Narrative Backgrounds

Played around with a few different narrative backgrounds before starting to paint, and had so much fun doing it… made me wonder, what if I allowed my viewer to do the same?

- plexi glass covering to allow viewer to draw on the painting?


- allow the child depicted to add the background themselves on a separate paper, then do my interpretation of it?

- allow the child to draw/ paint directly on the panel once I am done as a collaboration?

- allow adults to live vicariously, reliving their own memories?

hmmm…….

Current Projects….

Prepping Panels

Before beginning my current series of paintings, I prepped a series of panels in varying fashions, as an experiment to see which surface worked best.  I have made notes to myself on the back of each.  Here are a few examples...

Real Kids

My husband and I are going to be starting the adoption process within the next year [this can be a very lengthy process].  This is a path that I have had my heart set on since I was, probably around 5 or 6 years old, and thankfully I have an amazing and supportive husband who is trusts my judgement!
After having several students who were part of the foster care system, I realized that this was the obvious choice.  Children in the foster care system have endured unimaginable amounts of pain and suffering in a very short amount of time and often age out of the system before finding a permanent home and family.
Many of these children are given profiles on state run adoption websites.  There you find a few pictures, a few paragraphs describing their likes and dislikes, and any major physical or emotional issues that a parent would have to address.  Sometimes, you also find a video of the child introducing themselves and answering a few questions.  I became fascinated by the extra "layer" that this video added to my understanding of a child.  The photographs are staged and cropped to be the most "marketable", whereas the video is just that child being themselves; these are often two very different things.
So I started an experiment.  I started drawing pictures of the children in these videos, as it was running, [a life drawing in full action if you will], to see what facial expressions, body language and personality would come forth.  Next, I sketched the same child from the photograph.  Often, two different children would emerge.  I will continue this experiment to see where it leads….

Kids in the Media

I was advised by several [very smart!] people, to start collecting images of kids in the media.  I have been collecting, cutting, categorizing and collaging these images into my sketchbook in hopes that I can better understand how children are presented in the media, and how this varies from what I strive to represent in my own work.  Here are a few sample pages….

Things That Inspire Me… European Icons & American Miniatures

Comparative Analysis 

Kathe Kollwitz,  Child’s Head in a Mother’s Hands 1900

&

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother 1936

Throughout the years, I have been challenged on my personal use of drawing and painting in my portraits.  It has been argued time and again, since the birth of photography, that if one’s goal is to capture an authentic moment and likeness, then photography ought to be the method of choice.  However, by comparing the works of two acclaimed female artists of the last century, we can see that in many instances, a photograph simply cannot represent the reality of the human condition as truthfully as a drawing or painting may.  I will be examining Dorothea Lange’s esteemed portrait, Migrant Mother, in contrast to a lesser known work by Kathe Kollwitz entitled, Child’s Head in a Mother’s Hands.

Though existing concurrently with the Federal Arts Project, Lange was hired as a documentary photographer for the Farm Security Administration.  The purpose of hiring these photographers was not to stimulate the revival of the arts and culture [as was the case with the Federal Arts Project], but rather, to create documentation of rural life in order to get funding to these areas of great need. Fortuitously for Lange these works were received as much more than simple documentation.  The undercurrent of these photographs was meant to incite in viewers the sense that these were industrious Americans of great fortitude, who had simply come upon hard times.  Lange’s work clearly accomplishes this goal, albeit in a somewhat scientific manner.  Although Lange often engaged in conversation with her subjects, that too was primarily as a means of gathering data for the FSA and was brief and impersonal in nature; this detachment is evident in her works. Likewise, it is indisputable that Lange has taken great care to edit our interpretation of these scenes, but they tend to lack any hint of emotional mediation on Lange’s behalf.  

Dorothea Lange’s, Migrant Mother was shot in Nipomo, California in March of 1936, during the throws of the Great Depression.  This image has, in fact become so ingrained in our culture that it stands today as the singular iconic symbol of this era.  Despite it’s widespread popularity, and unquestionable documentary merit, this piece lacks the ability to incite in the viewer as deep an emotional response as can readily be found in works of her contemporary, Kathe Kollwitz.  

