Artists from A Generous Kingdom VIII share their ideas about abundance, the generosity of expression, shifting perspectives, coming full circle, and savoring the fleeting...
Theo Polymorphos
"Myth describes the timeless yet ever-shifting landscape of the human (and more than human) soul, and myth, like nature herself, is endlessly generous and regenerative to those who seek its wisdom. I especially love digging into lesser known myths, the stories that have fallen out of common parlance, perhaps because they evoke a worldview so alien to our own. Such seemingly inscrutable stories scramble our rational minds, opening us up to the potency of their symbols.
Bugonia is mentioned in a scattering of myths and legends from antiquity. Greek for "birth from a bull”, it refers to the mysterious process by which an ailing bee colony can be regenerated from the carcass of a sacrificial bull, hermetically sealed in a cave. A strange and brutal ritual from our modern perspective. It hardly matters to me whether ancient Greeks actually practiced this form of apicultural conjure, or what it’s all “supposed” to mean. I leave that bit to the academics. What interests me more is the questions this symbol stirred up in me as I painted it. What marvels await us when we finally exit the belly of the beast and all its carnage? Who can we trust to lead us on this journey? What a gift it is to be renewed, again and again, whenever life falls out of balance, as we travel the winding road of eternal recurrence!"
Theo Polymorphos
Maude May
Artist Maude May shares 2 favorite quotes ...
“This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don't think about it at all. The thing that was your bright treasure. You don't think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.”
Alice Munro
“Collage is different from almost any other visual medium. Unlike paint or pencil or crayon or ink, for example, its components bring with them the life they experienced — the role they played, the meaning they conveyed — before a human consciousness combined them to create a unique, inimitable work of art. Each collage exists in conversation with its own past and with the conversations it participated in before it even existed. Each collage carries within it the literal world from which it was made.”
Margaret Renkl
Nicholas Erker
"What draws me to create artwork is the need to explore memories. My work is based on narratives from my life and the lives of those around me. I realized the importance of exploring memories when I took care of my mother while she was in hospice care. The idea of loss, family, and the oral tradition of sharing family stories was something that became very important to me at that time. After my mother passed, I began creating much more work, all revolving around the idea of the American Midwestern family, oral traditions, and in some cases loss. Currently, I am working on two different series. One continues to explore the idea of memory while the other focuses entirely on the idea of what it is to live in the American heartland."
Nicholas Erker
Suzanne Fuqua
"Mostly, I straddle reality and imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane."
Tom Waits quote shared by Suzanne Fuqua
"I live in the Alexander Archipelago in North America, off the southeastern coast of Alaska. This vast temperate rainforest is home and refuge, my "church". The natural world influences most of my paintings, and the unpredictable dream world does as well. One of my favorite processes is laying down color washes and seeing what appears to me. I move from one element to another as the painting unfolds. Not knowing the exact outcome until I am done is a fulfilling, creative exploration.
Painting offers me solace, brings me joy, and gives me a path from which to navigate and withstand the pressures of the times we live in."
Suzanne Fuqua
James Richards shares the following quote by Carrie Mae Weems:
"I don’t always know what I’m doing. I’m often lost and struggling through a process and a set of ideas and emotions that I don’t always understand. Sometimes it takes me years to really understand what I’ve done… That’s why I think it’s so important to really sort of get out of the way of the work… I simply know that I need to make something…I need to realize something, grapple with something, and I do that…allowing the work to be what it is…allowing the meaning to emerge as it emerges. And maybe five years from now I’ll see something in the work that I really didn’t know that I was after."
Carrie Mae Weems
Thomas Crawford
"Close inspection reveals individual plots where future houses are planned, others where framing has begun, and others where new houses are complete. This satellite photo literally shows a new community coming into being.
Look again from a more global perspective -- a monumental building emerges with a triangular pediment resting on three columns, capped by a modest tower with a gabled roof, and standing upon a foundation of empty parking lots."
Thomas Crawford
Enzina Marrari
“Burn Your Lips is a soft sculpture based on the proverb, "Burn your lips on the hot milk, you'll start blowing on water too." It is a piece about processing trauma and grief, personal history, and redefining what is comfort.
I am drawn to the layers of stories woven into the vintage fabric of the doily. As I iron them out to prepare for what they’ll turn into next, I think about all the songs sung, tears shed, laughs had and time spent filled with the too much and the nothingness the doily must have witnessed - all the secrets it held.
The repetition of the hand stitched embroidery serves almost as a ritual of process - of remembering, of forgetting - a training of self, a scar. Marks that mirror memory, stitch by stitch.
A pillow provides comfort, solace, warmth- but like most things, it has sides. Sometimes cool, sometimes stifling - offering sweet dreams or sour nightmares, but, at least a new day and there is comfort there."
Enzina Marrari
