History of Material

This week I have been researching alongside building my next round of canvases. I was waiting for some canvas to come in the mail, so I started going through old books that I had I’m my studio.

I found myself cracking open an old art history book that I had gotten form UW Stouts library. (At the end of the semester the school would get new books and offer up the real old books to students.) I wasn’t sure when or how I would be using this book when I got it. It is a big book, perhaps as big as a standard English Dictionary. I hadn’t even looked at it since my undergraduate other than to pull it off my bookshelf when I moved.

The very first section of the book is called, The Ancient World: Magic and Ritual - The Art of Prehistoric Man. I felt a little floored. This was the vein I had been thinking in over the last few weeks. I was looking for ways to tie the ideas of image making with the idea of God(s). I also have been thinking about my relationships with my work and how art, the studio, and the gallery can act as Holy spaces, or sacred spaces. I have not finished the section yet, but even the bits I have read are powerful. It speaks of the cave as holy place and as womb. The hunter/ artists used the images both to connect with the spirit of the animals they were hunting as well as visualize the success of the hunt. Image making, magic, and holy space all in one.

I find that through my work I am accessing energies and forces that would otherwise go unnoticed to me. Am I tapping into the same energies that Paleolithic humans where in their caves? The connection with the Natural work as well as soil has always been blooming; that is to say that I am finding these materials have a powerful presence. Some of my paintings look like they are made from dirt, while some have this striking otherness that seems to capture some rouge element of the sublime or unnamed natural forces. There always seems to be something new that is grasping at my attention, and this week it seems that I can hardly keep my head on straight. I am joyful for all this great energy.