Artwork in full swing is set aside to pack a full household. Creating with the knowledge
that life is completely changing is vanity.
A report
many years ago declared that the United States was so large that it effectively
contained nine separate countries. Consider
regional accents and colloquialism, attitudes and even recipes…I fully believe
this.
And this
gives me pause as an artist.
All of those
accents, attitudes and recipes are new and different influences. The culture which was feeding the previous artwork is gone. I am immersed
elsewhere.
I do
different things now and have different experiences. Different people surround me. Continuing with the same body of artwork? I’ve striven to do that before but it just
doesn’t work that way.
Now this
move is complete. I pursue my great
interest in fishing since we are twenty minutes from the ocean. Fascinating stuff is there: Flounder!
And detritus! I found a wonderful vertebrae of some sort of large
fish that was so curious that I had to (had to!) render it. My
interest was in learning its lines. It
was profoundly abstract; a very lovely and hidden thing. What if this became an eight foot tall sculpture?
And sand fleas! I use them for bait and thousands
of them are swarming in every wash of the surf.
They are creepy but complicated critters and worthy of examination. I am faithfully drawing them to internalize
their structure.
So life goes
on. I create, but not continuing with
work from another region, time and influence.
This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing.
It isn’t market savvy. It isn’t
clever or charming. I find it compelling though; the stuff if not the art. And I’m about exploring it.
This is a
strange new world. Always.
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