The full-circle experience of initiating a painting, going through the process of resolving the piece, realizing what the work is about, then putting that into words is awesome and seriously challenging. To make sense of the impulse to paint and to complete a picture means diving into your own work as a sort of objective observer.
I have learned that it is my job to show up in front of the canvas, not give up, and trust that the work will be worth it. “Worth it” meaning that it will shed light on some truth about life–and hopefully resonate with others.
This painting “Gold Pipes” is about the recent-ish time I weathered in which many major aspects of my foundation shifted causing a collapse and fragmentation of my grounding.
I see in this work that the shards radiating all around the “house” are somewhat organized and creating a new formation. The gold pipes at the left side of the canvas plunge through the dark and loop back around and connect to the pink feminine shape on the right. The cream stripes bridge across another patch of darkness and seal the continuous flow into orange, over the roof, and back into the house filled with black. But don’t misinterpret.
The black is used as a reference and in reverence to the void, the place where nothing has taken shape, where, as said so beautifully by Louise Nevelson, “You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing.”
ALYSON KHAN [blog] 