There are several formal elements that must be addressed in order to unearth the deficiencies of this piece as a work of art, rather than documentation.  Lange took 6 photographs in this series depicting a 32 year old mother living in a tent with her seven children.  The photographs were taken in short succession, with Lange moving closer for every shot, eventually editing the frame down to a tight half length portrait. During this session, Lange admittedly, “did not ask her name or her history.” [Phaidon, 36].  This tightened frame allows us only to see only the mother’s face, hand and hints of three of her children.  So while we can only see one full portrait, there are three others being alluded to.  The woman holds a sleeping infant in her lax left arm, seemingly too fatigued to hold the child up, rather letting him drape across her lap, while two other children flank either shoulder, turning away from the camera only revealing their unkept hair and dirt stained hands.  This composition is highly reminiscent of the Madonna and Child, right down to the cherubs floating to either side.  Turning our attention to the portrait itself, we observe a swath of thick ebony hair hinting at the mother’s youth, and yet it is framing a face so wrought with fatigue and anguish, that we are forced to consider the circumstances she has endured.  Her skin darkened by the sun, she furrows her brow deeply creating a series of ripples emanating up towards her hairline, while creases pour from the corners of her deep set eyes.  Her mouth wrenches down at it’s corners, surrounded by well set indentations. The mother’s left hand rests beneath the infant and out of view.  The gesture of her pose is such that her spine curls forward beneath the physical and perhaps emotional weight of the children at her shoulders, her elbow coming to rest on her knee, as if supporting not only the weight of her face resting upon it, but the emotional weight of her entire family.  The pyramidal composition further emphasizes this sense of gravity.  Her hand simultaneously supports her face, and yet pulls the skin of her jawline in a tense grasp, framing her face and drawing the gaze up towards her hauntingly blank eyes which stare past us, but at nothing in particular.  By placing her gaze beyond the frame, we would expect the exterior space to be activated, and yet, her eyes focus on nothing, creating an introverted dialogue which we are not privy to.  Her hands are thin and deflated of their youth, with veins bulging forth and large protruding knuckles.  Her fingernails have been worn short and are framed by a thin outline of dirt, evidence of the hard manual labor involved in her daily life.  Our perspective is placed just at, or slightly below eye level, as Lange often did in an effort to imbue the sitter with a sense of strength and dignity.  Unfortunately, in this case our extreme closeness to the subject, combined with her complete disengagement, give us the sense that we are voyeurs witnessing the highly personal struggles of a woman not looking for our attention or assistance, but rather looking within.  The composition combined with the inward gaze, emit a sense of containment, that try as we might, does not allow us to step into or experience this image on a personal level, which is highly problematic.  All of these elements combine to create a piece that is, albeit, emotionally unsettling, highly voyeuristic and disengaging.

