50 x 38 inches/127 x 96.52 cm. Mixed media on paper.
50 x 38 inches/127 x 96.52 cm. Mixed media on paper.
(Click Image to Enlarge All Slideshows)
Shows 3 of 9 complete; 1 in-progress, & the last 2 slides are early-versions of the series.
Seen in the painting environment Land & Sky.
64" x 63"/162.56 x 160.02cm. Mixed media on paper.
64" x 63"/162.56 x 160.02cm. Mixed media on paper.
64" x 63"/162.56 x 160.02cm. Mixed media on paper.
#4. 114 x 150 inches/289.56 x 381 cm. Mixed media on paper.
114 x 150 inches/289.56 x 381 cm. Mixed media on paper.
100 x 114 inches/ 254 x 289.56 cm. Mixed media on paper.
100 x 114 inches/ 254 x 289.56 cm. Mixed media on paper.
Briar Rose & Other Old Stories works on paper are companion pieces to the Garden at Midnight paintings, but more fairytale than myth. I wanted these works to be something more like the blues or the country western music I grew up with or like early Chinese love poems. And at the same time, something like the work of the Osservanza Master (Sienese/early Renaissance) whose
paintings are hauntingly fixed in the present.
Shown here are 4 of the 11 total of these in various stages of completion along with 6 completed ealry versions that had drawings and poems attached.
Forgive Me, the last of the slides, is the prototype for the series. My most simple aim in this first piece was to recreate the feeling I loved as an elementary school child when I stood before the big blank sheet of paper on the easel and drew free-form whatever came to mind—for a long time, it was the conquistadors looking for the Lost Cities of Cibola.
Magic Spell:
These works on paper were the start of the pieces for the painting environment Between Land & Sky. I was fishing around for a new direction in my work and had decided to do a series of mandala paintings in my new studio when by chance the Aztecs/Mexico took over.
Only a few of these pieces remained intact after BL&S—my notion was always to break them up after the installation for new incarnations—so they ultimately moved on altered and in parts, a corner square or center rectangle for instance recombined. At the time, I was spending a lot of time in the Primitive Collection at the Metropolitan Museum and thinking about the life of a work from its original context into wholly other worlds. What of the original intent/meaning of the work is carried along the way; where is the locus/the fulcrum of a particular life.
The Campeche Canons:
These large-scale works on paper were based on 2 dreams, one of an exploding landscape that ended with the world/landscape coming back into focus upon the Gulf shore of Campeche, Mexico, and the other in which liturigal music was being sung as jazz improvistions. Plus I was reading Carolos Fuentes's Terra Nostra at the time. So—The Campeche Canons.
