Susurrus8" x 8"Acrylic on Book Pages & Canvas2005Sold

I visited Homosassa Springs, FL in the winter of 2005, and when I saw this baby alligator at their nature park, I knew I had to paint him (or her)! The background of this painting is comprised of a page from a book called The Creation of Matter, a page from an I Ching book, and the street finder section of an Asheville, NC map. The part that was to become the alligator was filled in with gesso, and the gator was drawn and painted in a meticulously photorealistic manner. The background was given several washes of red, crimson, and cadmium orange paint, and also sprinkled with a bit of black lava gel medium. This layer was coated with a gloss gel medium, and then the lines of the golden waves were carefully drawn, painted white, and then overlaid with several coats of antique gold paint. A final sealing coat of gloss polymer varnish then completed the painting. The golden waves were inspired by the Japanese byobu, or multi-panel folding screens, which were popular in Japan in the early 18th century and were used as decorative room dividers. The background text pages form a subtle crease down the near-center of the piece, which references its byobu influence. The underlying text peeking through provides the surface of the painting with a sense of age and history and is an embodiment of wabi sabi, the traditional Japanese aesthetic based on an appreciation of things that are imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is emblematic of life as an organic unfolding process that is always in stages of becoming. In this painting, nature (in the form of a reptile and stylized waves) supercedes the potency of language and therefore human consciousness, in a juxtaposition in which nature appears to both dominate and embrace human cognizance. The still pose of the alligator combined with the multi-layered Asian-influenced background create a piece that is imbued with a silent and mysterious mysticism.

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