STEWARDSHIP

Reflection on Process

For the Final Project, which I have chosen to title Stewardship in order to draw attention to the shared responsibility of our environment with other species, I decided to rework Studio 5 (which was also a reworking of Experiment 5). For Experiment 5, I chose to redo my previous painting, Crackling Woman with Hare which was my initial attempt to recreate the technique used by William Blake in The Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth by William Blake (1805) I encountered this painting over Fall Break when I visited London and Scotland and had the chance to see the William Blake Room of the Tate Britain. There I was able to examine some of the subtler features of his technique up close and in person. In this painting, Blake uses a bright yellow and red wash as a base coat and paints dark greens and blacks over top of it with gold leaf applied on top to lighten the images.

My first attempt at emulating the technique was in the then-titled Woman with Hare, a painting in which I explored the idea of an Artemis-like character, a female form who loves, reveres and protects the natural world, though the hare she is holding seems perfectly capable of protecting himself. I did not understand how this subject of protecting and respecting nature was at play in my inquiry into sound at the time that I made the painting in October of 2018, so I didn't feel like it would ever be included in my final portfolio, but here it is in the Final Project, in the form of a remix--nothing about it changed except the addition of "Crackling" to the title.

As I used the art of remixing to explore the technique I had used to create the first painting in Experiment 5, I was interested to see how my version of Blake's technique would affect a different subject, and I was also interested in bringing the image of nature back to the surface. In the original, there is a Persephone-like quality as well, one of transcending netherworlds--of escaping the sharp-toothed fishes nipping at the ankles of this woman and enduring the flames that eat away at her clothing. She appears to be strong, though slightly bloodied by battle. If you look closely at her feet, you will see the predators and the flames that make her journey difficult.

These tiny monsters are based on the much larger and scarier saber-toothed monsters in the background of Blake's painting of Pitt. What intrigued me about his work was how the color emanated from the basecoat, and how he used the background to deepen the narrative of the painting.....there seems to be a message underneath the painting in a way, something denoting the struggles of war perhaps. The war might even be a war of the spirit or an internal war within all humans--rising above the darkness as the monsters rip to shreds the innocents....

I might mention as well, at the time of these paintings, the largest fires of California were going on and the United States was gassing asylum seekers and locking up children at our border while loosening our protections on animals and the environment....there is also something very Scottish about a hare and a stag, something lingering a bit from my travels.....

When I look at these two pieces, there is a fiery infernal quality in both images which ties in tightly to the infernal and emanative processes described in Blake's writings concerning the imagination. In both paintings, the featured animals seem wild and wise. The woman in the first painting--appears either determined or angry--or both. I do not see a woman in the second painting and don't plan to add one, nor do I plan to add any infernal creatures threatening the stag. He already seems threatened by the need for green--there is not enough green.

An absence of green....although I suppose it could be night and the fire could be one of warmth and life-giving, as opposed to destruction.

It all depends on how you look at it.