FRAGMENTS
In this series I fragment, draw and stitch together images of a dutch flower paintings by Jan Van Huysum. I explore my urge to evade endings through making, and question the ways a copy both succeeds and fails to preserve the original. I add my own spin on the limitless iterations of the painting made possible by its digital copy. Once digitized, the work’s unique place in the world is exchanged for a reflection, an echo permeating and replicating indefinitely. In the cloud, it exists in infinite places simultaneously, yet the pixels on a screen don’t prolong the physical life of the painting any more than painting does for the individual flowers’ it represents. What endures is the artists’ view of the flower, warped and dragged into existence by their own hand. Hundreds of years since his own death, his painting remains, and its digital likeness will endure beyond that. A fraction of a reflection of a translation of his life, his perspective, remains.
Considering the implications of the french word for still life - nature morte - which translates directly to “dead nature” I use drawing as a form of active viewing. I connect with the image, exploring the worlds which exist within.
I filter the image through myself, distancing and distorting the original to make it my own; to keep alive some part of my experience, separate from my physical self. I call attention to the carefully inserted details and symbols littered throughout the paintings. By zooming in, cropping and sapping the images of color I reveal the human presence and the numerous indicators of death, cycles of life and the passage of time contained within the bountiful energy of the original composition.
I sew my fragmented pieces together, recalling the act of Frankenstein stitching flesh from separate bodies to make his monster. Similar to the way Van Huysum painted flowers in the same vase regardless of the impossibility of their coexistence in reality. An element of the grotesque residing within the beautiful, his imaginary bouquets are an exhumation and resurrection. His work exemplifies art’s resistance to the limits of reality and the confines of impermanence, reflecting my own desires to evade endings. I cling to the present through the act of making, an ultimately fruitless attempt to contain the ravages of time.
a note on titles
The titles for this show are quotes from the Realm of the Elderlings books by Robin Hobb, a sixteen-book series I listened to while creating these works. Hearing stories while I work allows me to lose myself in the meditative act of drawing and fixes the lessons and words of wisdom in my mind and into the paper along with the image. The messages enhance my thinking on the themes in my work and help me understand my impulses and motivation for creating art. Present for me throughout the creation of Fragments were words about living in the now and of the agony caused when one tries to settle events long past by constantly rehashing them in the present.
I see my own compulsions reflected in the actions of the characters, linked in our desire to preserve and keep close something that cannot be tied down: an unwillingness to surrender to time or fate. Attempts to transcribe the past are always infested with the present and say more about our own perspective than those moments long gone. Whenever I look at these drawings, I am transported into Hobb’s world, her words echoing in my mind. I wished to allow the viewer a chance to share in my experience and so have titled each work with small pieces of those tales.