Kathe Kollwitz’s, Child’s Head in a Mother’s Hands, is a small graphite drawing on a white woven paper, measuring just 8 3/16” square.  Despite it’s petite size, this piece captures every bit the emotion and narrative of Kollwitz’s much larger works.  At first glance this may appear to some as a precious moment between mother and child; the child softly sinking into sleep enveloped by the sturdy hands of his mother.  Upon closer inspection we are forced to acknowledge the foreboding posture of these hands.  These are, in essence, the hands of Lange’s Migrant Mother; the hands of a woman who has tended the earth as well as to her family.  Kollwitz renders these hands with great delicacy, as well as a somewhat urgent sense of mark making.  The hands are large in proportion to the child’s face, with bulbous, protruding knuckles, and rivers of sinewy veins rippling from wrist to fingertip, taking on a monumental tone.  The flesh is lax with age, and yet pulsing with life.  Kollwitz’s often modeled hands after those of her own mother and grandfather, stating in her autobiographical letter to her son, “Grandfather’s hands were very beautiful; my mother’s hands took after his.  They were large and expressive in shape.” [Kollwitz 29]  Although we recognize these as the hands of a mother, they are in no way delicate or effeminate, but rather quite solid.  The fingernails, similarly to those of Lange’s Migrant Mother, are shorn close to the finger, alluding to a life of labor, or perhaps to a nervous habit caused by a life of worry.  The woman’s left hand cradles the weight of the child’s head, with great care and unwavering strength, while the right hand seems to fall limp.  A few gestural strokes of Kollwitz’s graphite, lead us from this torpid form up and over the mother’s slumped and protruding belly, a belly that has just taken a great exhale.  Our perspective puts us just below eye level with the child, centering his head at the crux of the mother’s legs, aligned perfectly with the belly and therefor alluding to the womb and maternity.  As in Lange’s piece, we see one true portrait, and yet other’s are implied.  The portrait in this case, inversely to Lange’s, is that of the child.  The mother’s hands, and near pure white belly cradle and enshrine the child’s face creating a halo-like effect.  We must also take note of the flurry of franticly drawn lines, emanating out from the child’s shoulders, simultaneously forming the knees of the mother as well as creating the illusion of wings, evoking a sense of angelic innocence about the child.  This religious undertone, evidence of Kollwitz’s upbringing in the church under her liberal Protestant pastor father and grandfather.  Next, we turn our attention to the child’s face, which fades to a near whisper.  Delicately rendered, the child’s head slips to one side, resting it’s entire weight upon his mother’s left hand.  The child’s eyes are closed, and brow lax and absent of emotion.  Moving down the face, we notice that the child’s lips are softly closed, but the bottom lip pulls taught against a drooping chin, as if his mouth may slip open for a gasp of air at any moment.  The framing of this portrait has an air of expansion, as if the image may just keep expanding infinitely from the child's face, whereas Lange’s portrait is fully encased by other forms, thereby disallowing the viewer step into the space created.  When we take a step back, and assimilate all of these element, it becomes apparent that this is not in fact a sleeping child, but rather an image of death, and a mother caught in a moment of inexplicable grief.  This is, in essence, Kollwitz’s reinterpretation of Madonna and Child through a contemporary lens. 

Kollwitz’s, Child’s Head in a Mother’s Hands, was a life drawing, quite likely of her then four year old son Peter; foreboding of Peter’s death in war some years later, and perhaps also the death of her grandson of the same name, by the same means.  This study was completed in preparation for a triptych entitled The Downtrodden, depicting the death of Christ at the center, a female figure writhing in grief and pain to the right, and the mother holding the dead child to the left, with her husband slumped in grief offering up a noose to end their suffering.  Unfortunately the expansion of this narrative, does not allow the viewer an expanded interpretation of the scene, nor does it allow further room for personal interpretation.  Upon completion, Kollwitz felt this piece to be fatally flawed and omitted it from her series, Ein Weberaufstand, [A Weaver’s Rebellion], a historical narrative inspired by Gerhard Hauptmann’s play Die Weber, [The Weavers].  In spite of the ultimate downfalls of the triptych, the efficacy of this particular study is without question.  Kollwitz’s lifelong fixation upon death is arguably rooted in her childhood memories of witnessing the passing of a young sibling, followed by her mother’s prolonged grief.  Unfortunately, this theme remained prominent in her work, perpetuated by the deaths of several family members, coupled with her severe bouts of depression and the constant fear of war running as an undercurrent in Germany at this time.  Much like Lange, Kollwitz once lamented that, “Unsolved problems such as prostitution and unemployment grieved and tormented”[Kollwitz 43] her, and yet these were the things that she felt compelled to address in her work; further evidence of her upbringing in a strong liberal family with a focus on social activism.  

These two women were so much alike, and yet so different.  Both cared deeply about issues of poverty, strength and motherhood; both were esthetically drawn to the hands and the face as a means of representing the life-force of their subjects and most importantly, both women were dedicated to using their skill set for causes of social justice.  Lange’s work, including Migrant Mother, has served as powerful evidence of our societies’ sordid past, and still today, they remain necessary reminders of the fragility of our economy and strength of the human spirit.  However, they are just that, evidence.  Conversely Kollwitz, was able, time and again, to capture moments of human suffering and strength with sometimes as little as a few strokes of graphite.  As with, Child’s Head in a Mother’s Hands, we are able to slip effortlessly within the frame, embodying the mother’s grief, the child’s peace, and the overwhelming tension held in the moment between the mothers hand and the child face.  Such works hold more narrative, more pain, more innocence, and more reality than any of Lange’s photographs combined.  A strong piece of art should not simply show us the world, but help us to experience it.

