spirit
Spirit was my first new body of works after a five-year hiatus from painting, during which I focused on design research. I wanted to explore a personal retelling of the Icarus story, based on a poem I had written. In this version, Icarus is an autobiographical figure portrayed as a bird with a broken wing. Through determination, and assistance from his loving community of peers, he is able to become what he wants to be, and leave a path for others to follow.
a quick look
This video shares a look at my typical painting process, which was used for the exhibition “Spirit.” This stage really is all about creating the base texture, typically by using latex plaster. I then work layers and layers of color onto the surface, adjusting the underlying tone of the image and working a corona into the outer edges. I then incorporate ephemera, fabric, and found objects.
For this exhibition I continued the process by adding birds, hand-constructed moths, and other, more time consuming details.
The song featured is "Through The Trees" by Ishi.
Spirit
a poem by Larrie King
The premonition,
gold, and warm with death,
could not keep his gaze from the light.
His brittle bones,
his wing, snagged in the egg,
snared him not from his great hope;
To join the sky, with his brothers
and his sisters,
who fashioned for him a way out—
a way up,
from the memories they found
left to rest upon the forest floor.
Beautiful, shining, and blessed, lost things
granted as gifts from the universe
for an unknown purpose.
Up!
Into the sky,
as high as he dared to go
and higher still,
until he became one with that
great, big light.
His bones returned to the earth,
received by the onlookers
in love and compassion,
with the gift so beautifully crafted for him
to make whole another, some time from now.
And his spirit
now spreads across the sky—
a light to help show the way.
