Wonderful weekend.

I didn't paint today, but I was reminded of how fiercely I want to continue making art, and how much I have to say. I visited the DeCordova museum outside Concord, MA. this weekend. Tyler was fishing on Walden Pond, seriously, and I trotted out to Thoreau's cottage and pondered the wonderful words of the transcendentalist before hightailing it indoors at the museum up the street. I was quite immediately greeted by the installation pictured at the right. Now I was very, very, naughty to take photographs of this. It is typically frowned upon because of a few reasons not least of which is the fact that a flash can damage the often light sensitive surfaces of artworks overtime, but there is also that whole sticky issue of copyright and intellectual property.

Bah...

I loved this - positively swooned over it. And felt that I absolutely had to capture it for further scrutiny back home in the studio. As I talked about the piece to Tyler I realized I was interested in how the botanical subjects were turned into flat symbols and then grouped according to a mood or subject to create these crazy motifs - sort of Victorian, sort of fanciful, grotesque. Yes, this piece was grotesque in the way that the grotesque becomes the sublime...I loved it.

On another note, I was lucky enough to find four tintypes as I sorted through bins of antique photos in a shop in Gloucester MA this weekend. The owner was a collector of other people's snapshots as were some of his close friends. And I was immediately fascinated by that as well. What a wonderful and strange obsession - very voyeuristic in a way. Love it!