I apologise for having been AWOL for the last two months. My hunting season and my holiday season have been very creative and productive, but has given me an excuse to avoid the administrative parts of my work.
The short photographic essay, below, documents the step-by-step compositional evolution of my latest painting, entitled DEBATE, from October 2009 until January 4, 2010. It is being painted with acrylics, on an approximate, four foot square of masonite board.
Please click ``Read More`` for full post, from index page.
As I sit down and write, I am listening to a lecture by Jordan Peterson, on the excellent TVO Podcast of the Big Ideas Lecture Series. A portion of the lecture riffs on the archetypal stories of the primordial awakening of human self-consciousness. Like he says, "really, really old stories".
The story examples that he uses are older than the religious texts that he takes them from. I share his understanding of the metaphors being older than the flowering of human culture and "civilisation". He sees the Adam and Eve story as a representation of the awakening of human consciousness. His particular take, which I find visually compelling, is that Woman made Man self-conscious. I agree with that, but the implication of that wording, that female humans emerged into consciousness first, went unsaid. I find that an intellectual fireworks of an image; sexual selection of the lucid, male hominids with appreciable attention spans, by self-conscious, aware, and disbelieving female hominids. Our, now extinct ancestors emerging as sentient beings via some sitcom farce.
The rest of the podcast offers other story interpretations with secular and thelogical implications. Very stimulating.
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The main action of the piece, so far, is a struggle between two avian entities. The red, crested bird has been knocked off his balance and is falling. The cranelike opponent stands tall above, pushing the red bird down with his menacing talons. The red bird has a seagull-like head and bill (crest, not withstanding). It, too, wields a threatening claw.
One compositional idea that I am toying with is a figurative battle of the two characters’ memes; represented as tiny clone figures attacking each other like pirates clashing on two ships. A fractal reduction of figures, representing memes/memeplexes coming into conflict and exchange; it's not there, yet, but it will be.
Detail.
Soon, I will be posting new videos and a big post about our Ontario Arts Council grant, over at SpiritFire Park.
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