Feed back on the discrepancy Show in Napa.

Describing Discrepancy

Mark Van Proyen

Helen Wilson’s grouping of recent images titled Boys Playing Martyrs and Infidels Playing Cowboys and Indians seems to reach for the core of the matter, as if to say that the impulse to enact violent struggle lay within the deep psychological make-up of the human male. It seems to have the right kind of psychological distance for the way that we experience real conflict via mediated images, and it invites an ambiguous multi-dimensional reading that might be taken as a universalist apology for the bad decisions leading up to our troubled times.

Pagan Brooke

What an honor to see your drawings at the Napa Museum yesterday.

They were profoundly articulate, layered and powerful. The drawings them selves of course are stunning, but the way they told the story and carried the concepts was provoking and urgent. Thank you for a great experience.

Icons & Reliquares plus Couch Paintings & Coffee Table Books.

Finally some images of the opening.

About the skeleton...

I have been working with the image of the skeleton for over seven years.  The skeleton that we carry with us always (not simply at death), has been for centuries (and in multiple cultures) associated with Death as a Memento Mori.  The Skeleton also plays a part as structure. Especially when referring to architecture. Without this foundation we would collapse.  I use these multiple meanings in my art, first as a Vanitas and second as a reference to our foundations both religious and social. While death and its inevitability is an equalizing force, our beliefs about it affect our reality.

By using Velum (a transparent paper used in Architectural drawing) and placing two drawings back to back I hope to open up discussions on how our foundations affect who we become. Through the combination of being raised Catholic and the study of art history I understand the religious implication of illumination. The act of passing light through an image is a spiritual one. What becomes apparent in this action and what remains hidden is for me more of a psychological investigation into individuality.

For me personally, remembering my mortality has a very resent and personal meaning. I assisted my father only a couple of weeks ago. He died at home holding my mothers hand on August 13^th. While socially and culturally this time of life is predominated by myth and personally at times felt darkly dystrophic, the actual experience was an awakening one. Understanding more about death in the end affects how we chose to live and die.