A Significant Image – Week Two Task and Reflection

Ekphrasis

It has sat, silent, in every home I have lived in. Gold gilt frame, a life in still of produce and bounty. Its audibly voiceless presence, always being, accepted, let live, ignored – dare I say taken for granted. Until this year and by selfishly led means, I looked up from my table where nearby this image guards – I lingered. Why?

Asked to create a workshop in still life practice, I distilled my local environment - looking objectively at life through this lens. Suddenly I myself had to develop my own still life work – I became interested – I remembered.

You see, as a child, my family and I moved around, I never settled and objects and their placement were the only sure fabric – sure objects that is, one which companioned me from home to home – familiarly brought relative security.

I am not in love with this painting, yet if it was not there, broken, lost, I would be heart broken. This made me question objects and images and why or how we value them. We do not have to love them for the art, if that is what they are know as. Value changes, circumstances and narrative dependent.

In this paintings current home, the wall its hung on, has changed so many times in tone and colour – I could take out a mortgage with the Farrow and Ball paint allowance proffered. Yet it, will never change. So, I sleep, with this ‘sure’, this ‘unchangeable’.

When it came to this writing task, there was no choice in my mind as to what to write about – it always was, always will be this painting.

What is my definition of importance? Connection?

Whatever – in this images shadow, I sit at my table, the one I work on every day for my practice, in it’s security.

Reflection

This task taught me more about myself than it was a learning within the arts. I mention in my short presentation, that I moved and felt a lack of stability within my formative years. This insecurity made objects and my relationship with them of greater import. I became at times, subliminally attached to objects, be it furniture or image related within my home setting. I guess that I quickly realised, that some things were out of my control, yet I could choose or at least argue for an object/image’s keeping, its onward life in my walls.

Bringing this back to the context of my chosen piece (for those interested it is a large gold framed Pueblo still life print above my studio table), I realised that we could pass things by, underappreciate them, because they are always there. We can also define our likes or connection of an image, based on more than if we are a fan of a certain method or technique – it can be about memory, certainty and so much more than say a ‘good’ painting.

Final learning thoughts? For me, art is so much more than who I am, my career or what I enjoy doing – it is a way of creating micro certainty in my life. I have dealt with past trauma and life-threatening experiences within my own life – I can’t change them. But I can control the outworking of my hands and draw my way throughout it all.  AH