24″ square, acrylic on canvas over wood panel.
24″ square, acrylic on canvas over wood panel.
The great Talking Heads frontman David Byrne recently gave a 15-minute talk about the nature of expression that, while pretty informal and general, presents a compelling argument for the role that intended context plays in the creation of music. His point is relevant to the work I pursue as an artist, and it’s nice to hear someone else articulate a defense of contextual consideration; I used to bring this up in graduate school — the idea that I was thinking more about my paintings living in domestic settings than anywhere else — and the faculty was not very enthusiastic about the idea that I had an intended environment, let alone that this environment might influence the form of the work itself.
If you imagine a forest: a forest is composed of trees. If you’re next to any particular tree in the forest, you have a unique viewpoint of the whole forest. But the nature of the forest is that the trees hide the totality of the forest. And you can never see the forest as a whole unless you fly above it. But each viewpoint in the forest is really giving you a taste for forest, unlike when you’re out of the forest looking at it. The essence of the taste of forest is “mystery.” What makes forests so calming and so exciting to be in is that most of the viewpoints are hidden, they are mysterious to you. Yet the one viewpoint you have is beautiful.
– Ashtanga yoga master teacher Richard Freeman from his audiorecording, “The Yoga Matrix.”