Season’s Survivors: The Conception Story
Acrylics on yupo paper mounted on wood panel. 24″ x 24″ x 1.75″.
Recently completed after abiding patiently in the archives for eight years, awaiting the final completion stage. Sometimes it takes that long. This piece was conceived at my art studio on Bowen Island during the nearly three years of that ‘residency’. Executed with palette knives and acrylics on large Yupo paper (28″ x 40″), it was an exploration since I was unfamiliar with how the acrylics would take to that quality of surface. It worked! However, I still had to conceive a ‘composition’. It was all background or setting. What’s the story I wanted to tell?
It was another fire season in the province of BC, and several ‘close encounters’ of communities in the central regions made the news. While that is scary and horrific for those residents the perennial ‘victims’ are always the residents of the forest itself. Was that the inspiration for the shadowed survivors standing together and alone? Perhaps. It is in reflection that I become attuned in more explicit ways to how my inspirational process unfolds. That is my on-going artist’s inquiry.
However, the piece was not done. To me it looked ‘wrong.’ Something was amiss, incomplete. I couldn’t figure it out, which was of course the wrong way to go about it. So I let it be, rolled it up and set it aside. I returned to it periodically over the years with ideas but could not make up my mind. Then, this past week with Jupiter (who says ‘Go big’) conjunct Neptune (who counsels “Seek the depths”) in Pisces, I knew what was needed to finish this one.
This may sound radical. I cut the painting in half, removed a four inch middle section, and then mounted both halves together on a 24″ x 24″ ‘thick’ wooden panel. Tricky to get the seam just right. I then added more tree detail to hide the seam. I outlined the whole piece in a very narrow black, as well as the edges of the wood panel. Then varnished with a matte finish. Voila! Thank you Neptune and Jupiter for the inspiration! (Always thank the muses, however you conceive them.)
That’s the conception story of Season’s Survivors. What do you think about that? Then, this past week with Jupiter (who says ‘Go bIg’) conjunct Neptune (who counsels “Seek the depths”) in Pisces, I knew what was needed to finish this one.
