the irreversibility
The past is "the home of nostalgia", Luc Ferry says. The place of reminiscence and longing. But, it also pulls us towards what Ferry calls the "great spoilers of happiness"; remorse, regret, guilt, and bitterness.
Much of my work deals with looking back and building from it. Digging down and deep, and finding something solid. With reconciling the past with the present. With coming to terms with the absences. With bearing the weight of what once was, but refusing to wear the albatross of what can never be again.
Art is the recognition of the tension between the plaintive nature of remorse and the wistful yearning. It's an invitation to mediate on the fleeting nature of things. To sit with the irreversibility.
We make decisions. We take risks. Calculated or otherwise, but always with the best intentions. Either in bold moves and subtle gestures. Through splashes of color or shifts in texture. It almost never turns out how we wished, hoped, or thought it would be.
No matter what happens, your task as an artist is to provide a compassionate response to what you can't undo and what you can't bring yourself to leave. To accept it and embrace it. To use every instance as something foundational. To create an under-painting.
The past never leaves. Never fully fades. But if you look closely, if you pay attention, if you use it properly, you'll find it offers depth, dimension, history, narrative, and intricacy. That it can be the very thing that upholds and underpins every new opportunity and every future possibility.
P.S. ICAD Day 90-93
Maybe to cover the underpainting as a way to protect it. To honor it. To say: it mattered.
"The past never leaves. Never fully fades. But if you look closely, if you pay attention, if you use it properly, you'll find it offers depth, dimension, history, narrative, and intricacy."
Definitely a struggle, that one, but necessary. Appreciate the perspective as always, Duane.