There is no reason for any of this.
Why the taxidermy?
Why now the paintings?
To be honest I'm not sure I know. When I'm not doing the stuff folk ask of me I come back to this.
The taxidermy I keep. The paintings rarely survive!
I have been known to say that it's an investigation into ambivalence .... which it is.
But whether it is of any use or interest to anyone other than myself is doubtful.
As ever I'm looking at what remains when a life has gone ......
I often feel that I've stumbled into the wrong art form. That I should try and find some words or make some music rather than struggling with stuff.
But like that guy in 'Close Encounters' making his mountain from mashed potato I crazily continue ..... and probably shall 'till the spaceship arrives.
This one I called Montague and Capulet. A romantic notion of love. They can't have you for it ..... To put them together asleep in their fairytale glass casket was comforting.
This subsequent painting is a response to the taxidermy study and again that they go 'together' into the dark no doubt speaks of my own fears....
Here we have 'A little death' ....violent? ....ecstatic?
The taxidermied blue-tit came to a nasty cat-caught end.
There's nothing more violent than a natural order that involves predation.
But here poised on a knife point it looks more like a willing sacrifice.
The painting below maybe embodies more of the struggle.
And below we have an image that is so obviously religious.
I was but no longer am.
So why this?
To be honest the sheep skeleton, dead thrush and pigeon feet were quite insistant that they made the strongest image arranged this way and it's not always right to force your own views on stuff that knows best.
The painting will come soon. I've started and I'm hopeful for this one ...... but then I always am.
"...what remains when a life has gone"?
ReplyDeleteMostly I'm rather unaffected when I see a dead body (animals the cat
brought home), perhaps annoyance, sometimes disgust.
Your works arouse other feelings: love, pride, passion and cheerfulness.
Dancing, hugging, having so much fun playing fiddle with its own bones...
(at least that's what I thought when I saw your recent painting).
So - what remains when life has gone? A dream of life - what it was or
should have been, a celebration of life?
Morning newspaper comments the circumstances of death of Theo Angelopoulos
who died after a traffic accident while shooting an action scene of his
latest movie, they say this kind of death doesn't fit to his way of life
and they say that maybe death never fits to life.
I think they are wrong: life and death are closely connected. that what
your taxidermy works are all about...
(Clara)