Works Cited

Read in their entirety: 

Dorothea Lange. London: Phaidon, 2011. Print.

Fisher, Andrea. Let us now Praise Famous Women, Women Photographers for the US Government 1935 to 1944. London: Pandora Press, 1987. Print.

Kollwitz, Kaethe. The Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz. Ed. Hans Kollwitz. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Print.

Read in part:

Noun, Louise R. Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Hoch, Kathe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen. Iowa: Des Moines Art Center, 1994. Print.

Prelinger, Elizabeth. Kathe Kollwitz. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1992. Print.

Zigrosser, Carl. Prints and Drawings of Kathe Kollwitz. New York: Dover Publications, 1951. Print.

Visit #1 With my Artist Mentor, Daniela Rivera 

August 17th

I had the most wonderfully insightful first meeting with my artist mentor, Daniela Rivera on August 17th.  She gave me a plethora of information, things to consider and most importantly, candid feedback.  I am so excited to see where these new directions may lead me.

Daniela’s observations and questions...

The lack of shadow on Neema & lack of detail in the clothing, is reading as an erasure of identity.

• My intention was to leave the time and location ambiguous, but is it a problem that it is being read differently? 

Do these paintings need to be icons of particular children? Or representative of childhood in general?

Artists & Practices to research...

Russian Icons

- How are they built?

• How are they painted?

Abby Child [films]

Judith Black

Sally Mann

David Kelly

Glenn Ligon

Gerhard Richter [Atlas]

Marlene Dumass 

Kathe Kollwitz 

Alice Neel

Things to avoid & be aware of...

Cropping

• makes the use of the photograph more evident [more obviously mediated]
• disconnects the image from referencing the icon

Things to try...

Work from life, sketching quickly, and building a vocabulary of line

- school

• parks etc.

* use these life drawings as the impetus for painting

Center the figure [directly referencing the icon]

Erase not only the clothing, but the entire figure, refilling the form with a stand in, such as the pattern of the child's blanket etc. and/or create a painting completely void of the actual figure.

Collect images of children form advertising etc. [Gerhard Richter’s Atlas]

Experiment with size- either life size and/or miniature; push in either directions or both.

3 Areas of Focus & Experimentation Moving Forward

1. Portraiture
2. Icon
3. Works from Life

These areas may eventually overlap, or fall away, but in the meantime they should exist independently to see where each may lead.

Residency One Summary & Response to Critical Theory

My first residency was something of a jarring, yet inspiring experience.  I was met with a combination of criticism, support and overall enlightenment on the content and context of my work within our greater society.  Following my 2008 graduation from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, I struggled to reconcile my personal artistic taste and style with that which I was seeing supported and promoted in the art world.  This struggle left me feeling frustrated and highly defensive.  I came into this program ready to dig in my heals and defend my artistic choices, as I have been forced to do in the past, and yet after a mere ten days immersed in the AIB community, I have found my shell cracked, and my horizons broadened.   This transformation and redirection is what I hope to explore more deeply in the following pages.

The body of work that I brought to this residency revolves around childhood, and the notion that we all too often overlook the most perfect small moments in the lives of the children around us.  As a Visual Arts teacher to some 500 elementary aged children, I find myself constantly immersed in the lives of amazing young people.   Yet I too often find that I am one of the only adults in their lives truly paying attention to them as human beings, not simply as a student, a child, a son or daughter, or, more often than not, as a responsibility.  My goal was to capture these moments in small representational oil paintings in order to pay homage to the child as well as the moment.  My decision to keep these painting small in scale was intentional; the idea being, that the size of the painting will force the viewer to come in close, and take a moment to acknowledge the moment being depicted.  The size and technique also references traditional European Iconography, a tradition that I have studied and find great satisfaction in.  The process of creating these small works is my way of meditating on, and honoring, these children.  These intentions and modes of communication were quite clear to some, but not to all.  Which leads me to believe that I need to explore new and different avenues while still remaining true and genuine in my stylistic choices and intentions.  

