All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
—Federico Fellini
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I love this quote from legendary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini and the image of us all having a pearl inside ourselves, just waiting to be revealed to the outer world. It’s a pearl that is formed from the experiences and observations that make up our lives.
It fits well with the theme for the Gallery Talk that takes place Saturday at the West End Gallery in Corning. I plan on talking about how art has transformed my life and how that transformation has made its way into my work. In short, how my own simple pearl was formed and brought to light.
An example of that might be in the painting at the top, a very new work that will be shown for the first time on Saturday called Transmitters which is 10″ by 20″ on canvas. I see it as being about the need to communicate, about how we seek and reach out to like-minded people throughout our lives. For me this has been one of the biggest needs that painting has fulfilled for me. It has provided a platform for me to express thoughts and emotions that I would struggle to express in any other way. In doing so it has created a path forward to reaching others who share similar thoughts and emotions.
So here the pearl is the Red Tree and it reaches across space to others who feel they have their own Red Tree within. Hopefully, knowing that allows them to open their own shells and share it with the world.
Well, that might be part of what I’ll be talking about on Saturday. Who knows what might come up?
Redtree Times 