Redtree Times

Archaeology: The Past Comes Forward– Soon at Principle Gallery

We are that strange species that constructs artifacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.

–William Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor

The painting above is a new addition to my Archaeology series and is included in my June solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery. It is titled Archaeology: The Past Comes Forward and is 18″ by 18″ on canvas.

There is a lot I like about this series of paintings, aside from the process of painting the artifact field which is a sort akin to writing in a stream of consciousness, just letting things go without much, if any, forethought. I think the main aspect that attracts me to it is its ability to reveal new hints and new surprises with each new examination of the details. Every view creates new and different links between the artifacts and a new story and interpretation seems to emerge each time.

I think I may have compared these paintings to a jigsaw puzzle in the past. You’re trying to piece tiny bits and pieces together to get a fuller view of the whole they represent. Isn’t that kind of what archaeologists are doing?

It begs the question: What are the artifacts that would best represent what you are in this world if future archaeologists were to excavate the remnants of your life?

I sometimes ponder that question when I am painting these pieces. There are obvious choices. Paintbrushes. Books. Artwork. A guitar and things like that. However, the thing that always jumps out at me is that we don’t get to choose what pushes its way to the future to represent us. I look around at the mundane objects and wonder if they will end up being the sum total of my existence when some being in Year 21278 comes across evidence of our time.

Will my existence then be reduced to toenail clippers, a screwdriver and a broken pair of reading glasses? Will a plastic bucket , a chainsaw blade and a piece of chicken wire say anything about what the person I was thought and felt twenty thousand years before?

Most likely, it doesn’t matter. Maybe Gibson was right, we construct these things, these artifacts, so that we don’t forget and aren’t forgotten. But for the time being, I am enjoying this painting and the things it keeps me from forgetting.

Here’s song, Traffic in the Sky, to go with this post from Jack Johnson. I chose it because of these lines:

Puzzle pieces in the ground
But no one ever seems to be digging
Instead they’re looking up towards the heavens
…
The answers could be found
We could learn from digging down
But no one ever seems to be digging

Seemed to fit.