I began this process believing that my work was capturing lighthearted moments in the lives of children that I love.  Needless to say, I was shocked to hear my work referred to as being somewhat weird, eerie and unusual during my first critique with John Kramer.  At first, I found myself feeling quite defensive.  It was not until the end of the residency, after a number of other critiques, that I was able to see this observation not only as a compliment, but in fact, the root of what I had been attempting to accomplish all along.  The observation was also made during this particular critique, as well as in others, that I was subtly playing with distortion and emphasis.  I never intentionally distort an image, but I do allow myself to play with this aspect freely, whenever I feel that it will enhance an element that I wish to draw attention to.   The scale of these paintings, combined with the composition also lead to a discussion on these pieces acting as tiny fish bowls, capturing the moment, but through a lens of distortion.  This was particularly apparent in my painting of Talia, as she is, herself holding a small glass jar containing an ambiguous object [an egg], thus further referencing this notion.  This was a fascinating observation for me, and one that I am eager to embrace and explore further.  Another common theme throughout many of these critiques, was the notion of “preciousness”.  John Kramer used this term in a somewhat cautionary manner; however after spending some time mulling over this interpretation, I realized that rather than shying away from it, I would like to continue to push this notion while simultaneously using it to juxtapose the underlying tone of these pieces.  Lastly, the lack of background in my most recent work was met with mixed reviews, though largely positive.  John, as well as the others, felt that the lack of background confused the senses, yet allowed for interpretation and the reflection of ones own experiences into that space.  Needless to say, I will be continuing with this practice, while adding in a few key details to encourage viewer directed narrative.

My critique with Sunanda was a fascinating, if somewhat disconcerting experience.  Sunanda was greatly concerned that I may fall into a virtual “cutesy pit”, painting pretty pictures of children; though he agreed that this is not what I am currently doing [it was merely a cautionary tale].  Sunanda encouraged me to think about how I can contextualize or frame these pieces in such a way that viewers will not approach them simply as, “pretty pictures of children”.  It was recommended that I look at Jenny Holtzer’s benches in an effort to understand methods of controlling the viewers experience.  He also warned that I ought to be very well aware of the use of photography in creating these works as it is creating a twice mediated image.  Lastly, Sunanda seemed a bit put off by my use of children at all, as he argued that children, “have no agency”.  

I had the pleasure of meeting with several graduating students: Rita Maas, Aaron Lish, Jenna Genereaux and Linda Fitz Gibbon.  These were all quit helpful and informative critiques, though brief.  Aaron recommended that I experiment with participatory art.  I am very much open to this idea, however, as an art teacher, I feel that I can create this sort of experience within my own classroom quit successfully.  Rita along with Jenna, greatly appreciated my meditative process in creating these paintings in honor of children and childhood.  While Rita was drawn to the luminous quality of my paintings, she was fascinated by the line quality and implied volume of my drawings, and encouraged me to continue with that vein of my work.  Rita also encouraged me to look further into the work of Gerhard Richter [whose painting, Betty 1977, shares many similarities to my work] as well as Alice Neel [whom I have admired for many years].

I ended this residency with two fabulous critiques from Deborah Davidson and Tony Apesos.   Deborah was very receptive and encouraging of my desire to employ the language and context of Icon painting in these works.  She encouraged me to look further into the work of local, contemporary artist, Ambreen Butt, whom I have been aware of for many years now, but haven’t considered recently.  I have great respect for Ambreen’s ability to reference Persian miniature painting in a contemporary manner.  Deborah also drew my attention to a recent Tufts show featuring Ambreen and several other artists working in the same vein called, “Illuminated Geographies: Pakistani Miniaturist Practice in the Wake of the Global Turn”, as well as the MET’s collection of Icons, which I hope to visit in the near future.  My time with Tony was also quit informative and encouraging.  Though he willingly nit-picked several details in my work, he was tremendously supportive of my stylistic choices and goal with this work.  Tony argued that the use of photography in this case in no way diminishes the availability of the work, and that our world is inherently mediated.  However he did encourage me to experiment further with a limited Apelles Palette, to see where the experience may lead.  Tony recommended that I read Robert Rosenblum’s, The Romantic Child, William Wordsworth’s, Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood and Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: a Social History of Family Life, all in an effort to better understand how childhood has been depicted and interpreted throughout history.  In terms of artistic direction, Tony recommended that I study the works of Phillip Otto Runge for his early depictions of children at  play, circa 1800 as well as works by Norman Rockwell, local artist, Karl Stevens, Katy Schneider and William Blake.

