Achieving spiritual synthesis
Date
1988
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture
Abstract
In Birth Series I and II I invite the viewer to participate in the contemplation of some aspects of the mystery of birth. It is important to bear in mind that the Birth Series deals with the theme of birth in universal terms. The theme of birth is developed also with experimentation in mind by integrating new shapes with traditionally symbolic ones in an arrangement which is very often highly personal, ambiguously playful, and still manipulated and orchestrated with enough interest, I feel, to allow the viewer to engage in a personal discourse with the work regardless of what my specific intentions behind each piece were at the time of conception. Some of the work, for instance, deals with my personal vision of the human figure in the landscape, and the landscape as a metaphor for the human figure, carrier of life, as in Birth Series Nos. 3, 4, 20, and 11. It deals also with, the observation of metamorphoses which occur during the life forming process in nature, and which reveal themselves in terms of changing shapes and colors. Some of the images are linked to natural things ("seed", "water") as in Birth Series Nos. 7, 11, 13, and 15 as well as to visual-linguistic forms ("lozenge", "circles"), as in Birth Series Nos. 9 and 10. My creative expression evolves with images and compositional dynamics the way blues lyrics evolve in vivid objective correlatives. As in blues and later forms of jazz, I am concerned with rendition (mimesis) and experimentation. Shapes are like musical, poetic verses to me. One form inspires a whole trend of thoughts, thoughts based on what I am, what I know, and what I believe in.