Indifferent
Matters
52 Collages on Watercolor Paper
7 x 10 or 9 x 12
2019-2020
Scans: PhotoWorks SF
"Our spirits need simple things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees."
Edwin Way Teale, 1899-1980
"..I want a little breathing space to muse
on indifferent matters.."
William Hazlitt, 1778-1830
My three-dimensional assemblages take a long time and much patience to build. Glue needs to set before adding the next element, for example. They end up being holiday projects, resembling Gustav Mahler’s pattern of composing music during the summer because the rest of the year was jammed with bill-paying work.
In 2019, I paused the construction of assemblages and, inspired by the writings of the naturalist Edwin Way Teale and essayist William Hazlitt, returned to less time-consuming and rapidly satisfying two-dimensional collaging. It felt great, as did using pebbly-textured watercolor paper, and listening to the mystical symphonies of Bruckner and Vaughan Williams, organ music of Franck and Widor, piano works by Beethoven, Chopin, Field, Mozart, Satie, and Schubert, and chant and lute. Like an old friend, the near-weekly activity became a companion – and a means of processing - as the pandemic intensified.