Concurrently to all of these critiques, I was also absorbing a plethora of historical and conceptual insight through our Critical Theory course as well as my elective choice, The Spiritual in Art.  The first issue that I would like to address revolves around my choice of media.  The question was posed during Critical Theory, whether or not painting is still relevant [particularly representational painting].  Furthermore, it was questioned whether or not painting can still effectively communicate with an audience that is, arguably, no longer literate in the language.  Staniszewski’s, Believing is Seeing, presents the argument that Modern Art was based on the belief that we all speak a universal human language based on emotion and experience.  Modern paintings like those by Mondrian or Lewitt were meant to provide metaphysical solace for the modern world through purity, perfection, harmony & balance, and yet they make abundantly clear that they are in fact just paint on canvas.  So was this effective?  The general public found, and still finds, this work greatly inaccessible. Similarly, Duchamp argued that by leaving works ambiguous he was allowing space for the viewer to enter and create their own meaning.  I feel that we must strike a balance.  I would argue that the viewer, particularly in contemporary society, feels lost when encountering something so very ambiguous.  As a result, the majority of society feels as though, because they do not know how to approach nonrepresentational work, that they are somehow being left out or discriminated against, and therefor fear and avoid the work.  I strive to make my work accessible to all.  I want my work to feel accessible enough that viewers can willingly approach and contemplate the work as well as the message.  The human form, naturally, is the most accessible image one could use, so why not use it?  While I can appreciate the hypothesis that was set forth by the Modern artists, I choose to create work that remains tied to the language of painting.  In referring back to Sunanda’s words of warning in regards to my paintings being twice mediated, I would argue that painting is in fact a more authentic representation of the world around us, as a memory is inherently more authentic than a video.  Furthermore, I do not accept the argument that our culture no longer obtains the language for approaching, reading and interpreting painting; rather as a teacher and a painter I see my job as being to educate the next generation in this language, in order to keep our culture strong and well versed.  I agree that this language has fallen by the wayside for a number of years, but it would be shortsighted to think it lost.  

The European Iconography that I hope to reference in my work, was not always abundantly apparent to my viewer in these critiques, until I broached the subject with them, at which point I was met with great acceptance and interest.  Though I have training in the techniques of Icon painting, gold leafing and egg tempera, I have shied away from employing these traditional forms and symbol systems in my work, for fear that viewers would assume that I am simply creating a superficial analogy between childhood and religion.  My primary interest in referencing the Icon is much more about the actual process involved in producing this work and the historical reference to the meditative process used in their creation.  I am also very much enamored with the idea that the viewer would be able to approach these children with the same level of respect, reverence and deep thought that we approach religious icons, shines or reliquaries with.  In chapter ten of Believing is Seeing, Staniszweski presents Postmodernism as a recycling or resurgence of styles from history.  Similarly, The Anti-Aesthetic presents an essay by Frederic Jameson entitled, Postmodernism and Consumer Society, which argues that Postmodern art is a pastiche of previous styles simply because there is nothing left to be invented.  While I disagree with Jameson, that there is nothing new to be created, I personally enjoy the freedom I have in referencing historical styles in an attempt to inform my work and my viewer, and to more clearly situate my own message without having to start anew.  I agree with Jameson that the Postmodern artist may also engage in creating pastiche out of nostalgia for a simpler time.  I, admittedly, am drawn to iconography in large part because it so clearly recalls an era of simplicity; a time where things of beauty were created with ones hands. 

