ETHEREAL MEMORIES
18×24
TESSERA
$800

This bit of whimsy is a tessera piece that has an older oil painting as a base. The cut-up remains of other works over-lay the original, and in some cases allow the original work to peek through creating a new image that has a slight-of-hand feeling to it.

The work presents itself as two neighborhoods. The random roads and jumbled buildings seem to float in a world of cloud and illusions. They create a sense of rigid isolation from each other and from the world.  And yet there is a tenuous connection that is either falling apart or being repaired.

What kind of world lies here? Are they frozen in space … cursed by an evil spirit like villagers of old? Do they await rescue from their isolation? Or are they merely too busy to touch base with their neighbors?

BLOG POST;
This small work has a sense of completeness and serenity that allows one to make up one’s own narrative.
This work is composed primarily of tessera from one painting that was chopped into pieces and reconfigured into an entirely new image, but it is nevertheless a reflection of the original work. Tessera from other paintings have been added, and like bits of memories that we call on to help us when telling a story, the new bits add depth and interest to the original. So too do the traumas, and joys and grief and love that we experience add color and texture to our memories.

While working on this piece, it was struck by how this image is like my interior vision of myself. I always seem to be stitching together a new version of myself to present to the outside world. Whatever it is I piece together might look solid and cohesive, but is in fact cobbled together with bits and pieces that have washed up on the shore of my life. I would suppose that most people find this to be true. But then again, maybe not. Maybe it is just that I have the time to mull over all this existential dreck while cutting up old canvases.