What started out as a light valued drawing ended up getting darker and darker after I scanned it on to the computer and started manipulating it. At least the yellow and orange colors are dominant enough to catch the eye’s attention and retain power as centers of interest. Speaking of eyes, a theme I often explore in my work, you can see eye shapes on the left and right hand sides.
In thinking of what to title this drawing, I first thought of calling it Externalized Homunculus. A homunculus is basically a “little man.” In philosophy, the homunculus is supposedly the real intelligence inside your brain or your mind who is operating your body. The reason why I was thinking of titling this piece Externalized Homunculus is because I often ponder how people can sometimes watch themselves act something out from an externalized perspective, as if they are watching themselves in a film.
I didn’t draw “the little man” without in this drawing because one’s self, separate from one’s body, may not even have a human form. I still needed some kind of representation that would indicate a disembodied state of self-observation.
In this drawing, the selves are represented as mandalas, not human forms as well. There are two of them occupying the center space of the picture. One is above and one is below. I had wanted to do a painting or drawing for a while now of two equal sized mandalas. I knew it would work well within my Micro-Chimerisms series, as it portrays more of the mosaic style I’ve been working on throughout my life.
To put it bluntly, this drawing is actually crowded, oppressed, and full of conflict. The four fish-like figures surrounding the two mandalas are traveling upward, as if they are traveling upstream instead of downstream. Water naturally seeks paths of least resistance, to finally find resting places at the lowest points it can. Water is, not only a symbol of the unconscious mind and emotions, but it is also a symbol of collecting. Since humans are self-reflecting beings of nature, it is only natural that I would find this anthropomorphic quality in water.
The yellow and orange colors in the positive spaces of the objects are affiliated with the sun, light, oranges, lemons, and the splanchnic of citrus fruits. These colors are also opposite of blue, which fills the negative spaces of the rest of the drawing. There are two waterdrop-like forms with pointy yellow petals in them coming from the left and right sides of the picture and penetrating the space between the two main mandalic forms. This adds yet another dimension to the conflict felt in the artwork.
As a whole, I don’t think crowded conflict is bad, as oppositional forces can often be turned into creative ventures. I also don’t think growth can occur in conflict-free situations. While I don’t consciously seek conflict out, I realized my unconscious mind was communicating tension and conflict in this illustration after I finished it and started working on it digitally. Synchronistically, I was at Lowe’s today, and saw a large quote painted on the wall in the back of the store stating “safety is when nothing happens.”
I was surprised to see such a quote in a large corporate chain warehouse store such as Lowe’s. I would have thought that they’d be so regulated by our fear mongering totalitarian government that they’d say something like “see something, say something,” meaning, tell the government if you see someone acting weird. It was refreshing to see Lowe’s promoting an idea that was easily the mindset the founding fathers of the US had when they wrote out their revolutionary writings.
So you have the hot and the cool expressed in this image, surrounded by a dark frame. Beyond the frame are other worlds, and other universes. It looks like you could hop over the frame anyways, as the darker shadowy parts appear to be receding, rather than moving towards you. Enjoy the viscous sliding of churning organic shapes and figures lovingly resisting and accepting one another in a symmetrical moment in time.
Note that the word Exoculation is an obsolete word. It meant the act of putting out the eyes. That’s not the meaning I intended for this picture however. As I already wrote above, the externalized eyes are symbolic of a non-physical self observing one’s self interacting with another in a physical state.
Art of eVan 