It was a rather rainy chilly day on the Saturday of my Open studio. However enough people came to make it worthwhile. Its always so interesting to get some feedback. I know that often viewers of art don't want to seem unsophisticated in their remarks and this can stifle the comments. I will list some comments I thought interesting
A viewer really noticed that seeing the images on the website and in the flesh , so to speak were really different. He commented that there was much more of a chance to see the textures in the real piece. Also that they looked much more dimensional in reality. My reply was that really its not so surprising that the paper that I directly use and put time, effort and energy into should reap more of a visual reward than a photograph reproduced on a website. He was afraid that this was an unsophisticated point of view. I assured him that no it was not, it proved to me that he was really looking and feeling the work, not simply looking at the imagery.
A comment about "Meditation Northern Hemisphere" and" Meditation Southern Hemisphere" was very interesting to me. The lady said that it looked as though the fetus was directly plugged into the source, as in the Divine creative spirit in the Universe. I had thought of the baby and the seeds and the sperm circling the porthole like openings as being the chatter of the mind when I meditate. The portholes looking through to the Universal stillness, seem to be the goal of meditating. The added idea that as well as all that going on we are all also plugged into the Divine, was a wonderful illumination.
3.The large piece called "Past Present and Future" seemed to make some people curious. It is a complex piece, that took a long time to finish , and so I have a lot to say about it. I began by explaining that it is a piece about time, and what goes on in all our heads ,we have thoughts about the past , that we drag into the present and they become out future. It is also about the battle between good and evil that seems to be a constant theme in our world. The dark bug like shapes represent the negative force and the lighter shapes and the fetus again the positive force. The same imagery is used in all three pieces, if you notice the fetus in on the left side in Past and Present , in Future it is on the right side. this represents my hope that good will win out in the end. The shapes on the world or egg within each piece of paper represents to me, the universe within which we exist, if you notice the transparency in the three eggs is different. This represents for me the subtle blending and eventually the more natural way of being that the Future represents. The purple gaps between the two halts of the egg are the possible opening of the Pandoras box of the world, but also the gap in Meditation. A viewer observed that the three fetus's were all quite distinct, in the Past the fetus looked like a very old man, in the Present the fetus was female and in the Future it was male. Another viewer had also mentioned that he saw the Hindu Goddess Kali in this piece, I had to do some research about the creator destroyer goddess but I was amazed to discover that really that is exactly what Kali was about. It was the Hindu version of the Battle between good and evil.
