Gathering Forces

24"x18" mixed media, acrylic on canvas. (no longer in inventory)

Back to the gel medium and lightweight spackle for this one. There's no denying, this mixture is really my favorite for texturing. I applied the media after studying Kaethe Kollwitz's work, in particular, "The Carmagnole (Dance around the Guillotine)." Her composition shows a city scape with common folk dancing in the street in front of the guillotine. What made me connect with this particular piece of hers? The current events being driven by those in power in Washington D.C. (around the time of a certain controversial hearing conducted by a senate committee).

Once the media dried, however, I couldn't connect with what I had created. I couldn't tell what I was trying to communicate. So I turned the canvas 180 degrees and decided to paint it as if the thing were burning down. I did come to think of it as a gated structure being burned, with the fire starting in the streets. And I wondered about the toxicity of the smoke--that structure above the flames--sometimes it looks like a lioness, sometimes a gargoyle, sometimes Beethoven's head.

This painting has been finished for about 5 months, and it's still one of my favorites. Usually, my favorite is the one I'm working on now...

The World Split Open (3 Part Series--so far)

Each of these sections of the triptych is 36"x24", acrylic on canvas 

(no longer in inventory)

(no longer in inventory)

(no longer in inventory)

I didn't know about Kathe Kollwitz when I created this triptych. I only knew the lines from the poem "Kathe Kollwitz" by Muriel Rukeyser that were quoted in a book I read that examined the Madwoman archetype: 

What would happen if one woman told the truth about

       her life?

    The world would split open

In fact, I have quoted these lines in an earlier post thinking that it would be the title of the series I was working on at that time. But the timing was not right until now. 

After this triptych was completed, I decided to read the full poem by Rukeyser. But I didn't get it. Until I realized that Kathe Kollwitz was an artist and that I could immerse myself in study of her to understand the poem in its entirety. And holy shit. Did I get some powerful connection to then believe that this work I had done was appropriately titled. The connection I felt for the artist and the poem written about the artist was exquisitely painful in all of its gory and glory. Anti-war socialist? Hell yeah. Examining what could be considered the minutiae of everyday life to those of global ramifications. Absolutely. I was seeing all that in these pieces of the triptych as I worked each panel. From the cellular level to the perils of life and facing death, from the individual through to the community local and at large. Add to that, she worked largely in black and white in her drawings. This all together got me right in my core, in the very center that was the birth of this work. 

Sometimes everything fits in the most mysterious of ways.

Below are the links to Rukeyser's poem and to a bio about Kathe Kollwitz.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/90874/kathe-kollwitz

https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/kathe-kollwitz-german-modern-art-controversial-1021973

There are more websites about Kollwitz and of course images of her art online. I am still immersing myself in her.