R24 Nuclear Creature

R24 Nuclear Creature
36x24" oil on panel

Here the checkerboard becomes three-dimensional, heaving up in irregular thrust faults, the upheaval of a threatening world. The order and pattern of life is broken up, but out of the disorder and threats (missiles, darts, dark birds, like omens) there arises a new creature.

March 24, 1987
New panel on the easel. A new beginning. I have taken my time on the drawing, trying to interpret my mental state, give birth to a little being that is not man or woman, but an artistic spirit. Brave little artist, hissing up through the fissures and angles of a warped set of blocks, erupting in a flare of wings like black fire; sensing something out there, analyzing data. Defiant. This is the little spirit that I am painting.

22 June 1987
Completed the oil painting, R24 , after working on it all day and most of the evening. Most of my recent drawing s and watercolours have the same motif, an ambiguous creature rising up out of chaotic, fragmented surroundings. These are pictures that I may not like in the future, but they are essential products of my thought processes at the moment. It is as though my purpose were to take apart what I have been doing (origin) and examine every piece (fragmentation) and come up out of it with a new vision (eruption). All my creatures are pushing, reaching, climbing, striving. Out of confusion, one vision.

Eve was bent over her new picture, etching lines into the wet oil of the under-painting with a stylus.

“What is that?” Allan asked.

“I am trying to interpret my mental state,” she said without looking up. “I’m making a little being that is not a man or a woman, but an artistic spirit. A brave little artist,” she indicated a creature with the point of her stylus, “hissing up through the fissures and angles of a warped set of blocks, erupting in a mass of wings…they look like black fire, don’t you think?...sensing something out there, out beyond the painting. Defiant.”

I had to ask, Allan thought. Did she rehearse speeches like that?

Mary Weymark Goss (from the novel ‘Raven’)

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