While my fascination with Iconography might literally reference religion in my work, spirituality was an area that I had not yet truly investigated until taking The Spiritual in Art with Tony Apesos. Chaos is ever present in the world around us.  Religion strives to control, organize, explain and mitigate that chaos.  Similarly, the creation of art is often our individual means of achieving the very same objective.  For me, the process of creating a painting is an effort to construct order out of chaos.  Painting allows me to organize my world in such a way that I can absorb it in small pieces, and I hope to share those small pieces with my viewer.  Beyond these somewhat obvious connections, I would like to experiment with the common language shared by religion and painting.  Furthermore, I would like to attempt to use this common language to collapse the space between the sacred and profane; to give the viewer space and freedom to explore everyday issues from a meditative and spiritual perspective.  William Blake proposes that there are four states of being; Eden, Beulah, Generation and Ulro.  Eden is the fully energized, somewhat manic, state of imagination, engagement and creativity.  Beulah is the necessary state of rest when coming down from Eden. Generation is the state which we most often occupy; performing the everyday tasks necessary to sustain life. Ulro is a state of complete selfishness, despair and angst.  Generation in many ways relates to the profane, or worldly, while Eden maintains a direct correlation to the sacred.  The symbolism used in representing the Madonna and child, for me, successfully melds these two states of being.  The Madonna, very clearly represents Generation through her often visceral engagement in childrearing, while the  framing of this scene within a religious context informs us that this image is one of a spiritual nature, capable of allowing us to transcend to a state of Eden.  While I am not an overtly religious person, Iconography and religious imagery have always fascinated me for their accessible nature.  Perhaps because these works are created with the purpose of communicating with the masses, with people untrained in the language of art.  In every religion there exists a very clear language of symbolism that is very much meant to be read.  However, I would argue that the language used in religion, in particular, is one that is able to be interpreted, to a great extent, by viewers regardless of their origin, socioeconomic background, education or training.  Because religious imagery often depicts or references Generation, we do not approach it with the same level of intimidation that we might approach a Duchamp, Lewitt or Serra, rather, we are immediately able to access and relate to the image before us.

Lastly I would like to address how these paintings have been received in terms of  their subject matter and tone.  As earlier mentioned, a number of people found these works to be somewhat weird, eerie or unusual.  It was not until Tony Apesos refereed to a painting in a slide show with the utmost praise, as being “weird” that I was able to revisit what this word implied.  Tony used the term as a means of simply describing the piece as uncanny, or out of the ordinary.  It has now occurred to me that my goal was in fact to make these paintings “weird” all along.  I am not fascinated by children smiling for the camera, or sitting pretty for their school picture.  That is how we all see them, or want to see them.  I want people to see children for the unique, imperfect, often weird, little humans that they are.  I want my viewers to see these children in a different manner than they are accustomed to.  We often stereotype childhood as being a happy, sweet state of innocence and ignorance to the surrounding world.  There are certainly moments of these elements in the lives of most children.  But we have greatly generalized this population in such a way as to completely disregarded the experiences of the majority of children; the 16 million children living in poverty, the 1.6 million homeless children, the  nearly half of all children from broken homes, or the over 400,000 children living in foster care.  My work up until this point has attempted to address small moments that are overlooked in the day of a child.  Going forward, I would like to further investigate these “uncanny” moments in the lives of children from a wider variety of backgrounds and situations in an attempt to draw attention to the overlooked, the children that we try not to see because we are fearful that we might have to become aware of our societies shortcomings.  When I questioned people on what they found “weird” about these pieces, the answer always referenced the use of direct eye contact.  My intention has always been to use the child’s gaze to engage the viewer.  What I was not expecting, was how uncomfortable people were with making eye contact with a child.  Many viewers mentioned the fact that the child’s gaze made them feel that the child was somehow more adult, more thoughtful or more jaded.  This was surprisingly encouraging in that I was able to depict these children with a sense of presence, agency and interiority that people were not used to acknowledging.  I have given myself the task of further researching how children have been represented and perceived throughout history through a number of readings mentioned above, but I will also be extending this search to include photographers such as Diane Arbus, Jill Greenberg, Sally Mann, Dorothea Lange and other Depression-era photographers as well as painters like Alice Neel and Margaret Bowland.

A very wise Stuart Steck once said, “Smart artists give themselves a problem; a question to find answers to.”  Moving forward, I have found myself with a number of problems, and possible means to solve them.   The problem that I strive to address is deeply engrained in our culture; we do not, as a society, see our children for the powerful, creative, passionate human being that they are, nor do we appreciate the process of childrearing for the powerful, spiritual and highly skilled endeavor that it is.   My goal will be to investigate these issues through a number of paintings, that will address the topic of the unseen child.  I will also be experimenting more deeply with the use of Iconography in order to create an informed and guided experience for the viewer.   The end result will hopefully be a series of paintings that successfully address the topics outlined above, while simultaneously posing me with an endless new list of questions to address in the near future.