Wednesday, July 8, 2009

"Generation Gap"...


As a themescapist, whose emphasis is on utilizing metaphors for showing universal themes, it is always a delight to find similar thoughts from others from time to time... the original idea of this, for instance, came from an old friend of mine from many years ago, John Paul Sherman, a poet, who used this as his theme/title to a poem...

Along the wall of time appeared
A singular niche: the space of a minute.
Trowel of skill,
Mortar of will,
This appropriate brick I placed within it.

This itself came from another rendering of years earlier, "Veneration", which had the reverse, one old brick among new ones on the wall section... the original idea had been to show opposite senses of life - except it didn't happen, as each of these can and does display a positive view of man's relationship to the universe...

I make mention of this because one's sense-of-life has a lot to do with what one chooses to render, what draws one's interest as worth the rendering - even to how important is the desire to showing the importance of the rendering idea in terms of the size of the work in mind, whether the artist consciously sees this or not [it is reflective of the sense of 'greatness' within the artist, for better or worse - whether that 'greatness' is justified or not, and by what criteria is used to identify that sense of greatness, and by whom ]...

I say this because - consider for a moment, the size of this one work, and ask oneself whether its theme/title would have as much effect on the showing if, say, half the approximate life size it is? or if double the size? [and in this respect, not considering the medium used, only what is being shown] then ask 'why' - and what the size differences does to the grasping of what is being shown, or what else is added or removed from the showing in consequence... I say this because these things do matter, and the greater works have these thoughts behind them among all the other thoughts going into the creation...

[to say nothing that this itself is yet another layer in this particular metaphoric onion]

1 comment:

  1. Yes, this image was posted early in the blogging, but this here is used as an example, not in showing the work per se...

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