I’ve been working on a group of new work that will be going to a gallery in the Indianapolis area that is new to me. I’ve been working on pieces that I feel are very representative of my voice, knowing that it will be a first view of my work for most of the people who may see it there. I’ve focused on imagery, forms and colors that feel almost ingrained in my body of work wanting to give the viewer a quick insight into what I try to do with it.
As I’ve been working away, I keep coming back to the idea of these as internal landscapes, meaning that they are attempts at creating an inner harmony. Harmony is the key word here, the concept of separate parts working together to create a unified whole. I think we often feel fragmented and unsteady in our external lives, never fully feeling in harmony with the world around us. Perhaps I make a mistake in using the term we here when I mean I, not really knowing what the rest of you feel in your own relationship with the world. But I do know that I have often felt this way, out of sorts with the world in many ways and that it really is an unsteady feeling and that I turn inward to try to find an inner rhythm, a harmony within that can steady me. Something to allow me to function outwardly.
Like many things, this a difficult thing to explain. Perhaps I should just point out this new painting, a smaller canvas, 12″ by 16″, that I call Rooted In Harmony, and let it speak for me. This piece probably says more about what I am trying to describe in a single glance than I can with all the struggling words and sentences I could possibly write. I find great pacification in this painting, a feeling of relaxed ease forming inside. It tempers my confusion, calms my angers and slows the turning wheels of my inner self. My outer self is better for it. And maybe that is what I hope for with the title of this piece, that by finding an inner peace, the root here, it will spill outward in a harmonious attitude.
Okay, I have to stop the words. For another example of harmony, a great example of musical harmony, here’s a little classic Simon and Garfunkel from a 1966 performance on Dutch television. It’s I Am a Rock.
Redtree Times 