I recently decided to embark on a multi-media project that reimagines a single idea as painting, metalwork and papier maché. When I first started working on the Protoas, I tried traditional flour and water papier maché by making a ball. It’d been sitting on my window sill since March, and for reasons I can’t explain, I really liked it. I’d come to think of it as a little meteor or a stone and decided to play with this idea more, so now I’m chasing “stones” in copper.
Stone – Tipping Point WIP 20111111 ©2011
There was also an affinity with a small section of my “experimental canvas” (it’s a canvas that I continually repaint to try things out). I started painting standing stone formations on several canvases, and they were really weak and unresolved. A week or so later, I started thinking about Helen Frankenthaler who was mentioned in a book I’d been reading, and what she called her Dying process. I decided to try my own version of it, and had a breakthrough. The work is ongoing, but I’m excited about the direction.
I’ve been thinking about the whole concept as “Tipping Point.” It’s about the idea of collapse: how does a collapse start? What does it look like? Is there a single cause or a multiple causes? When does it occur? Are all collapses fundamentally the same?