture.
#worksinprogress #studiotime #summerartmarket #asldprintmakers
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