I wanted to experiment with a border that looks like the piece is mounted on a board for display. I’ve been feeling annoyed with the borders I’ve been making digitally for my art online. They were intended to look like matting boards of a variety of colors. I’ve just been feeling like they are too cheesy however recently. I may change my mind again about it after posting this recent piece with no e-matting, but a mount on which the piece is fixed.
It looks like there is an Ouroboros that constitutes the light green annulus that occupies the center of interest. I hadn’t intended that effect while I was in the process of making it. I needed to bust out of another rut or block I’ve been in. So this piece is representative of that. There really was no pre-planning or preparation for it, other than the style I’ve been using for the last few years. I just cut out some material from weird fashion magazines after I’d drawn the shapes with pro-markers. I’m still entertaining mixed media concepts, which usually includes markers, pens, pencil, cutouts and simple chemical transformation processes.
I let a lot of things get in the way of my creative actions, and it becomes, not just battles that are swiftly won, but internal wars with my habits, my conflicting desires, and my obsession with politics. This piece looks like a knot in a way, giving some symbolism to my conflicts. I got interested in topological knots a few years ago because of how I realized they represented complex closed loops and how I imagine they characterize psychological compulsions, obsessions, and other self-limiting habits. I wanted to make something creative out of something destructive, and hopefully helpful to others.
I’ve been reading books by Moshe Feldenkrais, a Ukrainian-Israeli engineer and physicist who developed a body awareness and movement training process. I recently finished reading Body & Mature Behavior, a book he wrote after world war two. He discusses the balancing senses as found in the ears, and, more specifically, the semicircular canals. If you pull up a diagram of these structures, you can see that my illustration associates with them. I hadn’t intended this either.
Art of eVan 