A CONSPIRACY OF BEAUTY
In her recent novel Still Life, Sarah Winman describes “a conspiracy of beauty.” Our current world of perfidy and darkness has inspired me to create a conspiracy of tranquility and light, however ephemeral. This quest brought me two years in a row to Hawaii. In the spring of 2022, I spent a month exploring Kauai and Maui and in an “informal art residency” on the island of Molokai. In 2023 I wandered the Big Island with its dramatic lava fields and verdant tropical forests.
I began making images of flowers, what nature writer Barry Lopez once referred to as our partners in the divine. But first I had to overcome my fear of being labeled a “lady flower artist,” dismissed as too trivial or sensual. Even Georgia O’Keefe had to battle this after her time in Hawaii painting what she herself called the voluptuous plants.
I was also fascinated by landscapes unlike any I had ever seen - red dirt waterfalls, black sand beaches, folding cliffs, stark lava - the otherworldly natural world. There I found myself able to be solely in the present for a while, accepting the light and the darkness, the life and the impermanence. Once home, I began experimenting with ways to convey what I had experienced in Hawaii, to find art forms that would best express my conspiracy of beauty. I made color and black-and-white photographs, and printed long pieces of fabric to sew and bead upon. I created solarplate prints from my photographs and collaged and embroidered on them, drawing with thread and paper and fabric.
Reveries, Idiosyncrasies, Ephemeralities: I share them all with you.